A. A. Allen: Miracle Valley Cult

Rev. Asa Alonso (A. A.) Allen was an Assemblies of God minister who resigned his position as pastor of the First Assembly of God Church in Corpus Christi, Texas to become an evangelist in the Latter Rain movement.  Allen joined the Revivals in December 1948[1]  shortly after it was announced that William Branham had returned from a mental health hiatus to the Revival trails.[2]  Allen later attributed his interest in the revivals to having attended a revival held by Oral Roberts.[3]  When Gordon Lindsay and the Voice of Healing revivals separated from the Latter Rain Movement, Allen chose the Voice of Healing side of the split.

Allen was born of mixed race, having both white and Native American parents.  When Branham began openly declaring his allegiance to Wesley Swift's Christian Identity Doctrine through the combination of Branham's "Serpent's Seed" and "Hybreeding" doctrines, many of his sermons contained rants against interracial marriage.  Branham associated this with passages from the Old Covenant concerning bastard children.  Those who knew Allen's mixed race would have been aware that Branham was calling Allen a "bastard" or a "hybrid".

In the Old Testament a child that was hybrid, borned out of holy wedlock could not even come in the congregation of the Lord for ten generations: took ten generations to breed it out. That's four hundred years to breed out a illegitimate child; could not even come into the congregation of the Lord; hybreeding: a woman vowed to her husband and live with another man and have a baby by him: a horrible thing. Today, we have so much fussing and stewing about this segregation of white and colored and everything. Why don't they leave it alone? Let it the way God made it. Tell me what real good, smart, intelligent, beautiful, colored woman would want to have a baby by a white man to make it a mulatto?[4]
- William Branham

When the Assemblies of God began to sanction the revivalists in support of Latter Rain, however, William Branham quickly lost the support of many revivalists in the movement.  Branham's open support of Latter Rain, combined with his emerging support of white supremacy, opened the door to attack.  In December of 1953 for example, Branham was listed as a speaker at the Voice of Healing Convention in Chicago, a gathering named after the evangelist's newsletter. Prior to the event, leaders of the convention issued Branham an ultimatum concerning his heretical doctrine and ultimately barred him from speaking.[5]  By the 1954 Voice of Healing Convention organized by Gordon Lindsay (Branham's former campaign manager[6] ), A. A. Allen had replaced William Branham as the headline speaker.[7]  This led to a sudden and unexpected change in William Branham's campaign and publication team.  Branham began working with Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones and Joseph Mattsson-Boze,[8] and Jones began to organize conventions for the faith healers.

During the time in which Jones sponsored Branham's meetings,[9] however, A. A. Allen actively worked to persuade leaders in the movement to separate from Branham — including Jim Jones.  Allen went to Jones at a meeting in the Claypool Hotel in Indianapolis during one of the revivals sponsored by Peoples Temple pushing for an ultimatum against Branham.  Branham apparently told Jones that he "don't believe a thing in that Bible hardly" But he said, "it's the way to make a living." The result was an open letter that circulated among the evangelists pronouncing death upon Branham.[10]

Some are listening. They won't tell you the truth, because the black book is the easiest gravy train that they've ever been on. Yet Allen [A.A. Allen, Pentecostal evangelist] came to me, Oral Roberts [Pentecostal evangelist] spoke this, Billy Graham came right to us – Ijames [Archie Ijames], Jack [Jack Arnold Beam], and me – in Claypool Hotel, said I don't believe a thing in that Bible hardly. But he said, it's the way to make a living. Billy Graham, who I prophesied his death, Billy Branham rather, said his head would be— I said he'd lose his head. His head was cut off in Texas. [Editorial note: The reference is to William Branham, an evangelical preacher and acquaintance of Jim Jones during the Temple's Indianapolis days. Branham died in an automobile accident on Christmas Eve 1965 in Texas, but was not decapitated.] He said you can't preach the truth about that Bible, he said (tape cuts out about three seconds) preach reincarnation, you cannot preach the truth about the Bible, you will be in trouble. I said, I choose to treat th— preach the truth. He said, well, I'll be around, while you will be in trouble. Well, I'm still here, and his head is cut off from his body.[11]
- Jim Jones, Q612 Transcript

