14 Things To Know About The Branch Davidians Cult Before Watching Waco
A siege recreated
In 1993, the world was glued to their TVs, watching the 51-day siege of a Waco, Texas-based Christian sect called the Branch Davidians by state and federal law enforcement. A new mini-series from the Paramount Network, starring Taylor Kitsch and Michael Shannon, will soon look to reignite that fascination, recounting the stand-off meant to take down Davidian leader David Koresh for the group’s criminal activity, which ranged from the possession of illegal weapons to alleged child abuse and statutory rape.
Waco recreates the siege, following the government missteps and stubborn Branch Davidian belief systems that resulted in 76 deaths. While the show is concerned mostly with the dramatic events occurring both inside and outside the Mount Carmel compound, it doesn’t go into great depth regarding exactly why David Koresh and his followers were so willing to die for their religion.
To help prepare you for Waco’s premiere, here are 14 facts about the Branch Davidians' faith.
14. The Branch Davidians Formed From Another Christian Church
Though their beliefs took a form unfamiliar to most, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians were actually an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a well-established Christian denomination founded in 1863 America. The Adventists still exist today and are similar in many respects to other Protestant Christians, set apart mainly by their focus on the Second Coming of Christ and the preparations followers must make for the End of Days.
13. The Davidians Have Been Around For Longer Than You Think
David Koresh’s Davidians weren’t the first. Their most direct predecessors were the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, or “Shepherd’s Rod,” a reform group that split off from the Seventh-day Adventists in 1929. After its founder and prophet Victor Houteff died, they fractured again and the Branch Davidians were formed by Benjamin Roden. He died in 1978, leaving the community to his wife Lois. After Lois’s death, a power struggle emerged between Benjamin and Lois’s son, George Roden, and Vernon Howell, the man who would later take the name David Koresh.
12. The Branch Davidians Under David Koresh Didn’t Refer To Themselves As Branch Davidians
The terminology gets pretty unclear as it goes along, but even though the media called Koresh’s group “Branch Davidians,” the members themselves usually didn’t. In survivor David Thibodeau’s memoir, Waco: A Survivor’s Story--the basis of the new TV show--he says this: “We have no formal name for our community. If anyone asks, we just say we’re students of the Bible. ‘Branch Davidians’, the name by which we’ve become known to an amazed world, really belongs to the splinter group of Seventh-day Adventists who lived in the Waco area for fifty years or so before David Koresh arrived on the scene and reorganized Mount Carmel.”
11. David Koresh Seized Control Of The Branch Davidians And Changed The Group
David Koresh came to the Branch Davidians' Mount Carmel headquarters in Waco, Texas in 1981. After a tumultuous succession that involved gunfights and attempts to raise corpses from the dead, Koresh assumed control of the community. He changed his name and led Mount Carmel as its prophet from 1990 onwards, altering its goals to match a more apocalyptic vision. Koresh wanted to reform the Davidians and recenter his group on what he saw as Adventism’s true goal: “to prophesy and prepare for the End Time and coming of a Messiah.”
10. They Believed They Were Approaching The End of Days
The Branch Davidians believed they were living in the lead-up to Christ’s return, or the Second Coming. Koresh and his followers did too. As Thibodeau writes, “[Koresh] claimed he’d been given the key to unlocking [the Bible’s] coded story, thereby making the events prophesied in Scripture about the end of human history actually happen.” This obsession with the End of Days would become extremely important during the siege, Koresh teaching his followers “that the first stage in the prophecies of Revelation, the obliteration of the community, would occur in Waco.”
9. The Book Of Revelation’s Seals Were Extremely Important To Them
The Branch Davidians’ focus on the Second Coming made them extremely concerned with the Seven Seals from the Book of Revelation. The Seals can only be opened by the Lamb or the Lion of Judah who was worthy enough to see the secret information within. The opening of the first four Seals brings the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the following three cause worldwide calamity until the Final Judgment begins. David Koresh believed his visions allowed him an understanding of the Seals hidden from all other humans.
Koresh travelled to Israel in 1985. He claimed to have received a vision on Mount Zion where he was given, according to Thibodeau, “a complete key to the Scriptures” and saw that it was “[his] destiny to unlock the Seals and open the way for our community.” He thought that he would “reveal” all of them by 1995, when the world would end.
