At a cult compound in rural Iowa, death prayers and doomsday prep gave way to ‘natural’ health grifts and costly tests of faith
Little Village, Iowa/September 30, 2025
By Emma McClatchey
On Dec. 12, 1972, cult leader John Robert Stevens made a big announcement: he was a time traveler.
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“I had a real meeting with the Lord,” Stevens told his followers in the Living Word Fellowship (LWF), also called the Walk. “During this meeting, I was projected seven years ahead of the present time. It was such a total thing that it almost blew my mind.”
“We are heading for some fantastic days,” he continued. “We really are. And the limitations that we’ve had in this Walk, we’re not going to have in the future, especially the financial limitations.”
The Nevada mine into which he’d invested their tithes would soon pour forth gold and silver. The congregations he’d amassed in southern California, eastern Iowa, Brazil and Hawaii would manifest God’s perfect kingdom on Earth — just in time for the apocalypse in 1979.
“Freeways will be bombed out. They’ll be destroyed,” Stevens said. “You’re going to have to know how to survive. I’d like to have 1,000 homes stocked with the necessary equipment for survival.”
If anyone in the crowd of LWF’s South Gate, California church had doubts about this prophecy, they didn’t voice them that night. Instead, “there was an immediate flurry of confirmation from the brothers [Stevens’ top acolytes], prophesying and coming up and agreeing with him,” said Scott Barker, who was raised in the Walk. “They just heard probably the most wild claim by John Robert Stevens to date, and they are immediately up there to back him up, just eating it up.”
Indeed, the Iowa farm boy turned New Age Christian prophet had made some wild claims before. He claimed a traveling evangelist miraculously cured “a terrific mastoid infection in both ears” during his childhood in Story County, Iowa. He claimed credit for the supposed Kennedy curse, believing the Walk’s focused prayers (called “intercessions”) brought about the deaths of JFK and RFK.
“There must be something violent within us that drives us to prayer and intercession until it becomes an agony within our heart,” he preached in 1967. “When God senses that drive, He answers prayer.”
Stevens claimed his wife Martha was a devil-possessed “Nephilim” and asked his followers to pray for her death. Another woman, Victoria Salyer, faced a literal witch trial before the South Gate congregation after she caught Stevens in a sexual affair with another married follower, which he denied. (Martha, too, confronted Stevens with allegations of infidelity. In her divorce filing, she says he “slammed” her head against a wall “several times” and “slapped me full force across the face, causing my nose to bleed” in response.) Salyer, like Martha, maintained her innocence, but was shunned from the Walk anyway.
The Living Word Fellowship followers sing during a worship service. Most “Words” delivered by church leaders were recorded on video and/or audio, then sold to followers. — photo courtesy of Scott Barker
The witch trial caused many of Stevens’ idealistic hippie followers to become disenchanted, leading to the Split of 1967, as it came to be known in the Walk. Some 50 followers left, but those that stuck around were more entrenched than ever — especially after the doomsday prediction in ’72.
“John Robert had pulled off the biggest coup in his history,” wrote cult scholar Woodrow Nichols, who went undercover in the LWF for a time. “He not only gave the kids the kind of end-time, mystical experience that they craved, but he also guaranteed that he would keep most of them around for the next seven years.”
Barker and another former member, Charity Navalesi, researched this period for their podcast Oops, I’m in a Cult! One of Stevens’ closest acolytes told them the time travel prophecy “became the basis of everything that took place in the churches from 1972 to 1979: storing wheat and other foods for survival, the building of Shiloh, the Kingdom Businesses and the total cutting off of everyone from colleges, careers or, in many cases, even relationships.”
Shiloh is the cult’s compound near Kalona in rural Iowa, where Navalesi spent much of her childhood. “Kingdom Businesses” were owned and operated by LWF members, often to sell Stevens-approved products like clothing and herbal remedies to fellow LWF members. Like the Nevada mine (which was a total bust) and Living Word Publications, which sold recordings and transcripts of Stevens’ every word, Kingdom Businesses were attempts to establish a society independent of the “Babylonian” institutions controlled by Satan — mainstream government, religion, arts, finances, sciences, education and health.
Stevens encouraged followers to stockpile supplies, study foraging and shelter-building, and learn to live without indulgences like make-up, toothpaste, matches and toilet paper. Long before the organic food craze and RFK Jr.’s MAHA agenda, Stevens blamed preservatives for corrupting Americans’ health.
Healthcare is no match for prayer and fasting. “A doctor doesn’t heal anybody. He just exposes you to the process by which the body heals itself … you have a natural means of healing,” Stevens explained. “Think of all the wicked people that need doctors. Think of all the sinners. Think of all the believers with weak faith that need doctors.”