Whether due to William Branham's connections to high-ranking members of white supremacy groups such as Roy E. Davis or by pure coincidence, both Jim Jones and A. A. Allen were attacked by the Klan after the event.  In 1960, the Klan threatened to disrupt one of Allen's revivals and then succeeded in blowing up a nearby bridge with dynamite to scare participants.[12]  Peoples Temple also became a target when a stick of dynamite was left in a Temple coal pile in a failed murder attempt.[13]

A. A. Allen's time with the Voice of Healing revivals was short-lived, due to alcohol addiction.  It was an addiction that would eventually claim his life; Allen died after a drinking binge,[14] Though his associate, Don Stewart, tried to clean up the evidence before police arrived.[15] In 1955, Allen was arrested on drunken driving charges.  Allen had a blood alcohol level of .20 percent, which was 5 percent over the legal limit.[16]  Stewart claimed that Allen was occasionally drunk after the event in Knoxville and that his staff covered for him.[17]  As a result, Allen was eventually forced to separate from both the Assemblies of God and the Voice of Healing to go it alone. 

After the climax of the 1957 convention with Peoples Temple, Allen purchased a tent previously used by Jack Coe that could seat over 22,000 people and began preaching what would eventually become the Prosperity Gospel.  Allen claimed that poverty was a "spirit" and that God would perform financial "miracles" as well as the alleged miracles already being claimed through his faith healing act.[18].  The new gimmick was highly successful — at least for Allen's own prosperity.  At the height of his fame, Allen appeared on fifty-eight radio stations daily, as well as forty-three television stations.[19]  

In 1965, the FBI's Legal Attaché in London opened an investigation into A. A. Allen's fraudulent claims in his healing revivals.  Several members of Parliament in London received letters of complaints during a three-month series of revivals.[20] The letters were forwarded to the British Home Office, and London Metropolitan Police opened an active investigation into Allen's claims.[21] It was then learned that Allen had a criminal record back in the United States, with convictions and charges ranging from several alcohol-related charges to tax evasion.  An unnamed informant in one of Allen's 1959 revivals sent information to the FBI that Allen had staged fake healings in his revivals in Texas.  Allen apparently planted people in the healing lines that would "hobble to the altar" and suddenly pretend to be healed.  

In 1958, A. A. Allen rented a building from the State Fair of Texas and held a religious revival. During the course of this revival, Allen claimed that he could heal people by merely touching them and as a result of this claim, many old and underprivileged people with deformities that were medically incurable, came to Allen for help. Allen would place various individuals in the audience who allegedly had physical deformities. These individuals would 'hobble' to the altar where Allen would pray for them and place his hand on their shoulder, at which time they would declare that they were healed. The audience however, was unaware that the individuals who claimed to be healed were 'plants' [redacted] tow people died during the course of these "healing" sermons. [redacted] termed Allen a "fraud'.[22]
- FBI Informant

Allen's fake healing gimmick was apparently profitable.  According to the FBI report, A. A. Allen had been in litigation over unpaid taxes.  Allen owed $350,000,[23] which was approximately the same amount Branham apparently owed.[24]

Interestingly, A. A. Allen's FBI file also included a request for J. Edgar Hoover to open an investigation into Anton Lavey and the First Organized Church of Satan.  The FBI had not yet opened an active investigation into Lavey, but did have correspondence between the A. A. Allen Revivals and the Church of Satan, and Allens' request for his cult of personality to send him money to fight Lavey.[25]

A. A. Allen died of alcoholism at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, California, on June 11, 1970.[26] FBI documents reveal that Allen was an alcoholic for most of his evangelistic career.  His FBI Record lists arrests in 1946 in Las Vegas for drunken driving, 1956, 1959, and 1960 in California for drunkenness, and 1964 in Florida for drunken driving and fleeing the scene of the accident.[27]  He was also arrested in Tennessee for drunken driving, though the FBI did not have a record of it at the time of the inquiry.[28] From the report, it appears that failing mental health played a factor in his drunkenness; in 1962 Allen's wife filed a petition to have him committed to a mental institution in Arizona.[29] When he died, the coroner's report stated that Allen died from liver failure brought on by acute alcoholism.[30]  The coroner reported that when Allen died, he had a blood alcohol content of .36, which was "enough to ensure a deep coma".[31] Members of Allen's cult of personality, however, are told that the coroner had falsified his report and that Allen died of cardiac arrest.[32]