The secrets of UFOs, space travel, reincarnation, the future – these were all parts of the religion taught by Dr. Joseph Jeffers, the prophet who knew what the Bible got wrong.
This is either the story of a man-god who was not subject to earthly laws, or the tale of a con man who would say or do almost anything. We’ll be focusing on his UFO-related parts of his career, but for a fuller biography, see the 2014 article, by Michael Marinacci, “Joe Jeffers and the Kingdom of Yahweh."
Joseph Davis Jeffers (1899-1988) was a charismatic speaker who had worked as a vaudeville performer before taking on the role of a traveling apocalyptic evangelist. In 1933 he stirred up some trouble in Arkansas known as the Jonesboro Church Wars. By 1934 he was building a large new following in Los Angeles, where he founded The Kingdom of Yahweh in 1935. Jeffers said that the Bible got things like the immaculate conception and resurrection all wrong, and he’d know, him being Jesus (Yahoshua) reincarnated. He claimed to be in mental contact with God, and one of his specialties was “Pyramidic Prophecies,” predictions often about war and the fate of the nation. He began publishing the newsletter, “The Kingdom Voice,” which ultimately outlived him. Along the way, he ran afoul of the law several times and served some time in prison.
There were controversies. One complaint that would follow Jeffers for most of his days was that of the many thousands he received in donations, the dollars seemed to primarily fund his lavish lifestyle. Simultaneously, he went through a series of ever-younger wives. Jeffers’ topics were often vitriolic, racist, and politically incorrect, even by the standards of the day.
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| Middlesboro Daily News, March 27, 1939, Under Cover by John Roy Carlson, 1943 |
Jeffers divorced his wife, then stole the car he’d lost in the settlement. He was convicted for the crime in early 1945 but managed to get out on parole. He took a new bride, Helene, who was suddenly transformed into Dr. Helene Jeffers and became his partner in the ministry.
1947 and the Coming of the Saucers
The Hollywood Citizen-News, June 2, 1947, reported: “The Rev. Joseph Jeffers self-styled reincarnation of Jesus, Joseph, and Solomon today announced the purchase of an atom-bomb refuge for followers of his Temple of Yahweh.” It was 16 miles from Palm Springs, an 823-acre ranch. Soon afterwards, Jeffers became one the first lecturers on flying saucers.
The Banning Livewire, July 3, 1947, carried two stories and an ad about Jeffers. “Dr. Joe Jeffers Speaks Here on Yahweh,” said that “the sect claims that the center of the Universe and the headquarters for the creator is on the constellation Orion, which is screened from scientific observation by peculiar nebulae.”
The ad was for Jeffer’s lectures at the women’s club, “Truth about the Flying Discs.” Also on the page was the story, “Jeffers Say the Flying Discs are Real.” Jeffers said the discs were the same as the ghost rockets previously reported over Sweden, “Washington knows what they are— I told them four years ago.”
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| Daily News, July 3, 1947 |
A week later, Jeffers held a press conference on the threat of flying saucers at a Los Angeles restaurant. The Daily News reported he said the saucers were flown by enemy nations, “sent by the Russians, with the aid of Germany, Japan, China ‘and others’.” He also discussed the crews that fly them, how they were propelled, and the weapons they carried.
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| Daily News, July 11, 1947 |
When taken to court for failure to pay alimony, Jeffers told the judge he was broke, but out in space, Yahweh had billions in diamonds and pearls waiting for him on Orion. Jeffers was sent to federal prison for parole violations but still got some press.
While he was in prison, Helene kept the franchise alive, lecturing in his place as Mrs. Joseph Jeffers. Some of the sermons included flying saucers.
