Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 29, 1993 TAG: 9301290091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BASSETT FORKS LENGTH: Long
FLOCK FOLLOWS ITS `JOSHUA'
WHEN HENRY COUNTY PREACHER Elwood Gallimore announced last month he had taken a second wife, his congregation stood behind him. Gallimore's parishioners believe they must follow him because he is a prophet.
Doris Dunford doesn't flinch at the question:
Do you believe Elwood Gallimore is a prophet?
"I believe he's Joshua," she said. "He's going to carry us away, lead us to the Promised Land."
Other members of the Evangelistic Tabernacle's congregation agree with Dunford. Gallimore is more than a drywall contractor turned charismatic preacher; he is a preacher carrying the spirit of Joshua.
Gallimore doesn't preach that he is Joshua. But he says he knows what his followers believe, and he doesn't try to set them straight.
As Gallimore explained, when the Rapture occurs, the spirit of Joshua will be there to take Christ's followers to the Promised Land.
That spirit "will get ahold of a man," he says.
So is he the one chosen to carry that spirit?
"I would never say that, but now the people will," he says of his followers. "That's the way they see it and they'll - oh, Lord - they'll stand on it. I can't keep 'em quiet."
Gallimore has been in the news almost daily since a Henry County search warrant indicated he had informally married a 16-year-old Floyd County girl.
Gallimore says only three or four families left the church after he announced in December he had taken a second wife. The remainder of the 100- to 150-member congregation - mostly factory workers, truck drivers, mechanics and other blue-collar workers - has remained loyal.
"If the spirit of Joshua is with him, and he's going to lead us out of here, then we got to follow him to make it out of here," says Dale Fields, the church's treasurer.
In the Old Testament, Moses led the nation of Israel out of Egypt. But it was Joshua who led the nation of Israel into Canaan, the Promised Land.
The name Joshua translated means "God's deliverer," according to the Rev. Charles Fuller, pastor of First Baptist Church in downtown Roanoke. Joshua was looked upon as "being the total person," Fuller says. Joshua was an Old Testament forerunner of Jesus.
Gallimore's church is a spinoff of the preachings of Indiana minister William Marrion Branham. Branham's followers believe he was a prophet; they say he was photographed several times with an angel of God in the background.
But the Rev. Willard Collins, who preached at the Jeffersonville, Ind., tabernacle founded by Branham, has disavowed Gallimore's preachings.
"If he's Joshua," Collins said of Gallimore, "I don't think I want to go where he's going."
When Gallimore preaches at the Henry County tabernacle, two wooden signs hang above him. One reads: "Stand Up Joshua." The other cites Malachi 4 in the Bible. It also reads: "Be Still and Know that I am God."
Malachi 4 promises: "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."
That doesn't mean the prophet would have to appear with the name "Elijah," Fuller says.
"The idea of Elijah the prophet does not necessarily mean `Elijah' the name, but a representative of the mysterious and powerful and authoritative prophet."
Most of Branham's followers think he is the prophet promised in Malachi. Fields, the treasurer, says that while it is true that Branham's message predicts the Second Coming, he sees Gallimore as the prophet carrying that message.
"People says, `Well, you're following the man,'" Fields says, "but Paul in the Bible says, `Follow me as I follow Christ.' God works through a man."
Gallimore preaches that the Second Coming of Christ will happen soon. The recent wars in the Persian Gulf parallel predictions of the Rapture in the book of Revelation, he says.
"I think God's coming back to rapture the bride and we'll be gone soon," says a woman who wouldn't give her name. "I believe [Gallimore] is Joshua, because it lines up with the Word."
Gallimore's critics have compared him to the Rev. Jim Jones, who led his followers to the South American country of Guyana, where they committed mass suicide.
The Rev. Alvord Beardslee, a religion professor at Hollins College, says he had never heard of a church comparing its leader to Joshua.
With Gallimore charged with two felonies related to his "marriage" to the Floyd County girl, Beardslee says the minister's stature with the church could easily improve. Either Gallimore will be put in jail and become a martyr, or he will be freed and be vindicated.
Beardslee doesn't think Gallimore's church is a cult. But he thinks the comparison of Gallimore to a Biblical figure who led his people to the Promised Land is curious.
"That leaves the question," Beardslee says, "of where is the Promised Land?"