The Psychology and Theology Behind David Koresh and the Branch Davidians

By Marc Breault

In the summer of 1988, as the 1988 presidential campaigns dominated the news, two nondescript guys walked in a Southern California mall.  The two guys were after a few small things, nothing major.  They talked as they walked about nothing much in particular.  No one paid them any mind.  As they walked past a Sears store, several TVs in the store were tuned to the news and the two stopped to watch a story on Lyndon LaRouche, who was actually running for President.  LaRouche had some crazy notions and the story focused on his followers in California who insisted, among other things, that AIDS was spread by mosquitoes and the government was covering that up.  LaRouche and his followers also believed the US government created the AIDS virus, and was covering that up as well.

I was one of the two men.  The other was my friend Vernon Howell.  We stood mesmerized by the story.

“Man, LaRouche is a nut case if ever there was one and his followers are even crazier,” I said.

Vernon responded:  “Yeah that’s true all right.  You almost wonder how anyone can believe such nonsense.” He then paused for a meditative moment, then said:  “But you know, we’re even crazier than they are.”

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “Just look at us.  You know we’re in a cult.  We’re actually in a cult.”

He was technically right, but this had never been voiced before.  I was kind of floored by this statement but I had to agree.  “I guess you’re right,” I said slowly.  “When you put it that way, I guess we are crazier than they are.”

“So what is a cult anyway?” asked Vernon.  “I mean, what is the scholarly definition of a cult?”

Vernon was a 9^th grade dropout who had been plagued by dyslexia during his school years.  I, on the other hand, had a Master’s Degree in Religion after obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology.  The Bachelor’s Degree was from a Seventh-Day Adventist institution called Pacific Union College located in Angwin California, about half an hour from Napa.  My Master’s was from Loma Linda University, which is predominantly a Seventh-day Adventist run Medical school and hospital, but which also has a graduate program in religion.  Despite this difference, I deferred to Vernon Howell as the leader of our just-declared cult.

“Well from a scholarly point of view, there are two definitions really,” I expounded.  “A cult is an organization which centers around a divine central figure, or a semi-divine figure, or someone whom the followers believe has a connection to the Divine.  So you could argue that at its beginning, Christianity was also a cult because it centered around Jesus Christ who was believed to be the Son of God.  Christianity eventually became heavily institutionalized and evolved to be mainstream, but if you follow this definition, Christianity started off as a cult.  Then you have the Mormons.  Their central figure was Joseph Smith who was not considered divine as you know, but was considered a prophet who spoke to God.  Mormons eventually became mainstream and gave us Donny and Marie.”  We both laughed at my joke.  Neither one of us were avid fans of their music.

I continued on.  “The second definition revolves around rituals usually having to do with a temple of some sort.  So animal sacrifices are considered cultic rituals and the temple which lies at the center of those rituals is thought of as a cult.  So we might speak of the Temple Cult for Ishtar when speaking of Babylonian religion, or the Temple Cult when speaking of the animal sacrifices at Solomon’s temple.”

“Then finally, you have the common definition held by the general public, and that is what you are thinking about Vernon.  When thought of this way, a cult is led by some weirdo nut job who things he’s the Messiah.  This definition only has negative connotations thanks in large part to Jim Jones and Charles Manson.”

“Well I guess we fit the first and third definitions then,” said Vernon.  “So how do you feel about being in a double cult?” He laughed.  “I mean,” he continued, “Do you ever fear I might turn into another Jim Jones and give y’all the Kool-Aid?”

This was a very sobering thought.  How did I feel?  There was no doubt I was in a cult and Vernon was the cult leader.  He taught he was a latter day Messiah as well as the Son of God, and all of us believed this.  It was small comfort to me at the time that being the son of God did not mean he believed he was Jesus Christ come again.  But there was no question we believed Vernon Wayne Howell, a 9^th grade drop-out who was born out of wedlock to a 14-year-old girl on August 17, 1959 was the chosen prophet of the Last Days foretold by Scripture itself.  Or was he?  Was I in too deep?  I had seen a miniseries about The People’s Temple and it portrayed a Jim Jones who did a lot of good things at first, but who then spiraled out of control thanks to his Messianic complex.

Vernon and his religion had always been out there, and while that might have been confronting to mainstream Christians, Vernon had done many good things too.  For one thing, Vernon did a lot of work with the homeless in Southern California and he was good with those homeless.  He sympathized with them.  He and his followers actually talked to them as people and were trusted by many of them.  Whereas many church groups simply dropped food off for them and left, Vernon actually treated them as human beings and gave them someone to talk to and someone they could confide in without asking anything in return other than preaching his version of the gospel.  But even that was done only if they wanted to hear.  Vernon was also great with drug addicts and prostitutes as well.  He did not condemn them but treated them as people who were worth having as friends.  He even persuaded some to get help. 

Maybe it was his miserable childhood that gave him empathy with the down and out, or maybe he was just naturally good when dealing with such people.  It was probably both.  But no one can deny, Vernon had started off doing many good things above and beyond what many church going people do, despite his “crazy” beliefs.

In answer to his question I told him I wasn’t worried about being in Jones Town 2 and we had a good laugh about it.  Privately, though, I had started to have reservations, but I kept those to myself.  Vernon and I genuinely liked one another because we shared a special bond.  We were like brothers in many ways.  Vernon laughed and took it as a source of pride that we were in a cult, that I acknowledged I was in a cult talking to the cult leader, and that I wasn’t afraid.  Later on, Vernon shared this insight with the rest of the group and everyone took pride in our cult status.

So there we were, two cult members in a California mall talking about what it meant to be in a cult and no one paid the slightest attention to us.  Vernon had no aura of charisma which naturally drew people to him, at least not in the mall, and we walked on to get the items we had come there to get.

That was in 1988.  Five short years later, the whole world would know who we were and we would not have been able to walk anonymously anywhere.  Sadly, the joke had turned into a reality both on the cult, and on the Jones town front.  In 1990 Vernon Wayne Howell legally changed his name to David Koresh, and by then, I was long gone, having escaped from the cult in 1989.  In 1993 David Koresh and his followers held the FBI at bay for 51 days during the longest standoff with law enforcement in US history.  The siege, as it was termed, ended on April 19, 1993 when fire swept through the compound killing 86 Branch Davidians in a conflagration seen by millions around the world on live TV.  I, along with my wife Elizabeth, who was also a member, spearheaded efforts to get people out, spearheaded attempts to get the authorities to take action against the Branch Davidians, and spearheaded contacts with the media.  We wanted to prevent the tragedy which was inevitable in our view.  I was the main source for the Waco Tribune Herald series of articles titled The Sinful Messiah.  The first of these articles was published on February 27, 1993, the day before the ATF raid on the compound which led to the largest law enforcement casualties in US history at that time.

When the raid went horribly wrong, there was a media frenzy the likes of which you rarely see.  Back then there was no internet to speak of, and certainly no social media.  So when the media descended on the compound to report the raid and subsequent siege, the only immediate source of information they had was the Waco Tribune Herald articles.  I say articles because on the day of the raid, the newspaper published all the articles at once which they had originally planned as a series.  The media, starving for any information, devoured those articles and since my name was all over them, all hope of a normal life vanished instantly for my wife and I.  The media descended on us.

The FBI was in a similar predicament.  When they were called to the scene, the ATF was in shock and in no position to advise them of anything.  Four agents were dead and many were wounded.  Of course we know that now.  At the time all anyone knew was there were dead people and some of those were agents, while others were wounded.

We have become accustomed to Hollywood movies in which we know who all the players are and why things are happening.  Take Olympus Has Fallen for example, a recent movie about the White House being overrun by North Korean terrorists.  As we munch on our popcorn, we see the terrorists planning the attack.  We know who the bad guys are.  So by the time the White House is overrun, we already have a coherent knowledge of what is happening and why it is happening.  Real life is not even remotely like this.  When I was first contacted by the FBI, they had not yet established their command post.  They had absolutely no idea who David Koresh was.  In fact, they barely knew there was a guy named David Koresh.  When I asked agent Max Howard how many casualties there were he told me they had no idea.  He then asked me who the hell David Koresh was and what my relationship was to him.  I told him, and then mentioned I had given detailed information on all the members to the ATF and had they received that information from them?  He told me they had no idea what the ATF knew and had even less of an idea what information they had.  He said the ATF was in no shape to help them out.  Those poor FBI agents were reading the newspaper and sipping their coffee on a quiet Sunday morning when they were called to a war zone.  They had no idea who was there, why they were there, how many people there were, or what to do about it.  All they could do was follow standard FBI procedures and read the Waco Tribune Herald as if their lives depended on it like everyone else was.  I was living in Australia at the time as my wife is an Australian, and had even less of an idea what was going on.

