This article examines how the apocalyptic narrative functions in cultural discourse, not only in relation to literary texts but also in the language, discourse, and writings of religious cult leaders. By studying the case of David Koresh, self-proclaimed prophet who produced apocalyptic narrative in his sermons, broadcasts, and writings, this study analyzes the appropriations and uses of the messianic apocalyptic narrative, the taxonomy ofthe rhetoric, sociological issues, the function and purposes of the narrative.

Further, this article examines how cultural texts such as news magazines, newspapers, media reports, magazines, religious pamphlets, politicalpolemics, and newsletters surrounding the tragedy of the cult leader, David Koresh, are apocalyptic, and how he conforms to the category of "mad messiah." As an extreme example of a American Protestant fundamentalist charismatic religious leader, Koresh is an important figure whose beliefs and attitudes can be examined in order to understand the sociological, epistemological, and psychological underpinnings of a major group within the American population. A close examination of Koresh's approach to biblical interpretation can yield insight into prevailing views about how meaning is constructed from a text. In particular, Koresh's approach to biblical eschatology reveals a dialectic between two dominant strands of literal and allegorical interpretation. This allows the reader to study two different aspects or strategies for reading ! and constructing meaning from text.

Further, this study contains an examination of the "mad messiah" as a figure who scripts herself or himself by means of cultural narratives. The messianic figure is a construct, a creation which reveals how notions about identity and reification warp under the pressure of the apocalyptic, millenialist imagination. The mad messiah is a product of the times, and an extension of the collective desires of the masses. This study examines the apocalyptic narratives used in conjunction with a mad messiah: first, the mad messiah's own apocalyptic message; and second, the cultural representation of his message, which takes the form of supposedly impartial and factual journalistic reporting, and highly biased counterarguments to the mad messiah's proclamations.

David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell1 on August 17, 1959, in a Houston hospital.2 His mother, Bonnie Clark, had not married his father, Bobby Howell, and was financially unable to care for her baby. As a result, Vernon was raised by Bonnie Clark's mother and older sister until he was five. Koresh's friend and follower, Marc Breault, speculates that Vernon's childhood emotional trauma began at the point when Bonnie told Vernon that she was his real mother and took him away from her older sister, the woman Vernon had known as his mother.3 Breault also suggests that what compounded the trauma and humiliation was the social stigma that surrounded an unmarried mother who lived in the 1960s in the Bible Belt region of Texas.4 Although Vernon was a lively child who enjoyed fishing, hiking, and tinkering in his stepfather's shop, Vernon was subjected to the taunting and teasing of his schoolmates, who considered him "slow" and "stupid" because of learning disabilities stem! ming from dyslexia. Vernon was ostracized and ridiculed at school, where he struggled to read and write, until he gave up and dropped out after ninth grade.

Despite the fact that Vernon was dyslexic and had difficulties reading and writing, he was not "slow." In fact, many who knew Vernon report that he had memorized the entire New Testament, and by age 15 was able to quote long passages from memory.5 Biographer Clifford Linedecker suggests that Vernon's early interest in religion was a way to combat the cruelty of Vernon's many abusers -- his stepfather, who repeatedly beat Vernon; his classmates, who ridiculed him; and the unnamed person who raped Vernon when he was young.6 According to his mother, after a difficult day with his peers, Vernon would go to the barn and pray for hours. When he returned, he would be calm, actually glowing with contentment.

Koresh's attitudes and beliefs about religion were shaped by the Seventh-Day Adventists, whose doctrines Vernon's mother followed. The Seventh-Day Adventists focus on the apocalypse and millennium in their studies of the Bible. They share significant characteristics with a wide variety of denominations, some of which are "mainstream" (such as the Assemblies of God) and others of which are more "fringe" (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses).7 The Seventh-Day Adventists believe in preparing one's emotional, spiritual, and economic state for end-times. To help them in their goals, these groups looked to biblical texts, prophecy, and visionary leaders who could help them decipher and make meaning from the often cryptic passages found in Revelations, Ezekiel, Malachi, Daniel, and other prophetic texts.

