Wilbur Glenn Voliva (1870-1942) took control of the community of Zion, Illinois — a religious community which taught Flat Earth doctrine (through the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church) — after Alexander Dowie resigned due to poor health and scandal. He kept tight control over the community and broadcast his Flat Earth agenda from a 100,000-Watt radio station in the town.

Irving Wallace interviewed Voliva in 1932. Voliva declared that the Bible was his entire scientific library. Astronomers were 'ignorant fools'. The sun, he said, was only three thousand miles away and only thirty-two miles in diameter. When asked why he thought the sun so near the earth, he said: "God made the sun to light the earth, and therefore must have placed it close to the task it was designed to do. What would you think of a man who built a house in Zion and put a lamp to light it in Kenosha, Wisconsin?"

The trouble lasted for a long time, but eventually the police authorities triumphed. They arrested some of the violators and fined them. The defendants appealed and lost, the court holding that the city could prohibit smoking in crowds. That broke up the practice, except for a few isolated cases – stubborn persons, who wanted to know what constituted a crowd, but the police magistrates and the judge of Zion City soon settled that little point.

To-day it is legal for a person to smoke in Zion City as long as he isn’t in a crowd. The smoker is walking along the street unaccompanied. The policeman spies him smoking and walks up and arrests him, and he is guilty of violating the city ordinance which prohibits smoking in crowds – the crowd in this instance being made up of the smoker and the policeman. There are very few arrests any more for violating the ordinance against smoking.

¶ 3:18 PM