Francis
James Westbrook Pegler was a famous American journalist, and he wrote
several very negative articles towards Guy and Edna Ballard where he
denounced the delusions of that couple and their cult. Unfortunately I
have not yet been able to find those texts, but below I transcribe what
the writer Gerald B. Bryan said about it.
We will now recount the events that led to the inauguration of a new attendance system for the Ballard classes. For five years the “Accredited
Messengers of Saint Germain” had openly
preached their political and religious doctrines to the American people.
Suddenly, however, following a
hectic 10-day class at Cleveland in October, 1939, all this was changed.
Then began their new system of
holding all meetings “closed,” open
only to those who would sign pledges of allegiance to the “Ascended Masters”
and their three-and-only Accredited Messengers.
One of the reasons for this
change from open to closed meetings was due, no doubt, to the fact that their
meetings were getting a bit too fanatical and funny for the general public to
tolerate. The furious decreeing and condemnation of “spies” and other “enemies”
from the platform, the lack of tolerance and true devotion, did not make the
average unhexed newcomer feel that these people were altogether sane or
inspired by a preponderance of Christian love and charity. They would perhaps
notice the ungrammatical language used by “Perfect Beings from the Seventh
Octave of Light,” or they might even notice Guy Ballard taking his watch out to
see how much time an all-knowing “Master” or “Goddess” had for the dictation — all
of which would give rise to the unkind thought that it was only Guy Ballard
himself dictating his own messages.
Such “vicious” individuals from
the unregenerate public had to be dealt with in some way. They usually had
watchful Minute Men eject them from the auditorium, but, as we shall see, some
of these “storm troopers” of the Ballards took their jobs a little bit too
seriously.
Occasionally, too, some woman
would object to the removing of her hat — a little observance absolutely
necessary to enable the great Saint Germain to send “Light Rays” into her
brain. Whether she gave the great “Master” permission to do this or not, it was
to be done unto her. She, and everyone else, was drafted for complete “Light
Ray” service during the entire meeting. Baldheaded men, it would appear, would
have no protection at all from Saint Germain’s Light Ray.
Conscientious objectors to this
rigid, hat-removing requirement of the Ascended Masters would be
unceremoniously and, if necessary, forcefully ejected — the most conscientious
of them, all the while, voicing down the aisle an audible protest.
A woman who had this experience
happen to her in Detroit, wrote to the writer as follows:
“I went to hear them yesterday and simply refused to remove my hat or
applaud them because I did not know anything about their doctrines. I was
ushered out because of it . . . stopped the show for a while. If that ‘Tube of
Light’ of Saint Germain’s could not penetrate a little bit of cloth on my head,
the ‘God’ they worship must be a weak God.”
Such happenings, of course,
worked against the peace and harmony of each miracle-working class; and, as we
shall see, sometimes brought about legal actions which the bolt-throwing Thors
of this cult could not handle with their death-dealing “Blue Lightning.”
Occasional disturbances of this
kind were bad enough, but when the Accredited Messengers reached Cleveland in
October, 1939, for the usual 10-day open meeting, it seemed as if all the
“sinister forces” of the universe had arrayed themselves against their “Powers
of Light.”
Part of the trouble that ensued
was brought about by the Minute Men at the door being caught a little off
guard, in that they permitted a bad-acting newspaper man by name of Westbrook
Pegler, who possesses a particularly trenchant pen, to get into their meeting.
It further appears that neither
G-man “Saint Germain” nor the great “Inner Secret Service” Chief himself,
“K-17,” knew that this nationally-known columnist was in the audience, or they
would surely have sent their annihilating “Blue Lightning” at him, and that
would have been the end of the matter!
Perhaps, too intent on directing
their “Blue Lightning” at the enemy abroad, they neglected the nearer menace at
their own door. At any rate, there he was — a sort of literary bull in an “Ascended-Master”
china shop!
Now, as the trenchant-pen Pegler
sat in meeting, pretty soon he was rubbing his eyes and doubting his ears. So
many things were happening... foreign submarines being destroyed by Swords of
Blue Flame . . . Japanese bombers being routed by Ascended Masters . . .
William Shakespeare shaking his spear. . . . etc. . . . etc. . . . that upon
leaving, he said, he had to buy a “sheaf of books to confirm in print what he
had heard in bewilderment from the platform.”
So armed with the booklets, which
doubtlessly assured him of his own sanity, and that what he had heard he had really
heard and not imagined, he sat down and wrote the first of two articles on the
strange cult, beginning in this wise:
“It seems impossible that in all
history the human race has produced any more humiliating rebuke to its claims
of reason and dignity that a certain congregation of about 1,000 Americans who
have been gathering afternoons and evenings lately in Cleveland to take part in
a religious cult known as the Great I AM.”
He went on to say among other
scathing denunciations in this first article, that it was “the most revolting
travesty in the entire record of religious eccentricity in the United States.” (United
Feature Syndicate, Oct. 24, 1939.)
This and his other article on the
cult, appearing as they did in so many newspapers of a syndicated chain,
brought much unfavorable publicity to the “Accredited Messengers” and their
strange cult.
(This is the first part of chapter 32 of the book Psychic Dictatorship in America, and shows how lost the Ballard followers were.)
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