As a consequence of their need for interpretation, these religious groups, including the Seventh-Day Adventists, tend to privilege the role of these visionary leaders, to the point that they accord them the status of prophet, and give them all the power that that position implies. In this context, the role of "prophet" signifies the capacity to articulate interpretations from the biblical texts, and there may be a number of prophets in a community. So, when Mrs. Holub, Vernon's grandmother, reported that Vernon told her "Grandma, I'm a prophet,"8 it was not a remarkable occurrence. In fact, Mrs. Holub approved and responded that everyone should study the Bible.9 In 1980, Vernon's mother, Bonnie (Clark) Haldeman, became interested in the teachings of Lois Roden, a 61-year-old prophetess who was leading a splinter group of the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Branch Davidians. Vernon, along with Bonnie, was inspired by her apocalyptic sermons and visions,10 to the point that he followed, by some accounts, like a "lost puppy."11 Although it may be tempting to say that such religious groups are good examples of the perniciousness of patriarchal hierarchies, the case of the Branch Davidians illustrates that patriarchy is less a gender issue than a power issue. At question is control of the group and absolute authority. This can be held by a woman as well as a man; thus a powerful charismatic leader can be a woman or a man. Patriarchy points to elite control and anti-democratic organizations and systems of communication; therefore, a woman (such as Lois Roden) can exercise the same influence. Even in the case of a woman-led cult, it is appropriate to refer to the system as "patriarchy" if one keeps in mind the basis of the designation, the models of father-figure ("king" or "god") control and concern with genealogies found in the Bible and other places. Although, with a woman at the fore, matriarchy is more literally accurate, "matriarchy" has to! o many connotations of nurturing, democracy, populism, and egalitarianism to be appropriate. Thus, as odd as it seems, for the purposes of this discussion, Lois Roden is an example of a "patriarch." The point is that to indict patriarchy is not to impugn the male gender, but to criticize elitism, autocratic control, and tyranny.

Vernon learned many things while he and his mother were members of Lois Roden's group, not the least of which was a genre of textual interpretation which derived many of its strategies and content from the tradition of Protestant fundamentalism which mixed right-wing American politics and biblical apocalypse. Through Roden, who was on first-name terms with Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell,12 and other politically active apocalyptic religious leaders, Vernon became infected with a particularly volatile ideology that suggests that the coming apocalypse requires one to do more than simply attain a state of spiritual readiness.

Some journalists and scholars have pointed to Koresh's 1983 trip to Jerusalem and the Holy Land as the turning point in his life, the place where he began to believe he was divine. During that trip, Koresh began to suffer the delusion that he was a prophet. Surprisingly, this delusion is not uncommon among tourists, visitors, and pilgrims to the Holy Land. Each year, a number of people become convinced that they themselves are Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, King David, God, or Satan.13 This psychological phenomenon has been studied extensively at the Beersheva Mental Health Center where it has been dubbed the "Jerusalem Syndrome." Eliezer Witztum, professor of psychiatry, explains that the onset is sudden. According to him, it has to do with being psychologically overloaded by the historical and religious significance of the city. This usually triggers a response in people who have had a deeply religious childhood, but who may have rebelled against the faith and fallen away.14 According to Witztum, it is not Jerusalem's religious atmosphere alone that induces psychiatric disturbances in vulnerable individuals. The unique atmosphere couples with deeply submerged beliefs, unresolved anxieties, utopian aspirations, or inner conflicts to cause the syndrome to emerge. In some cases, these may be true mystical experiences, which result in the betterment of humankind. For the most part, they are not. The syndrome is a false mystical experience which simply reinforces the afflicted individual's delusions and grandiosity, whereas a genuine mystical experience should deflate ego-seeking, self-centered behavior and attitudes and replace them with new humility and a desire to serve others. The true mystical experience gives the individual clarity, lucidity, and a new way of thinking. The Jerusalem Syndrome adds another layer of self-delusion and narcissism -- all of which implies that those who suffer from the Jerusalem Syndrome are ego-ridden ! monsters, which is not the case. They are in many cases pathetic, self-destructive and frail -- their inner conflicts have driven them to desperate psychological convolutions in order to avoid fear, pain, uncertainty, and shame.

