The Cult of Ole

"[This] process was done by all new members in the community for approximately the first 100 years of the church," Anthony wrote in a memo. "It is something that is done only once in a lifetime. It signifies that you've cut all ties to the cause and effect/reward and punishment principles of the world, and that you desire to live only by His grace which is given freely."

The greatest degree of control was vested in the Bible studies: People were expected to take every issue and crisis to their leaders: Anthony, the Rutledges or the Buckners. The lack of privacy drove a wedge between friends, even between spouses. People feared that if they confided in someone, their words might come back to haunt them as people felt compelled to confess. Group unity was paramount.

The Dallas Project tested that unity. Some members ignored the edict, others willingly participated. But it could be dangerous.

The Fergusons came home one night and found their homeless lodger standing in the kitchen wielding a butcher knife. They'd left him while their children were in bed to make a run to the grocery store. "Ole didn't tell us he was a crack cocaine addict and HIV-positive," Ferguson says. The man had hocked Larry's bike, smoked a rock and then grabbed the knife in a fit of drug-induced paranoia. "Ole endangered us for his own hubris," Ferguson says.

Terry and Susan Holden and their three children, who rented one of the apartments, sometimes had more than one homeless person living with them. It cost Susan her feeling of safety. People showed up stoned and stole from her purse. Some had serious emotional problems. One night their 9-year-old son asked his parents why there was a man sitting in his closet. Susan Holden says that all of those they took in ended up back on the streets. Though a few people turned their lives around with Trinity's help, Anthony now acknowledges the Dallas Project was "naïve."

Visitors to the Block, however, saw what appeared to be a harmonious community. The group had added events to the calendar as they studied the Bible. By the late '80s, they were celebrating Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Tabernacles, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover and Pentecost, as well as the Fast of Tammuz and what they called the "Fast of Ab."

The feasts, festivals and fasts brought a beauty and rhythm to life. Everyone looked forward to Purim, when the book of Esther was read out loud. At each mention of the hero Mordecai, they would stamp their feet. Each time the villain Haman was named they'd hiss. And each time the name of Esther was read they would take a sip of wine. Since Esther is mentioned 70 times and Purim is observed after a fast, everyone got smashed.

Weddings were celebrated with great fanfare. After the legal wedding, the bride and groom would return to the Block, where they were feted for a week. Each night, children of Trinity members slept in the same house as the newlyweds, who were prohibited from consummating their marriage until the eighth day.

On that day, the bride and groom were escorted to a tent draped in white flowers, fabric and netting. The couple exchanged vows under a canopy and stomped a wine glass. A huge feast brought an end to the festivities. Now they were considered man and wife and could have sex.

But Anthony's "blessing," required for a Trinity wedding, became harder to obtain. Some were convinced it was because Anthony didn't want his girlfriend at the time to pressure him for marriage. After years of dating and with no marriage in sight, she dumped him.

Tilton in the Bullseye

The tall, gaunt man in filthy clothes was up to his waist in garbage when he got nailed by the flashlight of a security guard. Peering out of the dumpster located behind a bank in Oklahoma, Anthony explained that he was looking for cans, and the guard moved on.

In September 1991, Anthony, Guetzlaff and Holloway began dumpster-diving at four Oklahoma locations at the behest of a producer with ABC's Primetime Live, searching for dirt on Robert Tilton. They made three trash runs that fall. They would hit the jackpot, finding scores of prayer requests mailed to Tilton, stripped of money and discarded. The men would grab bags of trash and take them to their budget motel for sorting.