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| 1949 Los Angeles Mirror ads |
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| Mexico Ledger, Oct. 30, 1950 |
After Jeffers was released, he and Helene set up operations in 1952 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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| Psychic Observer, Sept. 10, 1952 ad |
The 1950s were turbulent. Jeffers’ marriage ended after he started dating Connie, Helene’s 18-year-old secretary. Helene’s career as a solo psychic lecturer in Denver was cut short in early 1957 by her murder (unsolved). Jeffers married Connie. So maybe during these years Jeffers was too busy to focus on saucers. Or maybe there was too much competition from Adamski and the others who claimed to meet spacemen and go on rides in their saucers. Or maybe Jeffers thought all that was unimportant since he was the reincarnation of the Son of God. For whatever reason, he was back in the saucer business in 1957.
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| The Arizona Republic, Aug. 24, 1957 Note: "Facts About The Shaver Mystery!" |
Jeffers had an ad for his services and products in The Aberree, Sept. 1959, but there was no mention of flying saucers.
Skipping ahead to the 1960s, Jeffers ad in The Oregonian, Sept. 14, 1960, said: “Is there any evidence of Space Men or flying saucers on Mars, Venus and other planets? Facts of Astral World and Spiritual contacts.”
In 1966 there was more trouble when Joseph and Connie Jeffers were convicted “of thirteen counts of mail fraud and were each fined $500 on each count and were placed on three years' probation.” Their appeal was on the basis that “the bets were for the religious purposes of enhancing the Kingdom's treasury and furthering its 'religious' studies of [ESP], and that therefore the conviction infringes their free exercise of religion.” The verdict was overturned in 1968: “The spectacle presented to the jury — of a 67 year old eccentric purporting to have psychic powers, and his attractive 27 year old wife betting contributors' funds at the dog races — was so highly prejudicial that we cannot conclude that [they received] a fair trial.”
Besides his newsletter, Jeffers’ produced pamphlets and books from his Kingdom Voice Publications, the first of which was Yahweh - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1969
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| Ad – Fate magazine April 1973 (ran at least Jan. – May issues) |
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| Kansas Star, March 29, 1974 – hyping his appearance on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder. |
Yahweh City, and the Pyramid Temple
By 1974, Jeffers was based in Missouri and built a compound, Yahweh City, in St. James for his followers. Jeffers, then in his mid-70s, wore fur-collar coats and hats decorated with feathers and drove a $25,000 Mercedes. When accused of being a fraud, he said, ‘I'm not a film flammer… I'm a jimjammer. They can call me anything they want as long as they call me for lunch.” Some of the faithful called him “King Yahoshua.” Jeffers had about 50 followers living in Yahweh City, some of them donors of many thousands of dollars. Disciples farmed the soil with hand tools and built the housing for the compound. Per Jeffers’ edit, they ate a vegetarian diet and received a ritual cleansing enema on Fridays.
Jeffers wrote and published a few books relating to extraterrestrial life and spaceships. One was, Mars and the Mystery of Creation, 1976. The blurb for Jeffers’ 1977 book, Lemuria, Atlantis History Rewritten, asked: “Who were the mysterious pyramid builders? What about the Bible and Noah's flood? Was Atlantis really the Garden of Eden? What are the spaceships and flying saucers? Read about the age of dinosaurs and giants.”
According to Jeffers, in the mid-1960s, Esther Wilson Price, an elderly and ailing Richmond, Virginia, heiress, began corresponding with him after seeing his advertisement in Fate magazine. In October 1975, she moved from the hospital to a one-room apartment at Yahweh City. With $200,000 of Esther's money, Jeffers had his followers construct their Pyramid Temple. It’d serve as shelter and a meeting place for their departure. “Unusual Riches Gained by an Unusual Religion,” by John McGuire in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 9, 1977, reported that Jeffers and his flock “expect that a space ship will one day take them to Orion when the world ends.”
Interviewed by Springfield Leader, Aug. 3, 1978, about material from his book, The Spaceships are Coming, “Jeffers says there are two types of flying saucers. One type is Russian and has been used for years to spy on Americans and the other is the real thing from outer space.” Apparently, he didn’t have info from Yahweh about it but, “experts say that the government has recovered bodies from crashed UFOs…”
In the Oct. 20, 1978, Associated Press story, Jeffers claimed his thousands of his followers would soon be saved and taken to “the prettiest little city in the universe,” Orion. He said, “our spaceships will come for us and we’ll say good-bye world.” There were goodbyes in their future.
