GENESIS II CHURCH TIMELINE
1996: Jim Humble allegedly discovered that chlorine dioxide could cure malaria while gold mining in South America.
2006: Mark Grenon found Humble’s book and claimed to have cured a family with MRSA.
2006: Jim Humble released his book Miracle Mineral Supplements.
2009 (January): Grenon and Humble formed the Genesis II Church.
2010 (April): The First Seminar of Genesis II was held.
2016: Grenon established G2Voice Podcast and published his first book Imagine, A World Without Disease- Is it Possible?
2017: Humble retired from his involvement with Genesis II.
2020 (April 8): The FDA issued Genesis II a warning to stop providing GII Sacraments.
2020 (April 23): Donald Trump suggested that bleach could be used treat the coronavirus.
2020 (July 8): The FDA raided the main church in Bradenton, Florida and arrested Bishops Jonathan and Jordan Grenon.
2020 (August 10): Mark and Joseph Grenon were arrested.
2020 (November): Mark and Joseph Grenon were moved to Central La Picota penitentiary in Bogota, Columbia
2023 (October): Mark Grenon and his three sons (Joseph, Jonathan and Jordon) all were sentenced to prison by the Florida Department of Justice.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
Genesis II is one of a number of anti-vaccination churches in the U.S., such as the Fellowship of Divine 
Tenets, LifeSpirit, and Illumination (Bloomfield and Willes 2023). Genesis II was founded in January 2010 by Mark Grenon and Jim Humble. Mark Grenon was born in 1957 and, according to his own accounts, served as a missionary pilot in the Dominican Republic, Nigeria and Haiti for twenty-seven years. Jim Humble [Image at right] was born in Alabama and, according to his website, served in the Marines, worked for Aerospace and as a gold miner (Humble 2017). It appears that Humble also was a practitioner in the Church of Scientology for a time. According to Grenon, he and his eight children all contracted MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a staph infection that he was unable to treat with antibiotics. In a state of concern, he searched the internet; in late 2006 found Jim Humble’s book, Miracle Mineral Supplements (MMS) and learned about the potential for curing diseases. MMS is a solution of sodium chlorite (22.4%) dissolved in distilled water. An acid like hydrochloride (HCL) is then added to the solution to produce sodium dioxide, an oxidating process. Grenon then treated his condition with Humble’s Miracle Mineral Solution, first himself and then the remainder of his family.
Grenon [Image at right] then reached out to Jim Humble, who originally sold the “cure” through his book The Miracle Mineral Solution of the 21st Century. Humble sent Grenon $25,000 to promote MMS and to train people how to make it. Soon after, Humble visited Grenon and his family in the Dominican Republic (G2Voice#125 2019). After many discussions, Grenon and Humble decided to create a religion. Grenon drew on his experiences as a missionary and envisioned the success of acting as a missionary for MMS. He acknowledged that a religion would give them more rights and protections. Humble, who also had various church affiliations, approved of this approach.
Together they formed Genesis II Church of Health. The name “genesis” was chosen to represent a new beginning and the “II” component because, as Grenon said, “we obviously can’t take credit for Genesis I” (G2Voice#125 2019). Grenon has described Genesis II as a non-religious spiritual health church; anyone can join regardless of beliefs. In 2017, however, Humble decided to distance himself from Grenon and the church to focus on his own research and writing. In April 2020, the FDA warned Grenon to stop promoting MMS. Grenon ignored this warning and along with his three sons (Joseph, Jonathan and Jordan) was imprisoned. While MMS is still promoted on Jim Humble’s website and various New Age channels, the church has mostly been inactive since Grenon was imprisoned.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Jim Humble has made essentially religious and spiritual claims for himself and his discovery. He has asserted that he is a 1,000,000,000 year-old god from the Andromeda Galaxy. As a galaxy representative he was assigned to watch over the planet Earth (Harrison and Zane 2017; Bartley 2016, 2020). Humble has claimed that he discovered MMS while he was mining for gold in South America. He immediately concluded that MMS was a “miracle potion” and has referred to it as “the God particle” (Ono and Bartley 2016). Humble’s lofty spiritual claims have had little impact on Genesis II, however, as he left the church and the church’s focus is primarily on MMS.
