Lake-Cook County IL Archives Obituaries.....Voliva, Wilbur Glenn October 11, 1942
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Kathy Stinson findingthepast@comcast.net December 18, 2013, 7:22 pm

Chicago Tribune - Oct 12, 1942
Glenn Voliva, 72, religious colony leader, who Insisted the world was flat and 
often predicted it soon would be destroyed, died last night 48 years before he 
expected to meet death.  Voliva died at a hospital of heart ailment complicated 
by kidney disease. He had predicted that he would live to be 120 because of his 
"abstinence of meat and diet of Brazil nuts.

He forecast at various times that the world would end in 1923. 1927, 1930, 1935 
and 1943. His most recent prophecy was that a new "Battle of Armageddon" would 
be followed by a "second coming of Christ."

In his 32 years us both political find religious leader of the colony at Zion, 
IL, north of Chicago, Voliva, also presented many unorthodox religious ideas. 
His booklet. "Handbook and Guide to Hell," attracted wide attention.  "Every 
sinner is going to be punished with an overdose of his own sin." he wrote. "A 
tobacco smoker will be locked up in a den full of smoke. A chewer of the filthy 
weed will be immersed up to his neck in a vat of tobacco juice. A drinker
will pass his term of purification in a sanitarium filled with beer, wine and 
whiskey."

In Zion, Voliva enforced stringent rules against smoking, drinking, profanity, 
low-neck dresses, rouge, medicines, and such items of diet as pork and oysters. 
He ousted several Zion employes for chewing gum. 

Later he relaxed some of the regulations.  "This city houses more nuts and long-
haired fools than any other town its size," he said. "I'm not going to damn a 
man for taking a pill or smoking a cigaret." 

He also reversed an early ruling against vaccination for Zion residents. He had 
threatened to "take shotguns and blow "em to hell if the state tries to 
vaccinate us." but he changed his mind when a measles epidemic struck the 
colony.

He served briefly as pastor of an Ohio Christian church before joining the Zion 
colony. Its founder, John Alexander Dowie, an Australian, sent him to Australia 
to recruit members, Voliva induced some 500 to leave home and move to Zion.

He came there himself in 1907, and three years later had become not only 
religious and political head of the group, but sole owner of all Zion's property
—valued at $11,000,000. 

The depression cost him control of these holdings, and his large corporation, 
Zion Industries and Institutions, Inc., fell into receivership. Outsiders won 
power in the city government, and rival churches grew in strength. At his death, 
the once-powerful Voliva was little more than a figurehead in the colony of 
6,500 residents.

With him at the time of his death was his second wife, the former Ida R. 
Emanuelson, who had been a Zion school teacher. He had previously married Mollie 
Steele, but she died In 1915 after bearing him two children, one of whom died in 
infancy. His daughter, Mrs. Ruth Bennett, is a Zion resident.

Additional Comments:
Buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Zion, Lake County, Illniois

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