Instead of Reagan, we could have had President Jeffers in 1980, but things didn’t work out. There was unbelievable drama for Jeffers in the late 1970s, including his aborted Presidential campaign, the controversial death of Esther Price who had a questionable will leaving him millions. Then there was Connie who left him taking some of the millions and Jeffers trying to have her murdered. Then there was his arrest on charges of statutory rape and sodomy of a 14-year-old girl. All this generated a lot of media attention including the national TV news, but somehow all the charges against him were dropped. Still, he dropped out of the Presidential race.
For more on this turbulent period, see The Washington Post, December 27, 1978, “Cult Stirs Controversy” by Ted Gup.
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| The Lakeland Ledger July 8, 1979 |
Apparently, Yahweh changed his mind; the world didn’t end. Things were still hot for Jeffers in Missouri, so he abandoned Yahweh City and moved his cult, purchasing a quarter-million-dollar estate just South of San Benito, Texas.
Jeffers in an interview in The Atlanta Voice, Dec. 1, 1979, professed knowledge and visions revealing the truth about the future, the Bermuda Triangle, and Mars which had plant and insect life. “Jeffers also contends that ‘flying saucers are not out of this world.’ He says they fly all over the world especially over America and photograph all United States military bases, power plants and secret hiding places. ‘These flying saucers can outfly anything America has,’ Dr. Jeffers said.”
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| The Evening Independent, Jan. 9, 1980 |
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| Tampa Bay Times, Jan. 10, 1980 - Tallahassee Democrat, April 11, 1980 |
Jeffers resided in Arizona for his final years, and he continued to lecture and publish. In an interview for The Gold Leaf Farmer (Wendell, NC) Feb. 19, 1981, Jeffers told them about Atlantis, the sunken Pyramid at the Bermuda Triangle, and more. “Bigfoot… is the result of a genetic experiment by Atlanteans, according to Jeffers.”
A variation of the ad below ran from 1982 to 1986, later modified to include his 1983 book: Bermuda Triangle and Pyramid.
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| The Arizona Republic, Jan. 25, 1982 |
Jeffers’ associate in the Kingdom of Yahweh, Robert Graeter, sent out announcements in the early 1980s warning that:
“Russia will use her Flying Saucers…to detonate…atomic bombs” on the U.S., “possibly on December 25, 1984.”
Yet, it would not be the end of the world.; another piece explained how the people were to be saved from that: “YAHWEH left His headquarters on Orion by spaceship. He will land on a high mountain near Phoenix, Arizona. He will pick up his son, Dr. Joseph ‘Yahoshua’ Jeffers…”
(2008 Reddit post that includes several of the documents: My late Grandpa’s Dad was a chairman for a cult.
Scripture stated that, “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven,” but Jeffers insisted it would be in a spaceship. Interviewed for The Arizona Daily Star, May 25, 1985, Jeffers said his “work is two-fold: to teach people to ‘Praise Yahweh,’ and to prepare for his/her coming from Orion (heaven) with an entourage in spaceships.”
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| Picture from The Arizona Daily Star, May 25, 1985 |
The last lecture advertised by Jeffers was in early 1986, but he continued to write for the newsletter. Joseph Jeffers died on July 11, 1988, just a month away from his 89th birthday. Followers kept the faith and lectured in his place. Carl Herman said, “We’ve received messages from the other side that Yahweh’s spaceship is five miles long and a mile wide.”
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| The Jackson Hole Guide, July 5, 1989 |
. . .
Exactly one year after Joe Jeffers died, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was released, featuring a good question from Captain Kirk:
Another cult who believed that they’d be saved and taken to heaven by a spaceship made the news on March 26, 1997. In Rancho Santa Fe, California, Marshall Herff Applewhite and 38 of his Heaven’s Gate followers were found dead from a mass suicide.