Subsequent stories and write-ups about Waco treat the situation as if everyone knew everything ahead of time, just as we know ahead of time who the North Korean terrorists are in Olympus Has Fallen and why they are attacking the White House.  People have said the FBI should have done this, or the FBI should have done that, or that the government acted as part of a conspiracy against a group they knew about and hated from the beginning.  I can tell you unequivocally that the FBI agents on the ground on that fateful February 28 had no idea who the Branch Davidians were, and in fact, didn’t even know them as Branch Davidians.  The official name of the group is actually Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists and that is what I called them.

Shortly after the terrible events which took place on April 19, 1993, in which about 85 men, women and children died in conflagration seen by millions all over the world, I wrote a book entitled Inside the Cult which outlined what led to the raid, siege, and fatal fire.  I wrote it with an Australian journalist named Martin King.  In my view, the book is OK but it is not written in the manner I would have written it, had I been the sole author.  It was written to get information out there as soon as possible mostly because there were many death threats, and other threats, made against myself and my family by both Branch Davidians and “patriots” who came to believe I was responsible for the whole thing.

I have been asked many times to write a second book along the lines of the appendix which ends Inside the Cult as that was generally considered the best and more informative part of the book.  I have refused all these years and largely remained silent except for the occasional documentary which has interviewed me.  I have held back because I did not want to perpetuate David Koresh’s theology in any way so as to give fuel to would-be Messiahs out there who might build upon his teachings and cause more pain and suffering to innocent people.  After the April 19, 1993 tragedy, there were a number of would-be prophets and Messiahs who emerged from the smoking ruins, speaking metaphorically, of Ranch Apocalypse as the compound was known to those who were all too willing to take up the cause.  And why not.  If David Koresh could get a harem of willing women, why couldn’t they?

One crazy idiot published some pamphlets proclaiming himself to be “the heir.”  Aside from trashing me, he claimed that Koresh’s message was right and even his sexual relations with young girls was biblical.  However, he went on further to claim that Koresh’s downfall came about because he enjoyed the sex with those young girls.  He should simply have done his duty.  Oh no, another child rapist on the loose.

I also knew there would be massive investigations over this and I thought it best to stop at what I had said in my book and save the rest for those enquiries.  Indeed, there was a Treasury Department report (The ATF falls under that department of government), a Justice Department report, a congressional investigation complete with congressional hearings, and a $675 million lawsuit launched by the Branch Davidians against the Federal Government.  And of course, there were criminal trials and a number of conspiracy theory inspired documentaries followed by a number of books written by journalists, ex members, and even people who were part of the FBI team.

Things have calmed down after 25 years, however, and the stories which now permeate the air waves have a lot more information than the original ones did.  Everything I claimed about the Branch Davidians has been corroborated time and time again by a number of sources and perhaps most important of all, we now definitely know the Branch Davidians started the fire, just as I said they would two days before the final tragic end when the FBI asked me (after a long period of hostile silence toward me) what I thought would happen if they went into the compound.

My wife and I recently watched the various 25 year documentaries, some of which we were a part of, as well as the six part miniseries aired on the Paramount Network.  Although the six part miniseries was compelling drama with good acting performances all around, I was very disappointed when the final episode gave the impression many aspects of Waco were still disputed and that the FBI might well have started the fire.  I can understand bending the truth for the sake of drama, but there is a line which should not be crossed.

I could also see the writers of the miniseries were caught in a bind because on the one hand, the Branch Davidians had killed federal agents.  But on the other hand, the drama needed characters who were sympathetic at least to some degree.  The result was that many truly bad aspects of the Branch Davidians were not mentioned at all, such as the rape, sodomy and prolonged and unlawful captivity suffered by some at the compound.  Cover that, and all sympathy for Branch Davidians vanishes, so I understand why this was not mentioned.  The miniseries also implied that the children were not being abused so when the FBI approaches Attorney General Janet Reno in the film and claims children continue to be abused, the FBI comes across as desperate and grasping at straws.  At the time many radio talk shows emphasized the false claims I made on this subject but as I said above, time has proven everything I said to be true.  Even as late as 2000, bestselling novelist Dean Koontz joined the Marc Breault bashing party when he claimed in the afterward of his novel Dark Rivers of the Heart that my accusations against Koresh and the Branch Davidians were baseless.  I should point out that Koontz did not mention my name directly, but I believe he definitely had me in mind since many of the accusations against Koresh originated with me.

What really struck me about the miniseries, however, was how difficult it was for the series to come to grips with what Koresh actually believed and how things got to the stage in which tanks were needed against a religious group.  This is not their fault.  Many books and films have tried to explain this.  It was this difficulty, more than anything else, which has led me to break my silence after all these years and write this article.

Despite many things being clear now about what happened, there are a number of  unanswered questions.  What should the FBI have done?  Could they have done anything?  What if the FBI had simply waited them out?  What if the ATF had simply done nothing and let the Branch Davidians go on as they had been.  Would the Davidians have continued to exist without using their massive store of weapons against anyone?

The ATF asked me this question in December of 1992.  They flew me in secret to California, put me in a hotel room and grilled me.  They wanted to know what I thought Koresh would do with his massive horde of weapons.  My answer was that I did not know but I then qualified my answer by saying that at that moment, I thought he would use them defensively and not attack anyone because he expected law enforcement to move against him.  However, I went on to say, he could change his mind at any time because he was under pressure to deliver an apocalypse and the longer the world continued more or less as is, he would lose his grip on power.

The two ATF agents then asked me how they should serve a warrant against Koresh.  I told them under no circumstances should they raid the compound.  Koresh was fond of going into town with one or two of his followers.  He might visit String World, a music store he liked in Waco, or perhaps go out to eat somewhere.  Get him then, while he is away from everyone else.  The agents agreed.  They most certainly did not wish to raid the compound.

Imagine my surprise, then, when raid the compound is exactly what the ATF did.  I was beyond words at that point?  What had happened?  But much has been written and filmed about that aspect of Waco.  What I will do now is explain the theology and psychology of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.  I do this for two reasons.  First, it will provide answers to the questions I posed above.  Second, this will provide insight into groups like Islamic State that we face today.  For although the religions are very different, many aspects of the theology, and especially the psychology of such groups is the same.  By understanding this aspect of Waco, I hope we can better understand the radicalization that continues to plague our world today.

The story of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians actually begins in 1831 when a Baptist minister named William Miller began to study the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation.  These books are the two main sources of apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible and contain a number of time prophecies and mysterious symbols Christians have tried to understand for thousands of years.  In fact, the book of Revelation nearly missed out on making it into the Bible because no one in the early church had any real idea what to make of it.  It barely scraped in, mostly because enough believers held that the apostle John had written it. 

William Miller came to believe the 2300 day prophecy of Daniel 8:            14 showed that Christ would return to bring about the end of days in a few years.  After a few iterations of his calculations, William Miller eventually settled on October 22, 1844 as the exact date of the second coming of Christ. He arrived at this date by setting the starting date for the prophecy in 457 BC when the Persian king Artaxerxes issued a decree allowing Jews to return to Palestine to rebuild God’s temple.  This decree can be found in Ezra 7 in the Bible.  Miller then applied something known as the year-day principle in which a day of biblical apocalyptic prophecy equals one real year. To arrive at 1844.  How he arrived at October 22 is too detailed for me to go into here.

William Miller did not invent the year-day principle.  It was, in fact, invented and first used by an obscure theologian named Sir Isaac Newton.  You might have heard of him.  They say he was a pretty smart guy.  Isaac Newton, yes that Isaac Newton had three passions in life which were in order:  his hatred of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, something he needed to keep secret during his life time to preserve his head’s location on his shoulders, the study of Daniel and Revelation, and the study of Mathematics. 

            Thousands of people followed William Miller’s lead.  Many gave up home and family to prepare for the great day.  They even went so far as to make or purchase white robes which they called ascension robes, so they could be dressed appropriately when Christ came on October 22, 1844.  Needless to say, nothing out of the ordinary took place on that date and the movement scattered faster than it had taken for it to come together in the first place.  Although Miller and his followers were widely ridiculed, most contemporaries felt Miller himself was a sincere Christian of good character who simply got it wrong.  Several attempts were made to recalculate the time but Miller himself did not endorse these.  William Miller died quietly on December 20, 1849.  A small group of Millerites, as his followers were known, held fast to the idea that William Miller’s calculations were correct, but the forecasted event was incorrect.  They emerged from the Great Disappointment, as they called it, with a very complicated doctrine concerning a judgment of mankind which takes place entirely in heaven, and which began on October 22, 1844.  The doctrine touches not only on the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, but dissects parts of Leviticus and the letter to the Hebrews in great detail. 