Grenon and his family, as well as those connected with Genesis II, describe a world that is the product of a series of conspiracies. These include a distrust of mainstream media (leading to the Grenon’s creation of G2Voice, their own podcast), a cynicism of “big Pharma,” the belief that Covid-19 was a fabricated “Plandemic,”chemtrails release toxic chemicals, and various other beliefs. A list of some of the titles of their podcast illustrates their beliefs: “Plandemic Part 1,” “Top Doctor EXPOSES EVERYTHING The Deep State is Trying to Hide About CV,” “Fantastic Benefits of Cacao; A Powerful Super-FOOD,” “Are we being poisoned in the skies What are Chemtrails.” By creating the Genesis II church, the Grenon’s have created a “nonreligious spiritual movement.”
These specific themes connect to a larger theme that underpins Genesis II, that Americans are truly free to the extent that they are free from governmental control. As Grenon put the matter, “If handled properly a church can protect us from vaccinations that we don’t want, from forced insurance, and from many things that a government might want to use to oppress us” (Robbins 2017). One expression of this political position is that church members are required to carry ID cards that contain the following statement (Harvey 2020):
This card signifies that this member of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing has the God-given, unalienable right to control and maintain their personal health. All members are exempt from any means not chosen, including but not limited to: vaccinations, medications, X-rays, scans, implants, mandatory voting, and health insurance mandated by a human government or authority.
For Genesis II this translates in to the belief that the “body is the temple,” and it is every person’s right to decide what they do or do not put into it (G2Voice#125 2019).
RITUALS/PRACTICES
The Sacraments, also called the Protocols, are the foundation of MMS and is believed to cure all diseases. [Image at right] The Sacraments can be created with Sodium Dioxide and other chemical products that could be purchased from the G2Church for a donation (G2Voice#98 2018). The Genesis II Church believes that administering MMS is their right and their expression of religious freedom.
Mark Grenon has demonstrated how to mix MMS. First, 1-3 drops of Sodium Chlorite are dissolved in distilled water. An acid like Hydrochloric acid (HCL) is then added to set off the oxidizing reaction. The mixture forms Sodium Dioxide or MMS. This chemical solution, when mixed, is chlorine dioxide a powerful bleach used in a variety of different industrial processes, such as bleaching textiles. Grenon also recommends what food to ingest with MMS. There are various recommendations of what dose and what concentration of MMS to take depending on the condition for which a cure is sought. A feeling of nausea, diarrhea is considered a sign that the solution is working and the toxins leaving the body.
MMS has been sold to cure abroad range of diseases and illnesses, including HIV/AIDs, autism, cancer, leukemia and Alzheimer’s disease (Sauvayre 2023). Tens of thousands of bottles have been sold worldwide, according to the Department of Justice, Florida, the agency that prosecuted the Grenons,
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
Genesis II Church is essentially a hybrid organization, with both religious and commercial components. The church does have a spiritual origination narrative and on its website displays a church designation, and church officers (Bishop and Archbishop), ministries, Bible study, and sacraments. The church also lists key tenets. For example, in a G2Church podcast episode, “How to start a Genesis II Church Chapter,” Mark Grenon listed major tenets:
We of the Church believe in…
Doing good deeds
Doing what is right
Good health for all mankind
Enlightening others with truth
Helping one another
Maintaining integrity of all things.
Grenon has emphasized that it is important that the Genesis II church logo should be visible for “all the world to see” on the front door of any Health Bishops house (G2Voice#98, 2020). Inside churches is the “Health office” where the key tenets above are displayed. He states that, “You want to validate the fact that you really believe – that this is your religion.” The church has adopted an inclusive bent around health as it welcomes as part of its commitment to “health for all mankind.”
While the church has surrounded itself with mainstream religious symbolism, but the church’s activity is largely organized around the production, sale, and use of MMS. The rationale for these activities is scientific and financial. For example, Humble (2016) offered a scientifically based explanation for the use of MMS:
A great deal of evidence given by the FDA, EPA and various industrial corporations prove scientifically that MMS1 (chlorine dioxide) kills and or oxidizes pathogens and poisons in food, public water systems, hospitals, and even slaughter houses. It is our belief that the same thing can and does happen in the human body.
