Foundation Church of the Divine Truth, Inc

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Foundation Church of the Divine Truth, Inc.

The Foundation Church of the Divine Truth, Inc. is one of two organizations that emerged out of the organizational chaos that beset the Foundation Church of the New Birth beginning in 1982. In that year, the sole surviving trustee of the church, Rev. John Paul Gibson, died. Leadership passed to Victor Summers. Since its founding, the headquarters and most of the leadership of the church had been in Washington, D.C. However, in 1983 Summers moved first to San Diego, California, and then to Lake Helen, Florida. He then resigned from all church offices and disbanded the church.

Members in the Washington, D.C., area who did not accept Summers's actions reorganized as the New Birth Christian Healing Sanctuary and were granted permission to receive the mail directed to the former church's postal mail box. Then in 1985 nine former members founded the Foundation Church of Divine Truth as the successor to the former Foundation Church of the New Birth.

The Foundation Church is based upon channeled messages believed to be from Jesus Christ, a selection of high celestial spirits, and other spirits received through James Edward Padgett (1852-1923). Padgett was a Methodist Sunday School teacher who had become interested in Spiritualism following the death of his wife in 1914. Advised to begin practicing automatic writing, he soon became adept at it. Shortly thereafter, he received a message, purportedly from Jesus Christ, telling him to pray for an inflowing of the Father's divine love. Padgett was told that he had been selected to disseminate the Father's truths to humankind.

Padgett channeled some 1,500 messages between 1914 and 1923. The manuscripts were left in the care of an associate, Leslie R. Stone. Stone saw to the publication in 1940 of a selection of the channeled material under the title True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus. Subsequently three other volumes, the last published in 1972, appeared. These four volumes are believed by church members to constitute Christ's second coming.

The message of the Padgett channelings flows from Spiritualism and affirms the continuity of the soul after death, and its life and continued growth in the spirit realm. The soul progresses through various realms to paradise (the sixth realm). Should it seek to be filled with the divine love of the Creator, it may then progress to the celestial heavens. In heaven it is conscious of its immortality and continues to receive inflowings of the divine essence of the Father. Jesus' mission on Earth was to make known the possibilities of divine love to all persons.

It has several hundred members in the United States, Canada, England, Nigeria, and Togo. It has published a new edition of Padgett's writings under the title Angelic Revelations of Divine Truth. A second group of followers of the Padgett teachings was organized in 1991 under the church's original name. Currently, the Foundation Church functions as a through-the-mail, nonprofit Christian Spiritualist foundation. It may be contacted at PO Box 66003, Washington, D.C. 20035-6003.