One of the members of this small group was Ellen G. White, who was considered by members of this group to be a prophet.  Being a good 19^th century Christian woman, however, she allowed her husband James White to lead the group and had no administrative authority of any kind herself.  But if people believe angels and Jesus himself speaks to you, you don’t actually need official man-made titles.  Ellen White (1827 to 1915) published her visions and as the small group grew, so did the popularity of these visions.  This group eventually adopted the name of Seventh-day Adventists and officially incorporated in 1863.  As the founding members died off, Ellen White assumed matriarch status and became quite a prolific writer despite having only a third grade education.  Years later, it would be revealed she was also a prolific plagiarist, but during her lifetime, this fact was known only to a few.

The Ellen White Estate, the official managers of Ellen White’s writings tells us:

At the time of her death Ellen White's literary productions totaled approximately 100,000 pages: 24 books in current circulation; two book manuscripts ready for publication; 5,000 periodical articles in the journals of the church; more than 200 tracts and pamphlets; approximately 35,000 typewritten pages of manuscript documents and letters; 2,000 handwritten letters and diary materials comprising, when copied, another 15,000 typewritten pages. Compilations made after her death from Ellen White's writings bring the total number of books currently in print to more than 130.[1]

The sheer volume of Ellen White’s writings is important because her writings were considered to be equal to the Bible.  That is not the official position of the Seventh-day Adventist church.  The official position of the church is that Ellen White’s writings are the lesser light which amplifies the greater light of the Bible.  Put another way, the Bible is like the sun, while Ellen White’s writings are like the moon.  Ellen White herself stated as much.  However, this position needs to be seen for what it is, politically correct Protestantism.  The founding principle of Protestantism is sola scriptura which means The Bible alone.  Well, that is how Martin Luther applied the phrase anyway.  So in Protestantism, you are not allowed to have anything equal to the Bible.  Hence the lesser light view of Ellen White.

Seventh-day Adventist rank and file members see right through this farce and treat Ellen White’s writings as equal to the Bible though some pay lip service to the official position.  Logically speaking, they have the right of it.  After all, White said many times that an angel came and told her things and she wrote down what the angel told her.  What is the difference between an angel telling a 19^th century woman something and an angel telling, say the prophet Jeremiah something back in the 6^th century BC?  None.  An angel is an angel, is an angel.  If an angel says to a 19^th century woman:  “Thus says The Lord” that holds as much weight as an angel declaring “Thus says The Lord” to the biblical prophet Isaiah  This is obvious to anyone who is honest with themselves.  Thus a Seventh-day Adventist not only has to study the Bible, the person needs to study thousands of pages written by Ellen White as well.

There are two beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist church and their prophet Ellen White which are important to any discussion about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.  The first is that the literal country of Israel has no place in end time Bible prophecy.  The church believes prophecies about Israel’s glorious state in God’s kingdom were conditional upon Israel’s acceptance of Jesus Christ.  When they rejected Jesus, the condition was not met and hence those prophecies no longer apply literally.  Any application of these prophecies should be made to the true Christian church of God.  For an example of such a prophecy, see Isaiah 2:1-5.

The second important point to note is the Seventh-day Adventist belief that the United States will one day assume the role of the lamb-like beast of Revelation 13.  (See Revelation 13:11-18).  Seventh-day Adventists believe the first beast of Revelation 13 is the Roman Catholic Church.  They believe the lamb-like beast of Revelation 13 refers to Protestantism which will eventually join forces with the Roman Catholic Church and take over the government ushering in a totalitarian religious state which will be strongest in the United States.  In effect, this makes the United States of America part of Babylon the Great, the last great apostate evil power on earth before Christ returns.  Seventh-day Adventists do not believe the United States has reached this point yet, but it believes it will.  I point this out because this doctrine laid the foundation for Koresh’s identification of the United States government as Babylon the Great spoken of in the book of Revelation.

Ellen White died in 1915.  Fourteen years later, another prophet emerged named Victor Houteff (1885 – 1955).  Victor Houteff founded a movement called the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.  The movement was popularly known as The Shepherd’s Rod because of a two volume book he wrote which had this title.  Victor Houteff was rejected by the Seventh-day Adventist church but managed to gain a large following among Seventh-day Adventist members.  In fact, he caused quite a division particularly in the United States.  Victor Houteff taught that literal Israel did have a central part in end time prophecy.  He also taught that a modern day King David would physically rule over God’s kingdom when Christ came to establish God’s kingdom on earth; hence the name Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.  Houteff establish his headquarters in Waco Texas and called the property Mount Carmel.  After his death the original Mount Carmel was sold and today forms part of the expensive part of Waco.  Victor Houteff had to agree with Seventh-day Adventist biblical interpretations as well as the thousands of pages of Ellen White’s writings.  The reason for this need is simple to understand in the context of the belief system in operation.  Both the Bible and Ellen White were given by God so neither could be wrong.  Agreeing with everything was not always easy, particularly with regard to the role of Israel in prophecy.  Thus it was that the complexity of Davidian Seventh-day Adventist theology was much higher than Seventh-day Adventist theology.

Victor Houteff taught that one of the signs of the soon to come apocalypse was a literal supernatural slaughter of Seventh-day Adventists He taught this slaughter was depicted in Ezekiel 9.  Ezekiel 9 is a prophecy about Jerusalem which, despite the fact Houteff taught a literal Israel played the key role in end time prophecy, Houteff applied to the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Houteff died in 1955.  His wife Florence took over the leadership and proclaimed that after 3.5 years, the supernatural slaughter of Seventh-day Adventists depicted in Ezekiel 9 would take place.  In 1959, Davidians gathered together to await the supernatural slaughter and the ushering in of God’s kingdom by means of the second coming of Jesus Christ.  Like the Millerite movement 115 years earlier, nothing happened and the Davidians shattered into fragments scattered here and there.  Many gave up altogether and returned to the main Seventh-day Adventist church with tail between legs.  To their credit, the Seventh-day Adventist church accepted them back into the fold.

One of these fragments was led by a prophet named Benjamin Roden.  (1902 – 1978).   Roden opposed Florence Houteff’s 3.5 year prophecy.  This allowed his movement to survive the catastrophic breakup of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.  Roden expanded on Houteff’s idea of a modern day David.  He incorporated prophecies in the Bible about a righteous branch which would emerge out of the stump of Israel.  See Isaiah 11 for an example of one such prophecy.  There are a number of Branch prophecies in the Bible.  Because of his emphasis on the Branch prophecies, Roden founded the movement known as the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.  This is the very movement which Koresh took over and which became known to the world as Branch Davidians.  During the siege a panicked Seventh-day Adventist church begged anyone in the media and law enforcement who would listen to drop the name Seventh-day Adventists from their coverage and this request was granted.  This is why the world knows the movement simply as Branch Davidians but their actual official name is Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.

For the purposes of this discussion, Roden’s important theological contribution was twofold.  First, his more detailed analysis of the modern day David formed much of Koresh’s early thinking on the subject.  Second, Roden came up with what I call the Israel In Prophecy rule.  We saw earlier that despite the fact Ezekiel 9 is clearly a prophecy about Jerusalem, and Victor Houteff said that literal Israel plays a central role in end time prophecy, Houteff applied Ezekiel 9 to the Seventh-day Adventist church and not to literal Israel.

Roden’s Israel in Prophecy rule, (he did not call it this), solves this problem as well as the general overall problem Davidians had of when to apply Israel in prophecy literally or spiritually.  His rule was this.  Israel and Judah in prophecy prior to the second coming applies to the true Christian church of God.  Israel in prophecy which occurs during or after the second coming applies to the literal land of Israel.  It is Ben Roden’s Israel in Prophecy rule which ultimately led to the siege and fire taking place near Waco Texas instead of in the land of Israel as Koresh originally predicted.

Ben Roden, as he was known, was forced to harmonize his teachings with the Bible, thousands of pages of Ellen White, and hundreds of pages written by Victor Houteff.  His Israel Rule was one way he did this.  Roden saw the election of John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic United States president as a fulfillment of prophecy and the beginning of America’s descent and eventual status as the lamb-like beast of Revelation.  Thus under Ben Roden’s teachings, the United States moved much closer to bad-guy Babylon status.