8. The Group Was Fractured By A Disturbing “Revelation”
Koresh believed he had to approach sex, marriage, and childbirth at Mount Carmel differently if he was to fulfill Biblical prophecy. In the summer of 1989, he had his “New Light” revelation, which required his followers to become celibate--including those who were already married. Thibodeau describes how “only David was given the right to procreate with any of the women, married or single, to generate the inner circle of children who would rule the coming kingdom to be established in Israel.” Koresh told his followers that he had to produce these children in order to create “the twenty-four wise ones or Elders surrounding the divine throne, as described in Revelation 4” who would rule “the earthly kingdom to be set up in Israel in the last days” as predicted in the Bible.
7. David Koresh Was “Divinely Inspired” To Commit Statutory Rape
Following this line of thought, but without any biblical support for the idea, Koresh also believed he was justified in having sex with underage girls from the Mount Carmel community. He took multiple “spiritual wives” during his time at Waco, at least one of whom was in her teens. The age of some of his partners contributed to the charges of child abuse that urged the planned arrest that resulted in the siege.
6. David Koresh Was Viewed As The Lamb of God
Thibodeau’s memoir explains: “David believed he was the incarnation of the sacrificed Lamb spoken of in Revelation--the Lamb that was slain to receive power--who took the mysterious book from God’s hand and proceeded to unlock the Seven Seals described in Revelation, one by one. He made it clear that he was not a resurrected Jesus but an ‘anointed one’, a Hebrew term referring to the biblical ceremony in which oil is poured over the head of a priest or king.”
5. David Koresh Saw Himself As A Messiah, Too
Koresh took his name from the Persian king Cyrus, who conquered Babylon and freed the Jews so they could return to Israel in 539 BCE. The Book of Isaiah referred to Cyrus as a messiah and his name, in Hebrew, was “Koresh.” Thibodeau’s memoir adds: “David was the reincarnation of King Cyrus, the man who would confront ‘Babylon’ in its modern form, which I gathered included the political and military powers that ruled the world.” Perhaps most importantly, “In his own mind, David was no longer simply an American citizen subject to the laws of man but an anointed one owing allegiance to a higher authority.”
4. The Branch Davidians Observed Strict Rituals As Part Of Daily Life
Life at Mount Carmel was hard work. Following Old Testament guidelines, Koresh’s followers took communion at services held twice a day at strict times. They also studied the Bible constantly and worked long hours renovating the compound, which had no running water and was situated in a flat expanse of Texas plains outside of the city of Waco itself.
3. Their Life Was Meant to Be Uncomfortable
The lack of luxury at Mount Carmel was meant to make the Branch Davidians spiritually purer. Referred to as a “withering experience” by the group’s members, the idea was that spartan living, free of any comforts, would lead to a higher spiritual awareness among the community.
2. The Siege Was A Fulfillment of David Koresh’s Prophecy
To fully understand why the Branch Davidians believed they had to weather the siege, it’s important to remember that Koresh and many of his followers believed they were living through Biblical prophecy. They thought the armed forces outside represented the opening of the Fifth Seal from Revelation, which would lead to the Second Coming they awaited. Thibodeau gets at the heart of this understanding by describing how he and the others felt like what happened to them during this time was “out of our hands.”
Rather than simply leave the compound, they waited to see if God would intervene or decide they all should be killed as part of the Fifth Seal’s prophecy. Chillingly, he writes: “Ironically, it was up to the feds to decide our fate, through patient negotiation, or by fencing us in and walking away, or by annihilation. All we could do was wait and stand by our beliefs.”
1. David Koresh Believed Surrendering During The Siege Would Damn Himself And His Followers
Most of the Branch Davidians remained inside throughout the siege, even though conditions continued to deteriorate as supplies dwindled. Aside from practical fears of the danger awaiting them if they surrendered, many of Koresh’s followers thought there was a larger reason to stick by their prophet. Thibodeau recalls how he and his friends believed that “we, like Job, would likely suffer terrible torments on the way to becoming God’s true people.” Maybe more importantly, “For David, a surrender to temporal authority would be a betrayal of his prophetic role: a betrayal that would damn him, and all of us.”
Waco premieres on Paramount Network January 24.
from GameSpot http://ift.tt/2E0Mcif