Those who are suffering from the Jerusalem Syndrome share a few identifying characteristics. Most believe they are chosen and that they cannot rebel against their destiny, except at their peril. They often express dismay at the weight of the burden of being a messiah, yet it is this burden that drives them and gives them their sense of mission. The Jerusalem Syndrome often ushers in a number of behavioral oddities, including self-flagellation, spontaneous preaching, declaring at inappropriate times that one has become a divinity, a sense of isolation and disconnectedness from society at large, and an obsession with codes, signs, and other encrypted messages. The Jerusalem Syndrome has been affecting people for as long as Jerusalem has been a holy city, and the center of the religious imagination. Some sufferers include Peter the Hermit, a leader of the early Crusades, who appealed to the poor and dispossessed by promising them a heaven on earth. Other historical figures! include such baroque figures as flagellant leaders, who saw in their bruised bodies the image of the suffering Christ and were able to persuade thousands of people to beat themselves until their flesh was blue and swollen. The Brethren of the Free Spirit were another historical group, who were a sort of creepy, reckless antecedent to the New Age theology, and they persuaded their followers that because the inner man was perfected already, the outer man could be wildly promiscuous, slothful, even murderous.15 Odd as it may seem, there are more Protestant self-styled messiahs than Catholic. This may have to do with the fact that after the Reformation, it was believed unnecessary to go through an intermediary, such as a priest, in order to communicate with God. This was a major change because it meant an individual could have a direct link with God.

While all of the Holy Land is conducive to the Jerusalem Syndrome, the Holy Sepulchre is the primary location where susceptible travelers' psyches react and they feel prophetic, messianic urges within themselves.16 The wilderness around Jerusalem is the second most frequent breakdown point. In the desert, meditation, physical discomfort, and isolation subliminally suggest Christ's 40 days in the desert and the wanderings of God's chosen people. For Koresh, who considered his wanderings in the Texas "wilderness" evidence that he was God's chosen leader, the desert near Jerusalem provided him with his own "burning bush" experience. He returned to Waco with a mission to establish his own "promised land." In the case of the Jerusalem Syndrome, the malady is usually suffered by a person who is in isolation. Hallucinations can easily accompany dehydration, fatigue, lack of sleep, and a manically elevated mood.

David Koresh recognized his own divinity on a visit to Jerusalem in the summer of 1983, but was not treated at Kfar Shaul, the Jerusalem psychiatric hospital that specializes in treating victims of the syndrome. Unlike most sufferers, who go back home and recover quickly once out of the environment, Koresh maintained his delusion. Of course, many of the victims of the Jerusalem Syndrome did not go back to a job or environment where their messianic calling would be reinforced or validated. A few examples provide a sense of the average traveler's experience. A kindergarten teacher believes for a week that she is pregnant with the new Messiah until she returns to Maine to her husband and job. A pastor from the Midwest travels to the Holy Land with his wife and begins to believe that he is Jesus returned to earth. When he returns home after five days, he is confused, and only his wife knows about the episode. A young computer programmer from New York City temporarily worries that he might be Jesus. All of these, and others, returned home. Their affliction lasted less than a week. Witztum explains that their speedy recovery was aided by new developments in pharmacology and a better understanding of how the brain functions. For the staff at Kfar Shaul, helping individuals recover from the Jerusalem Syndrome is a matter of managing the dopamine levels in their brain. Too much dopamine can cause the mind to be overstimulated. In its overactive state, it projects itself onto external reality. In simple terms, with too much dopamine, the mind blurs the differences one perceives between the self and notions of divinity. The psychiatrists at Kfar Shaul prescribe Haloperidol because it is a dopamine receptor blocker, and it makes it more difficult for the mind to imagine, especially when imagined realities and hallucinations are confused with the real.