In 1962, Ben Roden and his followers purchased a piece of land just outside of Waco Texas.  He and some of his followers settled there.  This land was called New Mount Carmel.  It is the site where the siege and fire took place.   Ben Roden believed he was the modern day David.  He even went so far as to have a Crowning in the Wilderness ceremony in which he was officially crowned at the New Mount Carmel.  This happened in 1977.  His subsequent death in 1978 came as a shock to his followers.

The other Davidian prophets took Roden’s death as a sign his whole movement was wrong.  In 1978 Ben’s wife Lois Roden assumed the mantle of prophet when she claimed to have had a message from God.  She did manage to hold many of the Branch Davidians together, but some left and began their own Branch Davidian groups.   These were very small and insignificant.

Lois Roden is most known for her teaching that the Holy spirit represents the female aspect of the holy Trinity.  Her view was actually somewhat popular and she personally knew many celebrities and wealthy people.  This did not translate to much of an actual following which meant Branch Davidian numbers remained extremely small.  Since her husband believed he was the modern David, she naturally believed she was the bride of the Messiah.  She promulgated the teaching that the latter day David would have a latter day wife.  Together, they would usher in the apocalypse and rule God’s kingdom as king and queen on earth.

It was this belief that opened the theological door for Koresh to teach that his wives were prophecy made flesh.  Koresh believed the Holy spirit was fragmented, scattered among all the righteous people of the church and of the world.  As the latter day David, Koresh taught he needed multiple wives because these represented the fragmented state of the Holy spirit.  Just as the church would eventually be united and become the single spiritual bride of Christ (See Ephesians 5), so his wives would eventually become one bride in God’s kingdom.  Before that, however, Koresh would have many wives from all parts of the globe and from all walks of life because that represented the Holy spirit in her present fragmented condition.

People have this impression that when Vernon Howell first attached himself to the Branch Davidians under Lois Roden in 1981, he impressed people with amazing insights which sprang entirely from his own communion with God.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Koresh poured over the thousands of pages of Ellen White, the hundreds of pages of Victor Houteff, not to mention Houteff’s sacred drawings, the writings and teachings of Ben Roden, and the teachings of Lois Roden.  In his early days as prophet, Vernon, his father-in-law Perry Jones, and a number of other people in this group, could quote copious amounts of Ellen White, Victor Houteff, Ben Roden, and Lois Roden.  Many of us were walking encyclopedias of the past prophets.  Vernon and I used to call our debates with Seventh-day Adventists “Ellen White wars”  because scores of quotations were analyzed, discussed, and hotly argued.  Anyone who was serious about this religion spent hours and hours with their head in books.  Vernon Wayne Howell the uneducated might have been a 9^th grade dropout with learning difficulties, but Vernon Howell the prophet, who later became David Koresh was a book worm who studied his tail off and learned a great deal from books.

Like Houteff and Ben Roden before him, Koresh believed in a latter day Messiah which was described in the bible as a latter day King David, who would rule over god’s people.  He also believed other prophecies pictured this same latter day Messiah as a modern day Cyrus.  Cyrus was an ancient Persian king who allowed Jews to return from Babylon to Jerusalem to build the temple.  King Cyrus of Persia also conquered ancient Babylon.  The book of Revelation speaks of a latter day Babylon the Great which is the last evil apostate power on earth prior to the second coming of Christ.  As I pointed out earlier, Koresh also believed that the United States would eventually become a key part of this evil Babylon.  Thus, just as the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BC, so the latter day Cyrus, also spoken of as the latter day David, would conquer the Babylon of the apocalypse.  Koresh’s departure from other Davidian leaders was his view that there were David prophecies and Cyrus prophecies which must both be understood.

In 1986, a follower of Ben Roden moved to Israel and after Ben Roden’s death, never accepted Lois Roden.  This person believed he was the modern day David.  He self-published a series of tracts (pamphlets) on various subjects.  The point to note here is his teaching that the Bible speaks of a modern day David, not a modern day Vernon.  The Bible speaks of this modern day David also being of the line of the original King David (although he applied this connection spiritually and not genetically).  Thus he said the name of the latter day Messiah should be David ben-David.  He therefore changed his name to David ben-David and blasted Vernon in his publications for not seeing this.

Some of Vernon’s followers, including even Perry Jones, Vernon’s father-in-law who had personally known and followed Victor Houteff and both Ben and Lois Roden, were troubled.  Since Perry was troubled, Vernon was also troubled.

We discussed Ben-David’s tracts in our rented San Bernardino California house.  Vernon said David ben-David, who was actually an Australian Branch Davidian, did not account for the Cyrus prophecies and was therefore wrong. Despite wanting to follow Vernon, the David Ben-David tracts troubled Perry Jones and other long time followers of Vernon because as former followers of Ben Roden, they had been taught there would be a modern David.  Even though Ben Roden never changed his name, even when he was crowned king in 1977, should he have?

This is where I opened my big mouth.  Branch Davidians used only the King James Bible.  I opened mine to Isaiah 45:4, a passage that speaks of the Persian King Cyrus, and read aloud:

For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.

As a scholar, I knew full well that the term surname here didn’t actually mean this referred to Cyrus’s last name.[2]  After all, the Persian king was known as King Cyrus, not King Johnny Cyrus or some other name.  The atmosphere in the room at the time was troubled and I wanted to lighten the mood.  So I read this passage and said “See, ben-David can’t be the true last name of the Messiah because it says clearly here the last name should be Cyrus so if anything, the Messiah’s name should be David Cyrus.  And if you really want to get technical, Koresh or something along those lines is how you pronounced Cyrus in Hebrew so maybe we should call the messiah David Koresh.”[3]  Hahahaha.  Only no one laughed.  People grabbed on to this like a drowning man grabs on to a life line.  The mood in the room lightened considerably and Vernon had a good laugh and said “See how easy it is to disprove some of these people.” Somehow I never got around to explaining to people I was kidding.  But even if I had, Branch Davidians mistrusted any other English version of the Bible so I might have had to fight an uphill battle to undo what I had done.  If you are interested, you can read this verse in a modern translation such as the New International Version or the English Standard Version to get an idea of the intent. 

By now you the reader may be bewildered by all of this theology.  Fortunately for the purposes of understanding why things happened as they did, you really need to understand only one central point.  Although David Koresh was the master of a very complex theology, it all boils down to one inescapable fact.  David Koresh needed the apocalypse to happen.  Without that, none of his teachings, or the teachings of any of the past prophets mattered.

What do I mean by the apocalypse?  In a nutshell, the apocalypse occurs when Jesus Christ descends to earth from heaven along with a massive army from heaven.  He violently makes war against, and either subjugates or destroys all the kingdoms of this earth in a massive bloody battle.  He then establishes God’s kingdom on earth and rules the nations with a rod of iron.  You can read all about this in Revelation 19.  There are many details of this apocalypse including many signs prior to the great event which warn everyone.  For example, just before the second coming, the sun goes dark, the moon appears as blood, the stars fall from heaven and there is a massive earthquake so that mountains become valleys and valleys become mountains.  You can read all about this in Revelation 6:12-17. 

Before the apocalypse, the people of God suffer at the hands of Babylon a.k.a. the beast of Revelation and a number of other things happen.  Bottom line?  God has to literally show up and a lot of really amazing things have to literally happen.  Everything else is just window dressing when you get right down to it.

From a theological standpoint then, Waco happened because as time passed, the world continued more or less as it has always continued.  There was no darkening of the sun.  The seas did not boil.  The stars never fell and Jesus certainly never showed up.  And the more time dragged on, the more restless the people became.  When you get right down to it, David Koresh needed the apocalypse so desperately, if God wasn’t going to bring it on himself, he would, and so the buildup began.

Starting in 1986, Vernon and I departed from previous teachings and applied more and more prophecies to the literal country of Israel.  By this time, it was obvious Ellen White had plagiarized much of her material and this revelation rocked the Seventh-day Adventist church to its core in 1982.  So we did not feel the need to harmonize everything with Ellen White any longer, and this meant a lot of the complexity of Davidian and Branch Davidian theology which was largely due to this need, was also no longer necessary.  We began to free-wheel as it were and simply use the Bible and not worry about the rest.  Thus it was Koresh began to teach that God’s people would be in Israel.  All of the persecution of our group, including his eventual capture and death at the hands of the American government would take place in Israel.  God would then appear from the air and hover over Israel and the battle of Armageddon itself would be fought in Israel.  Other than his Messianic role, we largely agreed with the majority of American evangelical Christians in this regard.  Everyone knows the state of Israel has huge Christian right support and it is precisely because of the belief Israel plays the key role in end time events that this support exists.  Take away the Messiahship and the wives and a few other things, and we pretty much lined up with right wing American Christianity.