He saw his home state of Iowa as a new Eden, and utilized the largely unpaid labor of his followers to pave paradise in rural Washington County. On more than 200 acres purchased from a local Amish farmer, the Walk gradually erected Shiloh’s three-story dormitory, church, offices, lodge, dining hall and amphitheater.
“We’re going to be kings and priests,” Stevens told Scott Barker’s dad, one of the cult’s early followers, when he inquired why Stevens was collecting so much property. “Are you going to be a steward of nothing or a steward of everything?”
As ’79 drew closer, “Papa John” Stevens would order emergency intercessions in the dead of night. Followers gathered in Shiloh’s sanctuary to pray away the spiritual “attacks” against their prophet (and to call down death upon Nephilim like Jimmy Carter, John Lennon and the Rockefellers) for hours on end, while Stevens drank heavily and suffered from ill health — a supposed impossibility, given his exalted status.
The apocalypse never happened, but the unthinkable did: Stevens died in 1983 at the age of 63. Charity Navalesi was a young child at the time, and raised to believe Stevens would literally resurrect. His failure to do so caused another exodus of followers, but among those who remained, Stevens’ death became taboo; it raised too much doubt, and he’d preached, “If you do not voice unbelief, it is not activated.”
“Nothing will be as wonderful as the deliverances and the blessings that God’s remnant in this generation will walk in,” Stevens said in 1967. “Put everything else secondary and press into all that God has for you without any reservations in your thinking.”
The late ’80s and ’90s brought fresh forms of indoctrination under self-appointed godhead Gary Hargrave and his new wife (and Stevens’ widow) Marilyn Hargrave, dubbed “the Lamp of Israel.” The Hargraves phased out the doomsday prep, but doubled down on the divine diets and commodification of “the Word”; hours upon hours, years upon years of mostly ad-libbed sermons by Stevens and the Hargraves, often characterized by misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ messages, were sold as tape sets for followers to wear out in their Walkmans.
The Hargraves also instituted a pyramid scheme of “designated relationships” to guide and control members’ decision-making, engineering marriages, divorces and recouplings among their flock while pushing young people towards unaccredited LWF schools like Shiloh University. Adjacent to Shiloh, they established Marilyn Farms, an organic farm built and maintained by cult labor, including children sent to Shiloh’s grueling summer camps. Navalesi can recall days spent clearing weeds and thorny bushes, hauling earth and concocting tinctures that were sold as health products through the Marilyn Farms Company. Kids in the cult tended to be fed meager meals of rice, beans and salad.
“In retrospect, I feel like it was just another way to control us,” Navalesi said. “You’re just hungry and tired and in a more suggestive state.”
A new “Health Commission” directed members to naturopaths, faith healers and other alternative medicine practitioners. Many were friends and allies of the Hargraves, but not always LWF members themselves. Of course, remedies tended to point towards products sold by Kingdom Businesses and Marilyn Farms.
For example, a vegetarian diet was heavily pushed in the cult for years once the Shiloh farm began hawking its crops — until the Hargraves decided to invest in cattle and bison. Running wild with the “new Eden” idea after a trip to Africa, they purchased emus, mouflon sheep and eland antelopes. (Not well suited to Iowa winters, the herds of exotic animals didn’t live long.) Suddenly meat products were healthy and holy.
“A cult leader is just a con man who cons the same people,” Barker told Little Village. “You just suck dry the same well. … Most of the people that stuck around were always chasing that dragon of, like, the high they got from John Stevens. [They’re willing to] snort a line of Marilyn Farms super juice to get there.”
Some strange and dangerous ideas became common wisdom in the Walk: Enemas of catnip, strawberry leaves and cayenne can increase longevity. Magnets will either hurt or heal, depending on how close they are to certain areas of the body. Raw garlic is a cure-all.
“I had really bad acne when I was around 19 or 20,” Charity Navalesi shared on her and Barker’s podcast. “I was told to put raw garlic on my face and it literally burned through layers of my skin. I still have scars.”
After a doctor prescribed Navalesi antibiotics to treat a cervical infection, a woman from the LWF Health Commission “told me to put a raw clove of garlic wrapped in cheesecloth and stick it up my vaginal canal” instead. Navalesi went with the Babylonian doctor’s advice on that occasion.
Decrying the “poverty mentality” of the Walk, Gary Hargrave often preached that children and adults need their spirits broken before they can find success.
“We were always being asked for money and time and work and donations,” Barker told Little Village. “The reward was the work.”
“The reward was not being shunned and excommunicated,” Navalesi added. “The reward was today you are treated like a human and shown love and acceptance. Tomorrow, if you decide you don’t want to do that, you’re out and you are treated like shit.”
