Branch Davidians - Lois Roden's Successor Dispute

Lois Roden's Successor Dispute

Lois also faced discord from Canadian Charles Pace, who joined the church in the early 1970s, and who, in 1981, also said he had a special message for the church. After examining Pace's message, and finding some errors in it, Lois asked him to stop teaching it among them. When he refused to do so, she put him under a "censure," which meant that he could attend meetings of the church, but not teach at them. At the pivotal Passover, 1984 meeting, Pace presented his special message at a meeting held by George Roden. While Lois and others accepted the key point of Pace's teachings, the significant errors in it precluded Lois from publishing anything of his as he had presented it.

At the meeting, Pace announced that he believed that George was to be the next president of the church, and gave him around $14,000 so that he (Pace) could open a health center there. However, Lois had asked people to not give financial support to George, who was still under the court order that enjoined him from acting as the church's president; therefore, George had no authority to authorize Pace to open a health center. Shortly thereafter, Pace had a falling out with George, and he threw Pace off of the property.

After Lois' death in late 1986, Pace moved from Canada to Gadsen, Alabama, and set up his own faction which he at first named "The Living Waters Branch of Righteousness," then later changed the name to "The Branch, The Lord (YHVH) Our Righteousness." Though he claimed to be Lois' successor, he did not take part in the probate of Lois' estate, and thus allowed the church's property and identity to fall into the hands of George Roden, and then, eventually, Howell's.

In 1990, one of the first things Pace published under his new name was called It Is Finished. Shortly before Lois died in November, 1986, he declared that the church no longer needed to keep the daily hours of worship which Ben and Lois had labored hard to restore to the church. In that 1990 study he taught that it was an "abomination" to keep wine (grape juice) as an emblem of the Lord's Supper daily (as the Rodens had taught) because Jesus was no longer interceding for us, but only the Holy Ghost was.

In Lois' unattested will she named "Irmine Sampson, Teresa Moore, and the New York group" to lead out in republishing her and Ben's literature. Teresa took that to mean that she was anointed to be the next president of the church, though the others didn't assume the same about their being mentioned. Teresa attended the hearing on the probate of Lois' estate in early 1987, but not as a party to it. After the hearing she told Doug Mitchell (who was a party to the proceedings for the purpose of preserving the church's assets from abuse until the members could meet together) that it was her opinion that the church members should just let George Roden have control of Mt. Carmel Center and the other church assets. Therefore, she went back home and established her own faction, naming it The Lords of Sabbaoth, Our Righteous Branches, and abandoned the church's identity and property.

Amo Bishop became associated with George Roden in 1987, and later was married to him for a few months by "contract." George's mental condition was greatly deteriorating during that time, and not long afterwards he ended up in a mental institution until his death in 1998. Amo claims to represent the church, though she rejects many of the church's fundamental teachings. Even though she managed to get permission from George to represent his interests, he, not long afterwards, formally withdrew that permission. In spite of that, Amo continues to put herself forward as a member of the church with a right to speak and act for the church, even using George's last name (Roden). She then began publishing her own studies, which, according to Mitchell and others, greatly misrepresent the church's teachings. Some say that she is part of a group whose purpose is to disrupt and manipulate the church's image for nefarious reasons. They say that she has been taking advantage of the church's turmoil by repeatedly moving on to the church's property and passing out her literature under the supposed auspices of the church.

Doug Mitchell joined the movement in 1978, and worked closely with Lois until her death. He became a party in the probate proceedings of Lois' estate for the purpose of preserving the church's assets from abuse until the members could meet together, but to no avail as the judge wouldn't recognize that much of Lois' estate was things held in trust by her for the church, and appointed two of her other sons who were not active in the church as executors of her estate.

About six months before she died, Mitchell presented her with some "new light" he said he was receiving on the true nature of the Lord's Supper. That being, that in the early church that which is known as the Agape or Love Feast (the communal meal ) was the only Lord's Supper they practiced. Lois accepted that belief and practiced it with Mitchell when they met together, and even with Pace when they visited him shortly before she died.