David Koresh did not have the benefit of psychiatric treatment at Kfar Shaul. Instead, he returned to Texas, where he tried to convince others of his own belief that he was the messiah. After a lengthy power struggle with Lois Roden's son, George, which included a showdown between Vernon and Roden where Vernon attempted to raise Anna Hughes, dead at age 85, from her grave,17 Vernon wrested control of Mt. Carmel, the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, from Lois Roden. George did not concede his loss of power very graciously, but continued to fight Vernon, even murdering a person he thought Vernon had sent to kill him. Found innocent on grounds of insanity, George Roden is now incarcerated in a mental institution for the criminally insane in Vernon, Texas.

Vernon Howell gained more followers for the Branch Davidians through his apocalyptic teachings and by his ability to attract followers who were interested in combining their interest in heavy metal music with apocalyptic teachings. They were drawn to Koresh's vision of psychological pyrotechnics, which was more stunning and dangerous than the most elaborate concerts of the 1970s and '80s apocalyptic rock groups, like Blue Oyster Cult, MegaDeth, Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Motley Crue. To accompany his image as the rock star guru of guns, apocalypse and rock and roll, Vernon Howell changed his name in 1990 to David Koresh. The word, koresh, Hebrew for Cyrus, can refer to Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, or it can represent the surname of God. It can also mean death.18

As a country founded, in part, on the notion of religious freedom and the right of separatist groups to exist unmolested, America has a long history of religious groups, including those guided by visionary leaders whose sense of identity was shaped by a messianic ideal. The Puritans were perhaps the earliest and most distinguished of these groups. Although their leaders did not suggest that they were prophets, or the messiah, the Puritans' writings followed the form of the jeremiad, a distinctly messianic apocalyptic form. The cornerstone of the Puritans' jeremiad is a belief that the Millennium, Christ's thousand-year earthly reign on earth, would begin in America. Prominent spokespersons of this ideology include Cotton Mather, Samuel Sherwood,19 and Jonathan Edwards, whose "Notes on the Apocalypse" reflect dominant Puritan beliefs.20 In a study of religious prophecy belief in the United States, Paul Boyer points out that many well-respected religious denominations ori! ginated as a group with a charismatic leader, who thought of himself or herself as a deliverer of souls at the end of time.21 For example, the Mormons had very controversial beginnings,22 when Joseph Smith began preaching a doctrine which included polygamy. The Mormons were ridiculed, as were Ann Lee's Shakers, John Humphrey Noyes' Perfectionists, Alexander Dowie's Assemblies of God, Charles Taze Russell's Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Scientists.23 These and many other groups later achieved at least some level of respectability.

On the other hand, there have been many examples of churches whose visionary, self-proclaimed messiah was, in the eyes of the outsider observers, completely insane. These mad messiahs led their followers to tragic or confusing ends, while they met with a personal version of their own apocalyptic prophecies. One example is another cult leader who gave himself the surname Koresh. Born Cyrus Read Teed in the early 1800s, this individual proclaimed himself to be the "seventh messenger of God,"24 adopted Koresh as his new surname, and set up religious communes, first in Illinois and then in Florida. Teed, like the later Koresh, focused on the coming apocalypse, and attempted to gather the 144,000 loyal followers who were to be at the Last Judgment.25 Teed-Koresh's community collapsed when he died in a boating accident, and after four days, failed to resurrect himself.