Further, Grenon has publicly acknowledged that adoption of a church format was based on the various exemptions, including tax exemption (G2Voice#125, 2019). The commercial orientation became more apparent when the Department of Justice, Florida revealed that “donations” to Genesis II were in fact mandatory and varied by product. The seminar to be ordained as a health minister was priced at $450 in 2016 (Bartley 2016). Bloomfield and Willes (2023) have referred to this process as “religious masking:”
Religious masking involves the impersonation of religious style and substance to “pass” convincingly as a religious institution under legal requirements. Simultaneously, the performance of masking also signals to audiences that the church functions as an anti-vaccine exemption resource.
It has become more difficult to determine the reach and impact of Genesis II since the Grenons have been prosecuted and incarcerated and church websites have become largely inactive. The church itself has estimated that in 2018 there were 2,629 members, 205 health chapters and eighty-nine bishops. Genesis II also claims that it has sold over 1,000,000 MMS kits online.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES.
Genesis II became infamous on April 23, 2020 when then President Donald Trump recommended the use of bleach to cure Covid-19 during a briefing with advisors at the White House. At this time in America there were 25,000 new cases of Covid-19. On April 19 (four days before Trump’s announcement), during the G2Voice Broadcast, Mark Grenon and Joseph Grenon discussed a letter they had sent to Trump about the benefits of MMS and why they sent it. Mark Grenon explained that they wrote to Trump because the FDA had mislabeled their sacraments as fraudulent. The two Grenons stated that it was their letter to Trump that caused him to bring up bleach as a cure during his advisory meeting.
Mark Grenon also stated that while writing the letter “God was guiding me.” He stated that the sacraments are “sacred and holy to us” as they allow followers to keep their “temples clean” (G2Voice#188 2020). In addition to the letter, Grenon also sent Trump his latest book and included various biblical verses, including Corinthians 3:17 which states:
Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
The Grenons believed they had been attacked by the FDA which, on April 8, 2020, ordered them to stop selling G2 Sacraments. Mark Grenon responded with a thirty-five page letter explaining the agency has “no authority to demand any church” to stop beliefs protected by the United States Constitution. He believed that he and his family had been wrongfully accused and “kidnapped” as “political prisoners” (Grenon 2020). In his opinion, the Department of Justice, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were working together to purposefully control the health of all Americans and other peoples in the world (Grenon 2020).
On July 8, 2020, according to Mark Grenon, the Church in Bradenton Florida was raided, computers and important files “stolen,” and the supplies used to make the G2 Sacraments seized. According to a press release from the Department of Justice, Florida, Genesis II Church was formed purely to avoid its regulation by government and “shield themselves from prosecution” (Department of Justice 2023).
The media coverage of Genesis II and the Grenons has been predominantly negative, focusing on the legal proceedings and arrest. In 2016, Eyewitness News went undercover to attend a Genesis II seminar in Costa Mesa. According to their accounts, Mark Grenon announced to a room of attendees that the reason for starting the church was because they “can sell them anything…Tell them Jesus heals you while you drink this” (Ono 2016). In the same seminar, reporters say that Mark claimed that vaccines are evil and used to intentionally reduce to world population, chemtrails spray poison from the sky and the planes on 9/11 were holograms (Ono 2016). As the news reporting on Genesis II has mostly diminished, Grenon has continued to take part in interviews from prison to maintain his innocence. He has stated that
There are certainly times I have said some things that I probably should have said differently. For lack of a better way to express things at the time-or because others put words in my mouth, in the past I have stated that MMS cures most of all diseases. Today, I say that MMS cures nothing! MMS serves as a tool to kill pathogens and oxidize poisons in the body which allows the body to heal the body. We live in a toxic world and we are fortunate to have MMS, as well as various other important health tools, to combat the ill effects of poor foods, and chemicals that make us sick (Ono and Bartley 2016).
Since the prosecution, conviction and incarceration of the Grenons, as well as aggressive international law enforcement actions against Genesis II, various branches of the church have taken more defensive positions by introducing cautionary labeling of products on websites or discontinuing product sales in favor of recommending alternative suppliers (). The future of Genesis II appears to be very much in doubt given the incarceration of its leaders and aggressive control measures by law enforcement agencies across the globe (Sauvayre 2023;
IMAGES
Image #1: Jim Humble.
Image #2: Mark Grenon.
Image #3: MMS.
Image #4: Genesis II Church logo.