Oddly for a church identifying as Christian, LWF had no interest in evangelizing or fighting real poverty. “We never had food drives or gave money to the homeless. Everything we did was to earn money for the organization itself, or for the school,” Navalesi noted. “… Nobody’s thinking about the outside world, because, frankly, the outside Babylon doesn’t matter.”
“Forget about what’s written in the Bible,” Barker said. “Forget about the Sermon on the Mount. Forget about the loaves and fishes. Why would going and feeding somebody be a way of redeeming your soul?”
Former cult members recall the Hargraves having this coffee table, or one very similar, in their lavish Hawaii residence. It’s possible they spent $29,000 of church money on the item.
In defiance of the poverty mentality, the Hargraves helped themselves to mansions, travel, limo rides, golf carts, a $29,000 sea turtle coffee table and other extravagances. They also indulged Marilyn’s son from a previous marriage, Rick Holbrook, who fancied himself a showman. He was given near carte blanche to stage high-budget performances involving youth in the church, including in Fourth of July shows at the Shiloh amphitheater. Navalesi was among those who sang and danced in the patriotic, mostly secular annual productions, capped by fireworks and popular with southeastern Iowans who likely had no idea a cult was behind the festivities.
The Living Word Fellowship hosted a high-budget Fourth of July pageant and fireworks show at the Shiloh Amphitheater outside Kalona in the ’90s, ’00s and ’10s. — photo courtesy of Scott Barker
Several former LWF members have alleged Holbrook sexually abused them, including Shalom Abrahamson-Caples, whose open letters detailing her assaults by Holbrook, her many pleas for help, and the leadership’s failure to act triggered the swift downfall of the Living Word Fellowship in 2018. She and five other survivors pursued lawsuits against former church officials, which were settled for undisclosed amounts.
Barker’s own journey to deconstructing his faith, which has included investigating and exposing LWF’s abuses with Navalesi, began when his mother was diagnosed with Stage Three ovarian cancer in 2013. She was primed to see the health crisis as a test, and Gary Hargrave said as much in a Word about his own allegedly miraculous healing. He asked, “Are you going to believe in medicine, or are you going to have faith? Which one is it? Because the only one that really works is faith … You’ve got to dig down.”
Barker’s mother, like his father, was one of the Living Word Fellowship’s earliest members in southern California. Not only did Laurie trust the Hargraves with all her heart, but mainstream medicine had given her reason to be skeptical. Her husband had recently had a routine surgery that went wrong and required he be hospitalized for nine months.
Scott Barker’s parents, Doug and Laurie, pose with friends at Shiloh in the 1980s. — photo courtesy of Scott Barker
“I think she kind of felt like, well, there has to be a better way,” Barker said.
The Health Commission directed Barker’s mother to a naturopathic dentist who prescribed her a range of chemotherapy alternatives: IV drips of vitamin C. Marilyn Farms immune boosting supplements. Ozone therapy. A ketogenic diet. Curcumin tinctures. Exposure to red and green light. Of course, nothing was covered by her health insurance.
“My mom, when she said she was sitting in the naturopath office and watching other church members come in and get this natural treatment, she felt like she was a soldier in the battle for the spirit realm,” Barker said. “If she was able to break through and cure her cancer using these natural remedies, then she would have accomplished, she would have conquered, some battle in the spirit.”
Eventually, Laurie was referred to one Dr. Juergen Winkler — who had his license revoked by the Medical Board of California and Department of Consumer Affairs in 2012 — for insulin potentiation therapy, an unproven cancer treatment combining low-dose chemo, insulin and sugar injections. That course alone cost over $50,000.
Former LWF member Bill Sebok examines Marilyn Farms Company product stock stored at Shiloh. — photo courtesy of Scott Barker
“I am emotional and subjective. And as a lay person, I feel like I do not fully understand the treatments we’re researching,” Laurie wrote in an email to the Walk’s high-ranking “Shepherds” after a year and a half of alternative medicine. “I am looking for a sure Word. I want to get well. I am not ready to give up. I am not ready to die.”
Gary Hargrave prompted followers to ask “What does God get out of it?” before they pray for their own health; “be it unto you according to your faith,” was his Word.
But, “From what I was seeing, she had all the faith that she could possibly muster,” Barker said of his mother. And she was dying. As the cancer spread to her abdomen and lungs, Laurie finally decided to pursue the chemotherapy treatment her oncologist originally recommended. But by then, it was too late. She was placed in palliative care, and on Sept. 19, 2016, she died. Her son held her hand as she took her last breath.
Barker’s father has urged him to forgive Gary and the Shepherds, but, “What’s there to forgive?” Barker said. “Did anybody apologize for their stupidity? That’s the thing that is frustrating. It’s not that they tried their best and failed. It’s that they were fucking idiots and thought they were awesome. They were reckless with their power.”