I left in 1989.  In 1990, David Koresh and Steve Schneider went to Israel to prepare the way.  They went to look at properties and also speak to whomever would listen.  Sadly, Paul Cohen did listen and joined the group.  He died in the fire.  Koresh’s followers were excited because the move to Israel seemed to be just around the corner.  Steve Schneider, who became Koresh’s right hand man, bragged to everyone and anyone of Koresh’s exploits while in Israel, even going so far as to claim Koresh confounded every Rabbi he spoke to with his wisdom.

But a problem arose.  My wife Elizabeth and I went to the Israeli consulate in Melbourne Australia with mounds of evidence.  It is against Israeli law to try to convert people to another non-Jewish religion.  By this time we had signed affidavits from ex members along with other evidence.  I’ll say one thing about the Israelis.  They do not mess around.  When they saw what we had, they acted immediately and Koresh was given his marching orders and told not to bother coming back.  I remember the official talking to me smiling and saying they get about 50 to 100 of these nut cases every year.  She told me sometimes people go to Israel and have some sort of ecstatic experience  and come away from that thinking they are the Chosen One of prophecy.  Or, she said, you get people like this who already think they are the special Chosen One and try to convert people.  “We know how to deal with this,” she told me.

I cannot over state what a massive setback this was for David Koresh.  This was a huge blow to him because all his prophecies about Israel were now null and void.  I used this for all it was worth and a number of people left Koresh because of this.  I can also say a number of people who were just about to join the group pulled out because of this.  Koresh was enraged and really stepped up his campaign against me because of this.  And as people left, the more his secret activities with under aged girls was at risk.

I knew what Koresh would do.  He had no choice if he wanted to maintain power.  He had to revert back to old Davidian and Branch Davidian teachings and apply the prophecies to the Branch Davidians, the “true church of god.” He had to teach that since he was the Messiah, Mount Zion was wherever he was and that the apocalypse would occur wherever he was.  Since he was near Waco Texas, that is exactly where the end time prophecies would occur.

Most of the Branch Davidians swallowed this because he reverted back to old teachings.  There were a number of Seventh-day Adventist converts who had never been Branch Davidians but came in straight under Koresh.  But because the Seventh-day Adventist church has no place for literal Israel in end time prophecy, it was easy for them to revert.  Those who saw Koresh performing this theological 180 degree dance left.  Sadly, most were willing to go along rather than face the possibility that their lives were based on something terribly wrong.  The saddest thing about this period is I know Rachael Howell, Koresh’s legal wife, and her sister Michele Jones whom Koresh took as one of his wives when she was just 12 years old, wanted to leave.  They had had enough.  But they couldn’t because Koresh wouldn’t let them go.  They couldn’t escape as I had.  And as a result, they died in the 1993 fire.

As soon as Koresh was booted out of Israel, I gathered the ex-members who were trying to get people out and said:  “The countdown to Armageddon in Waco Texas begins now.  We have to alert the American authorities now to avoid a blood bath.” This is why I, along with my wife, and a number of other courageous ex followers took a stand, and went to the authorities in a desperate attempt to prevent the Armageddon which was inevitable.  We knew full well God wasn’t going to come down and save his son David Koresh and overthrow all earthly governments.  We knew there was only one thing left for Koresh to do.  He had to initiate whatever apocalypse he could in order to maintain his power.  By now he had taken away their wives.  He had taken away their money.  He took all of this for himself and people were unhappy about it, but willing to put up with this because they believed the apocalypse was just around the corner.  It was, but it was one of Koresh’s own making and the world saw the sad result.  Do you want to know why Waco happened?  This is why.  It is all about the theology.

And it is all about the psychology that went along with the theology and I will now turn to this.

Within the Christian context Branch Davidians operated, a prophet was seen as a person who receives dreams and visions from God.  This definition, in fact, is valid for just about all mainstream Christian denominations.  Pentecostals view prophets in a slightly different manner in that Pentecostal prophets sometimes spontaneously break out into prophesying without having either a divine dream or vision. 

We have all experienced strange dreams and most of us have experienced at least one dream which profoundly affected us.  Consider the dream of American inventor Elias Howe which led to the invention of the first modern sewing machine in 1846.  Howe wanted a sewing machine with a lock stitch capability, but he could not figure out how to design the sewing needle.  He nearly went bankrupt trying to work with conventional needle designs of the time in which the eye of the needle was located at the base of the needle.  Nothing worked.  Then one night he dreamed he was about to be executed by savage warriors.  The warriors had spears with holes at the point of their spears.  When he awoke he realized the eye of his sewing needles should be located near the point instead of at the base.  That same morning, the modern sewing machine came into being.

Because the construction of a refined sewing machine is a purely secular event which has no divine overtones or implications, we can easily see what happened.  Howe’s mind worked, and worked, and worked at the problem of designing a needle which would do what he needed.  When he fell asleep on that fateful night, his subconscious continued to work on the problem and through the mechanism of a dream, revealed the solution to the problem to the inventor.  Most people, and I think just about every psychologist would have no problem with this simple explanation of Howe’s dream.

Dreams often contain vivid sensory experiences and we accept this as a matter of course.  So although we may have a dream which profoundly affects us, we know dreams to be a normal part of life and thanks to modern research, we know a lot more about why we dream than we used to.

A vision, on the other hand, consists of dream-like sensory experiences which occur while an individual is wide awake.  A purely secular example of this phenomenon in action comes in the person of German chemist August Kekulé who, in 1865, discovered the shape of the benzene molecule and laid the foundation for understanding this class of chemical.  Kekulé had two visions:  one in 1855 and one in 1865 which led to his realization.  The 1865 vision seems to have been a daydream so was not perhaps as startling as his 1855 vision of dancing particles which he experienced while on horseback.  A person is technically awake during a daydream and this type of vision is accepted since we all experience daydreams.  Experiencing vivid sensory stimuli while awake, and not daydreaming, can be a shocking experience.

As in the case of Howe, we can understand Kekulé’s experience from a purely psychological perspective.  Like Howe, Kekulé’s mind grappled with the formation and shape of the benzene molecule and the solution was presented to him by means of vivid sensory imagery while awake.  If only I could have experienced something similar while studying integral calculus.  Since there are no divine overtones or implications, we accept both episodes for what they are, a manifestation of the subconscious mind at work, and communicating the solution to a problem through a medium often used by the subconscious mind.

Now imagine a dream or a vision filled with religious images and overtones.  Suddenly everything changes.  No longer are we sure we can understand dreams and visions from a purely rational and psychological viewpoint.  Might not God be involved?  The Bible is full of stories of people who experienced dreams and visions from the Divine.  These individuals are known as prophets.  The Apostle Paul speaks of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14.  These gifts are bestowed upon individuals by the Holy Spirit and are designed to help build and maintain the body of believers who comprise the church of God.  Prophecy is listed as the second greatest gift the Holy Spirit bestows, the first and highest gift being that of an apostle. 

Of course we could explain religious dreams and visions the same way we explain the scientifically motivated ones described above.  We could say that a person is intensely focused on religious themes and the individual’s brain continues this focus in sleep or when the mind is in a state to receive a waking dream, which is what a vision is.

A vision or waking dream can be more problematic than a dream, however, because a vision closely resembles a psychotic episode and indeed, many psychologists maintain a vision is a psychotic episode.  People on certain drugs experience psychotic episodes in which they act irrationally.  They are motivated by things they see and hear no one else can see.  They might, for example, be in a world in which they are chased by writhing snakes.  We don’t see the snakes.  We see such persons screaming in fear and twisting about frantically.  But to the person experiencing the psychosis, they are trying to escape from real, writhing snakes out to kill them.  Psychotic episodes are not limited to drug users.  People suffering from schizophrenia  hear voices no one else can hear, and see things on one else can see.  These are incredibly real to the individual, but are nonexistent to the rest of us.  The movie A Beautiful Mind captures this phenomenon in spectacular fashion.

Within a highly religious context, it is all too easy to reject, or indeed not even to consider purely psychological explanations for dreams and visions.  It is much easier to attribute them to God.  In this paradigm, an individual is especially chosen by God to receive “the gift of prophecy.” Such a person might be walking down the street minding their own business when bang, the Holy Spirit descends on that person and reveals truths to them or an angel might physically stand next to that person and begin to speak, usually only to the person blessed by God. 

