to God and telling him he’s a drug addict?’
The inhabitants of Jonestown were well prepared in advance for their eventual death. Jones kept on telling them that he expected the settlement to be attacked by a variety of foes, and that if this happened, the only way out might be suicide. He announced that the community must exist together or die together rather than be split up. If death was to be the final solution, this would not be in vain, for it would vividly demonstrate to the world the evil nature of the U.S. Government. In spite of this, there is some doubt about how many people actually committed suicide and how many may have been murdered. Reports by survivors, and examination of the site of injection in the corpses suggest that more were murdered than was originally supposed. The sheer scale of the Jonestown disaster shocked the world; but tragic events of a similar kind have occurred since and more can certainly be expected.
Let us turn from Jonestown to Ranch Apocalypse. Vernon Howell, as Koresh was originally named, was born on August 17, 1959 to a fourteen-year-old girl. When her lover left her two years later, she placed the baby in the care of her mother and sister. In 1964, she married a former merchant seaman and reclaimed Vernon, telling him for the first time that she was his real mother. According to his own account, Vernon Howell did not get on with his stepfather, who frequently thrashed him. He did poorly at school, where he was put into a special class, and teased for being ‘retarded’. He also claimed that a group of older boys had raped him. He was said to have been dyslexic rather than mentally handicapped; but this does not seem to have prevented him from reading the Bible, since his mother stated that he knew the whole of the New Testament by heart by the age of twelve. Later, this slow learner was to boast that he had more knowledge than all the great scholars could learn in a lifetime.
This is certainly an unfortunate background, but others have suffered worse childhoods without becoming psychotic or monsters of cruelty. By the time he dropped out of school at the age of fourteen, Howell had attained success as an athlete and had overcome his early unpopularity. His reaction was to become arrogant and patronizing; attitudes which precluded his keeping many of the odd jobs which he attempted. Howell was always hypersensitive to rejection, as was Jim Jones. At the age of nineteen, a sixteen-year-old girl whom he had got pregnant refused to live with him on the grounds that he was unfit to bring up a child. This shattered his confidence, and he began to suffer from mood swings of pathological intensity, sometimes believing himself to be uniquely evil, sometimes thinking that he was especially favoured by God. After various abortive attempts to find consolation in religion, Howell joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Tyler, Texas, and was baptized in 1979. He became infatuated with the pastor’s daughter, claiming that God had spoken to him in a vision and said that he would give the girl to him. Howell’s behaviour became so outrageous that, in 1981, the pastor and his congregation expelled him.
Howell’s reaction to these rejections is interesting, and follows the pattern of stress or illness succeeded by a new vision which is characteristic of most gurus. His initial periods of depression were succeeded by an ever mounting confidence that he had been specially selected by God; a conviction which may have been reinforced by the drug LSD, which he started to use in his late teens. Following his expulsion from the official Seventh Day Adventist Church, Howell joined a splinter group called the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists. The story of how he became leader of this sect can be read in David Leppard’s book, Fire and Blood, but need not detain us here. In 1988, Koresh managed to establish himself and his followers on a site originally called the New Mount Carmel Center, which occupied some seventy-seven acres ten miles east of Waco, Texas. Within four years, Howell, who had now changed his name to David Koresh, had established a regime closely resembling that instituted by Jim Jones in Guyana. With the aid of his associate, Marc Breault, whose home was in Hawaii, a number of rich businessmen were persuaded to finance the cult. The funds raised were used by Koresh for two main purposes: musical equipment to further his ambition of becoming a rock star, and weapons to protect his cult against enemies. By the time the cult was being investigated by the U.S. authorities, Koresh had spent around $200,000 on weapons.6 His annual income amounted to about $500,000. It was because a delivery man reported that pineapple hand grenades were being delivered to Koresh’s commune that the train of events which culminated in its siege by the FBI and its ultimate destruction by fire was set in motion.
Koresh resembled Jim Jones in being a fluent speaker who could hold his listeners for hours at a time. Jones’s vision was of a communist society in which private property was abolished and racial equality established. Koresh’s vision was apocalyptic. As other apocalyptic prophets have done, Koresh laid hold upon the Book of Revelation and claimed that he alone could interpret it correctly. He especially emphasized his unique insight into the Seven Seals. According to David Leppard, Koresh said: ‘If you don’t know the Seven Seals, you really don’t know Christ … The Seven Seals are the acid test for who knows God and who doesn’t.’7
The Book of Revelation was probably written around 95–96 A.D. In it, Jesus is portrayed as a warrior who leads a host of angels to defeat the Satanic forces ranged against him. Following the final defeat of evil, a Kingdom is established in which selected human beings, rendered immortal, live for ever in perfect peace and harmony. The opening of the book or scroll, which is sealed with seven seals, heralds a series of terrible events which, as in other apocalyptic visions, are bound to precede the final establishment of peace and order. When the first seal is broken, a white horse appears ridden by a rider armed with a bow and given a crown, who goes forth to conquer. The breaking of the second seal heralds a red horse and rider who is given a great sword and the power to make men slaughter each other. Breaking the third seal releases a rider on a black horse who carries a pair of scales and who appears to be the herald of famine. When the fourth seal has been broken, a sickly pale horse appears whose rider is Death. He is given power over a quarter of the earth, with the right to kill by sword, famine, epidemics, or wild beasts. After the fifth seal has been broken, the souls of those who have been slaughtered for the faith complain; but they are reassured, provided with white robes and told to wait until the tally of those destined to be killed for Christ’s sake is complete. The breaking of the sixth seal is followed by a violent earthquake. The sun turns black, the moon red, and the stars fall out of the sky. Following the breaking of the seventh seal by the Lamb of God, silence reigns in Heaven for half-an-hour. Then comes the destruction of a third of mankind, followed by the final defeat of the powers of darkness.
Koresh seems to have convinced his followers that he himself had the power to break the seventh seal, thus precipitating the catastrophes described in The Book of Revelation. He taught that God would return to earth with fire and lightning and establish a new kingdom in Israel, with Koresh on the throne. He persuaded his followers that death was only a prelude to a better life to come, in which they would be among the army of élite immortals who were destined to slaughter all the wicked on earth, beginning with the Christian church.
Koresh’s delusional system, like that of Jim Jones, took time to develop. At first, he alleged himself to be no more than a prophet, armed with special understanding of the Seven Seals. As his power increased, so did his claims for himself. When his defected disciple Marc Breault was asked whether Koresh believed himself to be the Son of God, Breault was emphatic that he did. When asked what control this gave Koresh over his followers, Breault replied: ‘Absolute control. I know it’s hard for you to understand this. But just imagine you believe someone is Jesus Christ. He can tell you anything. If you argue, you go to Hell. He’s the Son of God. Who wants to fight against God?’8 By the time that his Texan prairie retreat was undergoing its terminal siege in April 1993, Koresh was claiming that he was God, and signing his letters Yahweh Koresh.
Ranch Apocalypse, as Koresh now re-named the Mount Carmel property, was a squalid enclosure. There was hardly any heating and no running water or proper plumbing. Members of the cult had to excrete into chamber pots and bury the contents in the ground. Water was supplied from a container brought in by truck. As in Jonestown, cult members soon developed a variety of ailments, including Hepatitis B. Koresh considered that seeking medical help was a threat to his authority, and forbade visits to doctors. He constantly imposed