Marilyn Hargrave died on Oct. 21, 2015, likely also of cancer, and was buried near Stevens in Shiloh’s cemetery. She was never held accountable for her role in exploiting followers and abetting abuse.
The graves of John Robert Stevens, who founded the Living Word Fellowship in 1951, and his widow Marilyn Hargrave remain at the former site of the Shiloh cemetery, temporarily marked with simple name plates while construction on the site continues in 2025. — Dawn Frary/Little Village
Gary Hargrave yadda-yadda’d an explanation for her death — Marilyn had merely left her body to cavort in the spirit world or something — as he’d done with Stevens’ death, and as he’s done with the Living World Fellowship since its downfall.
These days Gary operates Hargrave Ministries, a tax-exempt corporation “leading people into spiritual maturity,” according to its website. He records a podcast called Growing in God with Gary Hargrave and hosts an online shop selling study guides and religious tchotchkes, like a bottle of “Anointed Oil from Jerusalem” for $25.99.
“He’s doing active work to make himself look like a true Christian, as opposed to a cult leader,” Barker said. “He is able to have meetings with United States representatives, because when you Google ‘Hargrave Ministries,’ [any critical coverage is] on the second page.”
Gary Hargrave (center left) and associates pose with Republican Mike Huckabee (center right), U.S. Ambassador to Israel, in 2025. — photo courtesy of Scott Barker
In June, he met with Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel and a born-again evangelical Christian, to advocate for “immersive tourism” in the Holy Land and support for the Israeli Defense Force. While Gary’s audience is small, his niche dogma — a belief that Jews were born saved, but Gentiles need Christ to get to heaven — fits comfortably into pro-Israeli, Christian Zionist propaganda. Needless to say, the Palestinian people and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza do not factor into this worldview. In fact, extreme Islamophobia is part of the brand, including conspiracy theories about United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) workers indoctrinating “the children of Gaza to hate and kill Jews.”
“It is no secret what Islamists are planning for America. Their philosophy of violence is not unique to Hamas,” reads a description for a podcast episode from July 2025. “All throughout the Arab world is the belief that, starting with Israel, they must kill all Jews worldwide. It is a fundamental belief of Islam.”
Barker said most of the folks joining Gary on vacation are former LWF members clearly excited to be closer to him — and likely paying well for the access. Meanwhile, the messy business of dissolving the Church of the Living Word’s assets by a few former LWF board members continues.
Marilyn Farms’ equipment was auctioned off in 2019, its land divided into smaller parcels bought by Kalona locals and an apparent LWF offshoot, English River Chapel, consisting of many former cult members. The profits, totaling some $5.8 million, were divided between the Shiloh Committee, Shiloh University and the Georgia-based Living Word Publications. Shiloh University is now Shiloh Learning, a provider of Christian homeschooling resources. Living Word Publications continues to sell digital versions of LWF materials. And the Shiloh Committee, represented by ex-apostle Steve Rich, put $1 million towards a biking and walking trail project at the former Shiloh site, annexed by the City of Kalona. He also made donations to Kalona’s food pantry, a student-built home project and the Mid-Prairie Foundation for trade scholarships.
Crumbling and asbestos-ridden, the Shiloh compound was destroyed in a controlled burn in 2020 ordered by the city. Watching it turn to ash was satisfying, but “in all honesty, I feel disappointed,” Navalesi said. “Steve [Rich] says that the congregation was involved in that choice, and they all felt good about it. But I’m like, what congregation?”
Drone footage captured by Kelsi Berg shows the Shiloh compound in southeast Iowa engulfed in flames as firefighters conduct a controlled demolition burn, Oct. 11, 2020. — video still via Kelsi Berg Photography on YouTube, courtesy of Scott Barker
Charity Navalesi and her dog visit the site of the former Shiloh compound in February 2025. — Dawn Frary/Little Village
“I don’t know how challenging it was for him and whoever else to figure all this out, I certainly would not have wanted to deal with that,” she continued. “But it’s still disheartening that nobody in any of these locations who had control of the funds did anything to help former members.”
Barker and Navalesi have stopped producing Oops, I’m in a Cult!, but are keeping an eye out for any legal and financial developments and Gary hijinks in case updates are warranted. For now, they’re satisfied with the interviews and investigations they’ve shared over two years and 36 episodes.
“I think it’s been really healing for myself,” said the L.A.-based Barker. “I’m very happy to get to be someone that helps other people solidify the story of what the Living Word was, and especially tell this angle that was intentionally hidden for years.”
“Everybody felt so alone in their pain and not able to break it down in a way that was really healing,” said Navalesi, who lives in Iowa City with her partner, cat and dog. “Apart from helping Shalom to bring her letters to light, I would say it’s probably one of the things that I’m most proud of in my life.”
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