This brings up a very interesting aspect to the Christian religion, and to Protestant Christianity in particular.  Protestant Christianity of all flavors teaches that God can and often does speak to everyone according to their need.  After all, Jesus loves everyone and is your personal savior, and my personal savior, and so on.  But when God speaks to an individual, he does so through impressions or through a strong feeling.  If a pastor gets up on a Sunday morning and says something like:  “I prayed to God on Wednesday morning and God impressed upon me the need to speak about the need to love one another,” no one in the congregation thinks that in the least bit strange.  A member of that church might say:  “When I prayed to God I really felt the Holy Spirit telling me I need to take that job in Kentucky and move my family there.” The term “impressed” I employed above is Christian speak for getting a strong feeling or thought in one’s head while praying.  This manner of God speaking is accepted everywhere.  Of course, questions arise from this mode of communication.  How does a person know whether his impression is from the Holy Spirit, or merely the result of his own mind?  No one really knows the answer to that one.

Now suppose that same minister gets up in front of his congregation and says:  “Last Wednesday while I prayed, an angel appeared to me and told me I need to speak on the need for us to love one another.”  That statement is a game changer for our hypothetical minister.  He has just declared himself the recipient of a special message from God, one that goes far beyond the norm.

When David Koresh preached to mainstream Christians, he often stressed that he heard an audible voice, or saw angels.  He did this to make sure people understood his communication with God went far beyond that of a normal church goer. 

Vernon Wayne Howell, born on August 17, 1959, was a troubled child.  He did not know who his true mother was until he was 5 years old.  He had difficulty in school and was forced to attend special classes for slow students.  As a result he was bullied in school and called “retard” by the other students.  He suffered from dyslexia.  He used to tell us how difficult it was for him to learn the alphabet, which brought more ridicule on himself.  His family life was often miserable though his grand mother and aunt did their best to raise this lonely little boy.  Some children bury themselves in books to cope with some circumstances.  Some bury themselves in sports.  Vernon buried himself into the Bible and prayer. 

Finally, when he was in the 6^th grade, he caught a break.  His school had a track day and Vernon was expected to run.  Vernon was a fast runner and as he won races, the other boys gained a new found respect for him.  For once he was OK and somewhat popular with his peers.  This popularity was short-lived, however, because he continued to have difficulty learning and eventually dropped out after the 9^th grade.  So for most of his childhood, Vernon was a loner who withdrew from people and spent many hours in prayer.  He began to receive visions and dreams which gave him special insight no one else had.

When we add to this biography the fact that schizophrenia was present in his family line, a purely psychological profile is fairly easy to establish.  Vernon felt isolated and rejected.  His mind, which was often intensely focused on the Bible, naturally helped him cope with his isolation and loneliness by projecting visions and dreams which made him special in the eyes of God, the only one who truly cared and understood him.  Vernon’s “schizophrenia” meant he heard voices and saw things no one else could see.  Given his background and lack of understanding of this phenomenon, Vernon naturally attributed his schizophrenia based experiences to God, and this eventually led him to the realization he was an especially chosen person.

I stated at the beginning of this article that Koresh and I shared a special bond.  This is because I too experienced visions and dreams.  My first vision occurred when I was playing super heroes by myself in my back yard when I was 10 years old.  I was minding my own business when suddenly, everything went dark as in a deep twilight.  A massive angel appeared before me and showed me portents in the heavens and told me what he showed me held the keys to understanding the book of Revelation.  The vision scared the daylights out of me and I resolved to tell absolutely no one about it.  I should point out I had just read the Bible from cover to cover so my mind was focused on biblical themes.

I am legally blind and because of this, I too experienced bullying in school and I was also forced to attend special classes.  I often spent hours alone thinking or reading and with respect to reading, I was well beyond my school years.  Unlike Vernon, though, I also consistently had a good group of friends and often played with the other boys.  While I too had difficulty learning in school, those difficulties were brought about by my blindness and not because of any mental issues.

Like Vernon, the bullying I experienced changed to respect when I was in the 6^th grade thanks to a school camp in which I was by far the fastest swimmer there, and also because I was an accidental hero in a basketball game.  I too changed schools and was bullied once again, though I did not retreat into the woods to pray as Vernon did.  Instead I was marched to the principal’s office after getting into numerous fights.

My next vision occurred when I was 15 and caused me to leave the Roman Catholic religion and become a Seventh-day Adventist.  Both Vernon and I became Seventh-day Adventists in 1979.  Vernon continued to have visions and dreams while I tried my best to deny mine.  I had a couple more when I was in college studying theology, but when I failed to get a job as a pastor, largely because of my disability, I became disillusioned and returned home to Hawaii where my parents lived and pretty much gave up on religion.

Then in December of 1985 I had an unexpected vision in which, in a nutshell, an angel told me my spiritual eyesight mirrored my physical eyesight.  This was a slap in the face to me.  I had a Bachelor’s degree in theology along with an American Bible Society national award for outstanding achievement in the field of biblical languages.  But when an angel tells you something, you shut up and listen.  The angel then showed me seven people in a van.  The angel then told me I must go to Loma Linda University to pursue my Master’s degree immediately or I would be completely dead spiritually.  I was told the seven people shown to me would help me see.

So I went.  I quit my job, got on a plane, and went to Loma Linda.  I wasn’t going to because I couldn’t afford it.  But two days after this vision, the center for the blind in Hawaii, knowing of my rejection as a pastor, suddenly thought perhaps if I earned a Master’s degree, that might enhance my chances.  They needed a success story so they decided to give me a full scholarship, pay for my books, and pay for a new computer and printer to help me with my assignments.  Half dazed with amazement, I went.

On my second day at Loma Linda University, I was doing some grocery shopping.  I wore a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt.  Perry Jones (Koresh’s father-in-law), and Perry’s daughter Rachael (Koresh’s wife) were shopping there at the same time.  Perry saw me with my Cowboys t-shirt and being from Texas, struck up a conversation with me.  Perry was always out to recruit.  He never succeeded, but he never stopped trying.  What he did not know at first was that I was freaking out instantly at his appearance because both he and Rachael were two people I saw in my vision of the green van and the seven people in it.

We talked about religion.  He was a full-fledged journalist concerned about the growing influence of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the rise of the Moral Majority, a religious movement which gained strength in the 1980’s.  I mentioned earlier the Seventh-day Adventist belief that Protestantism would eventually take over and create a totalitarian religious state so Perry’s story fascinated me.

Perry then asked if I might be interested in further conversations.  I was, but not entirely for the reasons he thought.  The next time I spoke to him he confessed to me he believed his son-in-law was a prophet and he would really like me to meet him.  Let me guess, I said to myself.  When I meet him he’ll show up in a green van and I’ll recognize him.  I agreed to meet him and a couple of days later, Vernon Howell drove up to my place in a green van and of course I recognized him.

This is the honest to God’s truth how I met David Koresh.  I wrote all this down at the time.  When I eventually told Perry and the then Vernon Howell this story, it was their turn to freak out.

This story made it really difficult for me to attribute my visions and dreams to purely psychological causes, though I thought long and hard about this possibility.  I started to have visions and dreams more frequently and thus it was that Koresh and I were able to share our fears, anxieties, experiences, hopes, and perspectives on a level no one else could match.  For the first time, Vernon had someone to talk to and so did I.  As Vernon was four years older than I, he was like a big brother to me and I was like his little brother.

There was always a background element of “this town ain’t big enough for two prophets” and Vernon was very honest about his fears on this point.  He was very honest with me that not only did he believe he was the Chosen One, he wanted to be the Chosen one.  He told me that his life finally had meaning and purpose, and although he wrestled with doubt and misgivings (I personally witnessed the anxiety he went through) he wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Vernon definitely had a chip on his shoulder.  He felt his special status compensated for his lack of education and he enjoyed, as he put it, “having more knowledge in my little finger than y’all have in your whole body.”   Koresh could have amazing insights and he had an incredible memory of the Bible, Ellen White, and other Davidian literature.  But he could be incredibly ignorant and his know-it-all attitude could get the best of him.

Our first real argument came about over something completely stupid.  Koresh got it into his head that we lived in the 19^th, not the 20^th century.  This was in the 1980’s.  No one could persuade him otherwise.  Don and his son David Bunds tried desperately for quite a while to reason with Koresh but to no avail.  David, being only a teenager was told to shut up and not to question the Lord.  It was at this time that Isaiah 45:13 first reared its ugly head to me.  Isaiah 45:13 is a passage about King Cyrus, which Koresh applied to himself as the latter day Cyrus.  The King James version of this passage says:  “I will direct all his ways.”  Koresh took this to mean everything he thought and felt was from God.  This is why despite Don Bunds offering to draw out the centuries on a number line for him, Koresh refused to listen.  He said he had special knowledge and the whole world was wrong on this point.

