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At the time, he went by the name Tony Delevin, and he was catering to “the drifters and runaways, the drunks and drug addicts who are still on the street when night falls,â€� as the ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV’s Judith Ratliff reported that year.

Delevin explained: “I tell them how Christ can help them get their lives together and what it means to be a Christian. Whether they accept it or not is not the question. At least they’ve heard it.�

Delevin died Friday at age 79, but by then he had reinvented himself and his concept of a religious community many times. In fact, Delevin was not his last name at birth — it was Dell’Erba.

During later periods, he became known as Gabriel of Sedona, Gabriel of Urantia, TaliasVan and, at the time he died, Van of Urantia, which he formalized as his legal name in 2024. This was a person with supposed world-historical significance, who in previous lives had been St. Francis of Assisi, King Arthur, Mozart, George Washington and other luminaries.

“Van of Urantia, through his soul ascension, was given the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star,� KVAN 91.7 FM.

“This is a Mandate to serve the people of the world, to help in healing and destiny actualization, to serve as true spiritual teachers and leaders, establishing not another new religion, but a spiritual union of all people as one planetary family under one Creator.�

At 630 N. 4th Ave. where Delevin’s Son Light Ministries was based, members slept on bunk beds. As Phil Thompson, who worked with Delevin then, remembers, they ministered to people on the street and at the University of Arizona campus, leading prayer groups and Bible studies.

“He had this vision of a Christian community,� Thompson said. “We called it a ministry. We took people in, but the catch was they wanted to learn more about Jesus and Christianity.�

After Tucson, he formed a community in Sedona that began as a sort of New Age commune, but over time became more closed, more controlling, and more financially successful. Then in 2007, the whole operation moved to a property in the Santa Cruz River basin near Tumacacori, called Avalon Gardens and EcoVillage, and renamed itself the Global Community Communications Alliance.

As time went on, more and more people left, even his daughters, and condemned the community as a cult and Van of Urantia as a sort of dictator.

Musical ambitions

By all appearances, what he really wanted to be was a rock star.

In , wandering the street that he grew up on in Pittsburgh, Van of Urantia reminisced about the musicians who used to play outside in his Italian-American neighborhood.

“I started to sing when I was very young. Loved the flair of it all,� he said.

In the Tucson years at Son Light Ministries, the ministry would bring in bands for concerts, and Delevin would take the opportunity to open for them, Thompson remembered.

He tried again and again over the years to make his name in bands. He never became popular, perhaps due to a voice that sounds like a squeakier Neil Young, and that seemed to grind him.

“I used to go to the Telluride festival,� he said when . “I was disappointed that they didn’t ask me to play — so disappointed that I didn’t go.�

But the yearning might not just have been limited to musical notice.

“He always described to me that he wanted to be recognized by people,� Thompson recalled Monday.

Another path to recognition

And so he achieved recognition another way.

In the 1980s, Delevin discovered The Urantia Book, a massive religious and philosophical text that takes place across the universe and millenia, incorporating Christianity and other concepts, author Joseph L. Flatley writes in his book

When he and his wife Niann Emerson Chase moved to Sedona in 1990, they formed a nonprofit, the Aquarian Concepts Community, in part to advance the ideas of The Urantia Book. That’s the decade when things got serious, Flatley writes. The group came into money through one of its followers, and it went from being more of a commune to a regimented work camp with a spiritual point.

“Then came an event known in Aquarian lore as ‘The Shift,’ “ Flatley writes. “It was decided that Gabriel’s followers would give all their money and assets to the community. From that point on, new members were required to hand everything over when they joined — from cars to credit cards to inheritances.�

Unsurprisingly, his financial condition improved mightily after that. But the terms of a contract that new members signed went even beyond that, said Joshua Lilly, who spent years as a child, then again as a young adult, in the community, and whose mother remains a high official there.

“It gave them complete rights to you in every aspect,� he told me Tuesday. “If you, or you and your partner left the community, you would still give Gabriel and Niann rights to your children.�

“Gabriel would move your children out of your home if you were not conforming,� he added.

‘The spiritual mecca’

Throughout this period, the community kept or purchased property in Tucson. And in 2007, the group moved closer, leaving Sedona behind and settling at a $4.4 million ranch on the east side of the Santa Cruz River near Tumacacori.

Then-Star reporter Stephanie Innes described the tension that surrounded the group’s move in a story that year. Locals weren’t so sure they wanted them around. But members of the group protested that they are good people who just take an alternative approach to life.

“The benefit of giving up your money is that you get so much more from everyone else,� a member named Taranta Baldeschi said at the time. “But I know the majority of the world lives according to making a living, so we seem different.�

The leader, then known as Gabriel but no longer of Sedona, declined to talk to the reporter but sent a written statement.

“This ministry works with all peoples who are somewhat damaged by society, i.e., divorce, struggling to make a living, troubled teens, and/or temporarily emotionally distraught for whatever reason,� he wrote.

“Tumacacori/Tubac will become the spiritual mecca of Western civilization,� he added.

Is there a way forward?

Along with property in Sedona and Santa Cruz County, the Global Community Communications Alliance still owns real estate in Tucson. It owns the building at 328-332 E. 7th Street, just west of North Fourth Avenue, where Sea of Glass Center for the Arts and have their offices and play music exclusively by Van of Urantia’s bands. This was the location of the group's restaurant, Food for Ascension Cafe, in 2014-2015. 

It also owns 630-632 N. 4th Ave., the building where Delevin started Son Light Ministries. Alliance members also founded Soulistic Hospice, 2344 E. Speedway.

“There are no words that can truly capture how real and immense his impact and legacy was and is!� son . “He was an absolute living legend, and is now a legend gone from our sight.�

Amadon and his sister Ellanora are rumored to be the heirs to leadership of the community, Lilly said. Without the central leader, though, such communities have had trouble carrying on.

“He didn’t do it all by himself by any means,� told me Monday. “He was the personality that people could circle around. He’s got business people in his cult that were running things.�

The question is whether the multifaceted enterprise can persist without the persona who has always sat at its center, whether he be named Gabriel of Sedona or Van of Urantia.