By Larry Walker, Enterprise Staff Writer, Elizabethtown, Kentucky

August 16, 1971, North America

Despite innovative rumors to the contrary, Elizabethtown’s Children of God colony has quietly and efficiently gone about its business since the arrival of the settlers last October. Its business is the Lord’s. The colony occupies a 74-acre tract of land off the Valley Creek Road on the LaRue side of the Hardin-LaRue County line.

(On the national level, the Children of God religious organization claims 1,400 members in 29 colonies. Started nearly three years ago, the base camp in Mingus, Texas has over 200 members on a 460-acre ranch).

Most of the colonies are concerned with reaching the youth with street witnessings and testimonials, but the Elizabethtown work deals with “training the brothers.”

Presently, nine young persons between the ages of 18 and 25 are at the camp. Five single men and two girls are undergoing a five-week crash course in Bible study to arm them with answers to back …

By George W. Cornell, Associated Press Religion Writer, Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado

June 5, 1971, North America

Soft-spoken, cheerful, Bibles in hand, they extend profuse blessing to anyone they meet and then, as if imparting a choice secret, they say: “Jesus loves you.”

These are the street Christians, the “Jesus Freaks,” who in recent months have proliferated exuberantly across the country, to the surprise and sometimes uneasiness or ordinary church folk.

“Have you met the Lord?” they ask. “It’s beautiful to walk with Him.”

Their movement started out in California and for about two years was largely concentrated in that area. But now extensions of it are cropping up from coast to coast, and from Minneapolis to Miami.

“It’s sweeping the country,” says Evangelist Billy Graham.

“It doesn’t bother me that it might be a fad. At least it is a positive fad. I’m for anything that promotes the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

ALTHOUGH MANY well-groomed “straight kids” are involved in it, in affluent suburbs and on …

By Jerry Dean, The Sun Bulletin—Binghamton, N.Y.

March 23, 1971, North America

The Children of God are coming.

Led by two advance men named Brother Josea and Brother Abel of the Tribe of Levi, the Children of God will set up a colony of 15 acres near Binghamton.

Brothers Josea and Abel—the only names they use—said yesterday their mission is to reach young people who “want to get rid of their hang-ups by serving the Lord.”

Youths’ hang-ups,

The hang-ups prevailing among today’s young people, they said, are sex, drugs, long hair, the radical movements and, yes, even the church system.

The brothers, both with neatly trimmed short hair and formal clothing, laughed as they talked with groups of people.

“People expect to see us with long hair and beads and blue jeans.

“But this is different than all those other Jesus groups which have to do their own thing. Life in one of our colonies is discipline and self-denial.

“We want …