REFERENCES
Bartley,Lisa. 2020. “Eyewitness News Investigation: ‘Church of Bleach’ claims to cure coronavirus.” ABC7 Investigations, April 10. Accessed from https://abc7.com/coronavirus-covid-church-cures/6091160/ on 5 February 2024.
Bartley, Lisa. 2016. “Shameless: The High Priests of Snake Oil Offer Miracle Cures.” abc news. October 28. Accessed from https://abcnews.go.com/US/shameless-high-priests-snake-oil-offer-miracle-cures/story?id=43111532 on 5 February 2024.
Bloomfield, Emma and Stephanie Willes. 2023. “Religious Masking and the Rhetorical Strategies of Digital Anti-Vaccination Churches.” Western Journal of Communication, February 21.
Davey, Melissa. 2020. “Australian arm of group that wrote to Trump peddling bleach as coronavirus cure fined $150,000.” The Guardian, May 13. Accessed from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/13/healing-church-fined-150000-in-australia-over-selling-bleach-as-coronavirus-cure
G2Church. 2020. “How to start a Genesis II Church Chapter.” Brighteon, February 2020. Accessed from https://www.brighteon.com/962116d8-c07d-4baa-891c-5628ddc456f2 on 5 February 2024.
G2Voice #188. 2020. “Letter to President Trump and Response to FDA/FTC about their attack on our Sacraments! 04-19-20.” Brighteon, April. Accessed from https://www.brighteon.com/aedb4e1b-3a47-434f-8548-7efe585a1cf1 on 5 February 2024.
G2Voice #125. 2019. “Discovery of MMS and the History of the Genesis II Church and what it means to the world – 02-03-2019.” Brighteon, March. Accessed from https://www.brighteon.com/00000000-0000-0000-0006-005967385001 on 5 February 2024.
G2Voice #098. 2018. “G2Sacraments for Dummies 7-29-2018.” Brighteon, July. Accessed from https://www.brighteon.com/00000000-0000-0000-0005-817054721001 on 5 February 2024.
G2Voice #037. 2017. “Genesis II Church Seminars 05-28-17.” Accessed from https://www.brighteon.com/6ae75be0-eb23-4a3f-a190-13fd95c380e3 on 5 February 2024.
Grenon, Mark. 2021. “The Depravation of Rights Under Color of Law And The Conspiracy Against Rights.” Honeycolony, December 13. Accessed from https://honeycolony.com/article/the-timeline-of-the-depravation-of-rights-under-color-of-law-and-the-conspiracy-against-rights-title-section-241-242-and-the-offenders/ on 5 February 2024.
Harrison Kelly and Thomas Zane. 2017. “Focus on science: Is there science behind that? Bleach therapy.” Science in Autism Treatment 14:18-24.
Harvey Sarah. 2020. “The Genesis II Church and Miracle Mineral Solution.” Religion Media Centre, May 1. Accessed from https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/factsheets/genesis-ii-the-non-religious-church-that-wants-you-to-drink-bleach/ on 5 February 2024.
Humble, Jim. 2017. “A Word from Jim Humble.” Jim Humble, June 27. Accessed from https://jimhumble.co/ on 5 February 2024.
Humble, Jim. 2016. MMS Health Recovery Guidebook. Jim Humble.
Ono, David and Lisa Bartley. 2016. “’Church of Bleach’: ABC News confronts founder of Genesis II Church.” ABC7 News, October 29. Accessed from https://abc7.com/church-of-bleach-genesis-ii-2-health-and-healing/1578279/ on 5 February 2024.
Robbins, Martin 2017. “The man who encourages the sick and dying to drink industrial bleach.” The Guardian, September 15. Accessed from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/sep/15/miracle-mineral-solutions-mms-bleach on 5 February 2024.
Sauvayre, Romy. 2023. “Dissemination of a “Fake Miracle Cure” against COVID-19 on Twitter: The Case of Chlorine Dioxide.” Social Science. Accessed from https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/6/320 on 5 February 2024.
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida. 2023. Press Release “Leaders of “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing,” who sold toxic bleach as fake “Miracle” cure for COVID-19 and other serious diseases, sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison.” United States Attorney’s Office. Friday, October 6, 2023. Accessed fromt https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/leaders-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure on 5 February 2024.
Publication Date:
10 February 2024
