Sealed-Up Sect

On July 4, in the town of Benson, Ariz, (pop. 2,600), all the members of the sect called Full Gospel, Inc. suddenly vanished.

Their neighbors were astonished; they had seemed such normal folk when they settled in Benson, mostly during the past six months, and built their attractive houses--about 30 of them--and their neat stucco church. But now the houses were shut and silent in the summer sun, even the dogs and cats were gone, and their automobiles--mostly new station wagons --stood in the driveways.

Then Warren Burke came to the office of the county attorney to complain that his wife and four children, members of the sect, had disappeared, and he had a good idea where they were. Deputy Sheriff Ray Coffey went with Burke to the Full Gospelers' houses and found them sealed up, with newspapers over doors and windows, keyholes plugged, plastic covers over cooling outlets. Neighbors remembered the sounds of digging a while back, and it began to look as if the Gospelers had all gone underground.

City Attorney Fred Talmadge kicked in the back door of one of the houses and found the furniture carefully stacked and covered. In a closet was a trap door, beneath that another trap door, locked from below.

After the searchers had banged on it for a while, it was opened by an angry Gospeler named Glenn Scott. "We are doing what the Government has told everyone to do," he said. "We're taking an active part in civil-defense preparation." But there was more to it than that.

A letter from a sect member to a friend explained that "the Lord told us through prophecy that soon there will be devastation on earth and one-third of all the people will be destroyed. He is warning the people through civil defense today as he warned them through Noah when the Flood came." After a Russian atomic attack, to be preceded by a divine tip-off in the form of "an iceberg appearing in warm waters," the Full Gospelers planned to emerge from their hiding places to win what was left of the world for the Lord.

Last week a few Full Gospelers had come up to take their chances with the rest of the U.S., but most were still underground. One man emerged with two of his seven children; the other five and his wife insisted on staying below. Another Gospeler who left his shelter was Allen J. Harvey, 14, of Columbus, Ohio, who had come to Benson to see his girl, was assigned to a different shelter, and spent a month underground without seeing her. "We pray a lot," said Harvey. "The rest won't come up until the Lord tells them to."

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