Don and David appealed to me for help.  So I told Koresh he was wrong, but before he could give me the same treatment, he had given Don and David, I told him if God himself came down from heaven in fire and glory and proclaimed we lived in the 19^th century I would tell him to his face he was wrong and didn’t know what he was talking about.  Koresh was shocked at my blasphemy and I brought up Isaiah 45:13.  I said:  “Did you ever think that God might be directing your ways by giving you good advice from other people?  After all, humility is important.  You can’t assume everything you think is from God.” I then reminded Koresh of a story in the Bible in which King David makes a mistake in judgment and is given good life-saving corrective advice by Joab his general, whom I pointed out was the Old Testament equivalent of Pol Pot.  I said if ancient king David, prophet, psalmist, and a man after God’s own heart, had to take correction from a guy like this, you can listen when we show you are wrong.  Koresh did not like this advice, but he took it and backed down, at least publicly.  My stern words held him in check for a while. 

Koresh often took corrective advice from a few people like Wayne Martin, Steve Schneider and myself.  His wife Rachael gave him a good talking to once in a while as well.  But he did not like to back down.  Sometimes the guys in the group would have competitions of strength or speed, as guys do.  We did not let Koresh win.  He was perhaps our fastest runner, but he never dared challenge me in swimming because he knew what would happen.  One day he did make the mistake of participating in an arm wrestling competition.  Peter Hipsman, who died in the 1993 fire was the man.  He wasted all of us including Koresh.  The Koresh match lasted maybe 10 seconds.  Koresh was very upset and challenged Peter four more times and Peter ruthlessly beat him every time.  Eventually Koresh took his losses with what good grace he could muster, but by then, he was so used to being top dog, he did not like being reminded he was not always the best at everything.

At times, though, his need to know it all did not get the best of him.  He could be very humble and many times easily deferred to Wayne Martin or myself in a number of areas.  He usually knew when people were smarter than he was.  However, Koresh was under immense pressure to be right all the time.  This is because Koresh did not understand the psychological dynamics of his visions, or refused to consider these dynamics.  He came at his visions and dreams from a purely religious context.  When God speaks to you, you simply must be right all the time.  After all, God wouldn’t be God if he was ever wrong.  Unfortunately for Koresh, he fell victim to the universal truth that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The more power he had, the more paranoid he became to keep his power and slowly, like many despots before and after him, he started to crush his potential opposition in order to keep his position at the top.

Those voices in his head kept telling him things which exalted him more and more.  For instance, he would desire a woman and sure enough, as night follows day, he would hear God’s voice saying “I will give thee. . .”  This happened over and over.  More and more women felt it was an honor to be part of “The House of David.” Because I also had visions and dreams I became more and more a threat to him and he could sense I had more and more misgivings.  By the time Vernon changed his name to David Koresh, he had gone back to his original interpretation of Isaiah 45:13 so that every thought and every feeling he had was from God.  No one could correct him any longer.  Only the voices in his head and his visions mattered in addition to his thoughts and feelings.

While I was still a Branch Davidian, and indeed even at the time the two of us had our cult conversation in the mall, I started to disagree with some of my own visions and this caused me great anxiety.  And while I went through my internal struggles I allowed Koresh to get away with things I should never have allowed, and I am still ashamed of myself to this day.  But as Koresh pointed out in that mall, I was in a cult, and I needed to deal with that realization before I could help anyone else.  I had to put the oxygen mask over my head first, before I could put it over anyone else’s head.  I was in trouble and I knew it.

But I had one thing Koresh did not have.  My mother was Japanese, born and raised a Buddhist in Tokyo.  Although she converted to Catholicism when she married my American father, she had actually spent three years formally learning Buddhist meditation.  My mother could see I had an inclination toward the mystical.  I said earlier schizophrenia ran in Koresh’s family.  Well, visions and dreams ran in mine as well.  My great grandmother was known and respected for her gifts in the fishing village of Ishikawa-ken.  My grandmother was also known for her special dreams.  And so my mother made sure I at least understood what meditation was and what it was for.  This led me as a child to practice meditation on and off.  I was fascinated by the concept of meditation, but only experimented with it being the good Catholic boy I was.

I suddenly remembered that children who experience what I had been experiencing were trained at Buddhist temples in order for them to cope with such phenomena.  Why would that be?  I then remembered that prophets in the Bible went to school.  Why would that be?  The Bible specifically teaches in Ezekiel that false prophets see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear.  I suddenly knew this is what was happening to both of us.  Prophet school or mystic school if you will, regardless of religion teaches one fundamental truth.  When you approach God you must empty yourself of everything.  Only in this way, can you have a true vision from God, if you have any at all.  Otherwise, your visions and dreams will reflect what you want or expect.  When I realized this, a number of strange stories in the Bible suddenly became crystal clear.

When I tried to explain this to Koresh to say we both needed to take a step back, he would have none of it.  And really, he couldn’t at that stage because we had given him absolute power and he could not give it up.  So I left and began working against Koresh to restore normal lives to as many people as I could, for I had brought many into the cult.  I felt shame and regret and a sense of responsibility.  I could not undo the past, but I could try to salvage the future.

Now perhaps you, the reader, can understand more clearly why Waco happened.  David Koresh was a prophet who became a Messiah because the voices he heard told him he was.  He couldn’t back down and walk away as I had because he had taken wives, then other men’s wives, along with people’s money.  He could do this because people believed who he said he was, but also because people believed the apocalypse was only a few years, at best, away.  And once the apocalypse took place, all the sacrifices and emotional torment they experienced would be rewarded and they would spend eternity happy and fulfilled.

Only, the apocalypse did not happen.  Day after day went by and more and more of Koresh’s predictions misfired and people began to trickle out of the group.  When you are in a cult like this you can’t help feel a sense of pride.  Yes, the cult leader might be the Chosen One, but the cult member is a Chosen One too.  After all, out of all the billions of people on earth, you, the cult member, are one of the few God has graced with this superior life.

You enthusiastically sacrifice whatever you need to sacrifice to take part in something that really matters.  You also bond with cult members.  They become like family.  I had many good times with Koresh himself and with the members of the cult.  They are like family because they understand and accept you are in a cult.  It’s not like you can go back to your old friends and when they ask you what you’ve been up to, you tell them you’re in a cult.  Most of the time, family doesn’t understand and are hostile to your beliefs.  This draws you closer to the cult members.

But there is a dark side to cult membership too.  As days go by, and you remember the rest of the people out there who sacrifice nothing continue to live and prosper,  you grow resentful.  There those women are dressing in those short skirts and wearing makeup.  They don’t even know I exist.  Don’t they know God’s going to take care of them?  And what about those guys over there drinking at the bar watching Monday Night Football.  I don’t watch it because it’s bad, and also because I’m not allowed to watch.  They’re having fun while I’m following the truth but I’m not having fun.  Don’t they know God is going to get them?

And as time passes, people become abstracted.  They aren’t people anymore with families and children.  They are misguided entities ungrateful to God and ripe for punishment.  You detach yourself emotionally for what it means for other people to get hurt, because you have abstracted them.  They aren’t people with hopes and dreams and beating hearts.  They are concepts.  They are Babylonians.  Don’t believe me?  Here is a direct quote from a recorded Bible study David Koresh gave after I left.  He recorded this, and later regretted doing so, in an attempt to scare those who left the cult to come back in.

Verses 6.  That thy beloved may be delivered, saved with thy right hand and answer me.  God's word says I am perfect.  There are those who say I'm out trying to get other men's wives.  Huh!  What confusion!  I never taught that.  But seeing they're in confusion, that means they're what?

Class:  Babylonians.

Vernon:  And if they're Babylonians that means they must want me to fulfill Isaiah 13!  Man!  How cruel can they be?  They know what Isaiah 13 teaches don't they?  So if they think I'm going to do something that I'm not going to do, and I tell them that they're a liar, and show them in God's word that they're a liar, and they still follow their lie, that means they're Babylonians, and what happens to the Babylonian women, men!

Men: They get raped.

