Marlon Finley remembered being at a Christian commune in Paducah, Kentucky, and seeing “one box of beef stroganoff . . . [feed] twelve people to capacity.” Brad Davis was living at a “discipleship house” run by the Agape Force in Southern California and claimed that more than thirty young people were fed by a single can of tuna. Kent Philpott recalled an incident at the Soul Inn in San Francisco in which he claimed that a single can of beef stew cooked over a hot plate fed dozens of homeless hippies—an experience that left him reaching for the phone years later to verify with a former coworker that he had not simply dreamed the incident.

Within the ranks of the Shiloh organization, “the PBJ miracle” was a famous story of God’s provision in the group’s early days. One afternoon, Cathy Stewart recounted in a 1977 issue of Shiloh Magazine, she and another sister in the House of Miracles in Fontana, California, made a number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their housemates’ lunch. Having planned for two sandwiches per person, they were dismayed to suddenly see “all these people from the Riverside house [charge] in the front door.” They were amazed that, when all was said and done, no one had gone hungry:

When we went into the dining room to clean up, a whole bunch of sandwiches were left on the platters. It was like seeing something you knew logically couldn’t exist. Everyone had two [sandwiches] and some brothers had eaten six or seven. It was just like the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

James K. Foley belonged to a communal house ministry in Burlington, Vermont, that reported a similar experience. Foley claimed that “at one meal . . . 24 pieces of chicken were put in front of 20 people; everyone had at least one piece, some as many as four, and there were nine pieces left over. No, you wouldn’t believe it even if you saw it!”