Vernon: Ravished, Isaiah 13 says. Boy, they're just begging' you guys to have their wives aren't they? Aren't they?  They're just begging' for the sons of light to slay them and humble their Babylonian women.  God has a rainbow.  When God says a flood's going to come you'd better build an ark.  When God says a flood ain't going to come and says here's my sign, you'd better look at it.  It's light in many colors.  But it all points to one thing, the God who said let there be light.  You hear me?

This scene was not re-enacted in the miniseries I assure you.  I wish you could hear this recording while reading this article.  It would send chills down your spine.  If you could hear the robotic tone in which the Branch Davidians respond to Koresh question “and what happens to the Babylonian women men!”  When the men respond “they get raped,” there is no emotion there, none whatsoever.  It reminds you of what you did in the third grade when your teacher asked the class what is 3 X 4.  You all responded 12 without any real enthusiasm.  That is exactly what this is like.  Koresh is screaming and the men sound like robots.

The ATF heard this recording and this is why, in that hotel room, they asked me what I thought Koresh would do with his weapons.  Would Koresh and his followers rape the Babylonian women before or after the apocalypse began?  If you think the ATF was mindlessly going after a gun-loving group simply to fulfill some anti-gun government agenda, you would be mistaken.  When those two agents asked me this question, they had the above in mind and there was real fear for the safety of the people of Waco.  They wanted to know specifically when the killing and the raping was going to begin.

So I told the agents I thought he still believed this would still happen after the apocalypse but Koresh had changed his mind so often by now, who knew?  When you consider Koresh needed the apocalypse, I felt then, and believe now, it was only a matter of time before Koresh changed his mind and commanded his men to start the raping ahead of schedule to bring on Armageddon.  And what would these sex-starved men, many of whom sat by while Koresh had sex with their wives and had children by him do if ordered to kill and rape?  How much anger and resentment toward the Babylonians had built up by the end of 1992?  A great deal, that’s how much.

I find it amazing so many people are willing to believe our government makes statements for the public which conceals the truth and the truth is known only by members of the top secret inner circle.  Half the TV shows we watch seem based on this premise.  Yet these same people who believe this believed that all the public statements made by the Branch Davidians reflected their full beliefs.  The Branch Davidians, like many cults, had two sets of theology.  One set was meant for the general public.  The other set reflected their true beliefs.  The FBI enlisted the aid of theologians James Tabor and Phillip Arnold.  These men were given everything the FBI had on Koresh and they made a valiant effort to make sense of it all.  But these reputable scholars were always going to struggle to understand Koresh’s true beliefs because they never had access to the real teachings of the group.

People have said the federal government should have done nothing because the Branch Davidians were peaceful.  People who say this fail to understand the Branch Davidians were a tornado waiting to be unleashed and no one knew exactly when that would happen.  When Koresh had access to the media after the siege he proclaimed himself to be an American citizen with rights which had been violated.  Yet Koresh believed the federal government was Babylon the Great, the evil power spoken of in the book of Revelation.  And as we saw above, Koresh fully intended to kill Babylonian men and rape Babylonian women.  He also believed he was God’s son, the king of kings, answerable to no one.  He was above all laws.  This meant Koresh proclaimed himself king on US soil and this constituted a rebellion against the United States of America in my opinion.  He was a peaceful, harmless, gun-loving patriot American citizen in front of the cameras, but he was a king who was not subject to any rule of law once the cameras were turned off.

What if the FBI had simply waited, and waited, and waited.  Would they have starved them into surrender?  We don’t know because the FBI didn’t wait.  They were concerned with the other nut jobs who were already starting to copy Koresh.  After all, Koresh had the media hanging on his every word.  Maybe these copy cats could do something violent and get the same attention.  Koresh needed to bring on the apocalypse.  He knew that if he surrendered peacefully he would go to prison because, if nothing else, the government had him on statutory rape and child abuse, not to mention immigration fraud.  those charges were going to stick no matter what happened.  More to the point, Koresh did not wish to come out because to do so meant he was giving up on the apocalypse and this would have shattered his power.

The Bible says in Revelation 6:9-11 that the apocalypse will not occur until a fixed number of martyrs have died for Christ.  Koresh believed that number to be 200 million which included everyone since the creation who had died for God.  As day 48, 49, and 50 came and went, there was no apocalypse.  That could only be because the 200 million had not yet been reached.  The scales stood at 199,999,915 or so.  Had there been a day 52, 53, 54. . .78. . .200 the apocalypse would still not have happened and some of his followers would have become disillusioned.  One of the survivors of the fire admitted to authorities people inside were restless and concerned with the lack of an apocalypse.  No apocalypse, not enough martyrs.

I loved Steve Schneider like another brother.  I almost got him out in 1992.  I was that close.  But when I knew I had failed I cried like a baby in my wife’s arms.  I hadn’t cried that hard since I was a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.  I knew Steve was a dead man walking unless by some miracle he saw the light.  I tried everything.  I even called his mother over and she balled her eyes out in front of Steve begging her only son to leave.  Steve hated me for doing that but by then I was willing to do almost anything.

The Branch Davidians were decent people who wanted to do the right thing.  They wanted to follow God.  But they got caught up in something which changed them into people who resented the rest of us for living normal lives, and who, were willing to die and kill for David Koresh.

So two days before day 51, I told the FBI all this and said if they went in, Koresh would die by fire (the only thing which hadn’t killed any Branch Davidian yet as listed in Daniel 11:31-35) so that the 200 million would be reached.  I believe had the FBI waited, Koresh would have ordered an attack in an attempt to break through the perimeter,  knowing they would die trying, and he was willing to take his women and children with him to the paradise he believed lay just out of reach on the other side of death.  Indeed we know now the Branch Davidians did have an attack plan.  They had marked specific locations throughout Waco to attack and they even went so far as to mark a fallback position should a government counter attack push them back.

And at long last, my story ends.  25 years have gone by and we would like to think Waco happened, and won’t happen again.  I can only hope that is the case.  But you know, when I described what happens to the psyche of the cult members (I began to experience this myself but got out in time), I also described Islamic State radicalization.  The radicalized person detaches emotionally from other people.  We are no longer seen as people, but we are seen as infidels.  How dare we enjoy cartoons mocking The Prophet and think we can get away with it?  How dare our women dress how they like, date whomever they like, and think they can get away with it.  Allah will take care of them.  Like the Branch Davidians, Islamic State preaches the Islamic apocalypse.  Their whole battle strategy is designed to fulfill the apocalyptic prophecies of Mohamed.  And just like the Branch Davidians, they expect to be killed by the Beast of Rome united with the Great Satan known as the United States.  Different religion, same underlying radicalization process. 

I wrote this because I want to try to help people understand what happens in a group such as the Branch Davidians.  Perhaps our best and brightest minds can digest this and come up with ways to deal with such mind sets.  There have been other fanatics out there.  The Buddha nearly starved himself to death in search of enlightenment.  Saint Francis of Assisi was a fanatic who gave up all worldly possessions and nearly starved himself to follow God.  These are examples of fanatics who ended up doing a tremendous amount of good.  Jesus tells us in many places in the gospels we have to give up everything to follow him.  Like Saint Francis, the Branch Davidians did just that.  But somehow, things went horribly wrong.  The story of the Branch Davidians is the story of the other side of the fanatic’s coin.  On one side you have those I mentioned above along with a host of other great people.  Then you have Jim Jones, David Koresh and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – the leader of Islamic State.  I hope we learn the lessons of Waco and work to prevent other good people from falling victim to the wrong side of the fanatic’s coin.  But I also hope we allow and even encourage religious devotion.  I remain a Christian despite everything and I now understand and control my visions, which I still have from time to time, without the use of any medication.  Now my visions are of tremendous help to myself and sometimes to others.  Many religious traditions see visions and dreams properly controlled and understood as a very valuable gift, bestowing on those who have them an augmented perception of reality.  Mainstream psychology generally treats such phenomena as only bad.  Though I remain a Christian, I see value in all religions.  Yet there is no question that a religion or any extreme ideology for that matter, can be very dangerous.  Maybe out of all the tragedy that happened 25 years ago, we can salvage some good and steer people away from the theological, psychological, and spiritual pitfalls that lie just beneath the surface, awaiting the unwary and untrained.

End

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[1] See http://www.whiteestate.org/issues/faq-egw.html.

[2] According to the Marion Webster dictionary, one definition of surname, and the one which applies here is:  “an added name derived from occupation or other circumstance.”  Surname is used as a verb in this passage and means that God has given the Persian king an honorific or title.

[3] Ancient Hebrew had no vowels when written.  Vowels were added later.  There is some uncertainty, therefore, with regard to how Cyrus’s name was actually pronounced in Hebrew since his name is written as KRSH.