Another example of an American self-proclaimed messiah is Matthias, born Robert Matthews in 1788 in Cambridge, in Washington County, New York.26 Matthews started his professional life as a journeyman carpenter in Manhattan. Although he was successful at first, he failed when he suffered from a long and protracted illness. From the beginning he exhibited a violent temper (he beat his wife, believing that she was possessed by evil spirits), and he had a propensity to preach (he was dubbed "Jumping Jesus" by shopworkers on Canal Street).27 Matthews' conversion experience occurred after a long ordeal of physical and financial hardship, which prompts authors Johnson and Wilentz to observe that the great revivals of the early nineteenth century came not from the middle class, as was once supposed, but from those who were either ignored or damaged by the shifting American marketplace. Matthews' experience was not unusual, as these things go. He became convinced that he was the! Spirit of Truth -- the male governing spirit -- and that he could take any shape or enter any body, including animals and plants. He wore unusual clothing and sought out followers who would help him construct the utopian community which he was assembling in the home of Benjamin and Ann Folger in Sing Sing, New York. There real men would rule and anything bearing the "smell of woman" would be destroyed. According to Matthias, "woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation -- full of all devilry."28 Once in his utopian community, Matthias carried on in a very un-messiah-like manner. He impregnated Ann Folger and prophesied that her child would be the Holy Son. The baby, a girl, was not. Later, Matthias had a confrontation with another struggling messiah, Elijah the Tishbite. When Elijah the Tishbite turned up dead one day, Matthias was charged with his murder. He was also charged with fraud and exposed for his weird social behavior, "licentiousness and lust," ! murder, sexual depravity. Like the mad messiahs to follow him, Matthias became the center of public controversy, horror, and titillation. Revelations of his exploits and reports from the trial sold innumerable newspapers and fueled the penny press. As Johnson and Wilentz explain, the collapse of the Kingdom of Matthias inaugurated the tradition of demonizing a self-styled messiah in order to entertain the public. The press was less than compassionate in its depiction of Matthias. He was described as a "miserable strolling driveller who was part rogue, part fool, part lunatic, an ignorant and ferocious imposter."29 Analyzing the case of Matthias is interesting because it parallels that of David Koresh, particularly in public reaction and treatment by the press.

Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of a self-styled messiah who brings death and destruction to him/herself and followers is Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church, who perished with more than 900 followers, in a mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. While Jones initially won adherents because of his desire to promote racial equality, he began to exert a negative influence on them when his teachings shifted from a populist approach to a messianic one. Jones began to claim he was the reincarnation of Buddha, Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and Lenin30 and that his mission was to bring his congregation through Doomsday. Telling his followers that he was a physical manifestation of God, Jones said he had raised forty people from the dead.31 He hadn't, and neither was he able to resurrect himself or the 900 who drank poisoned purple Kool-Aid.

At first, the members of the Peoples Temple identified Jim Jones as their protector, guide, and father-figure. But, what began in the 1960s as a faith-healing, interracial, and social service ministry32 took a strange turn in the 1970s when at one point Jones claimed to have raised 43 people from the dead. He declared himself the Messiah and simultaneously Jesus, Moses, and Lenin.33 While these statements make Jones appear delusional if not deranged and his followers even more so for believing him, it is important to recognize that they did not necessarily take his statements literally. Jones was trying to overthrow the notion of an all-powerful Sky-God -- a principle that had led to the enslavement and subjugation of individuals -- and replace it with a utopian vision which would offer a better life for all. In their quest for a better life, Jones' followers gave up the freedom of self-determination when they trusted that his strange tests and rituals were a necessary ! step on the journey. At the same time, they adopted an ideology that admitted Black Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton's concept of "revolutionary suicide" as a last-ditch effort to counter the "hopeless, helpless submission of blacks in America to the forces of racism that had deprived them of human dignity and had driven many to drugs, alcohol, despair, and death. Revolutionary suicide was a radical attempt to maintain human dignity by fighting the forces of oppression even to death."34 This call to violent action echoes some of the early twentieth-century anarchists and radical social activists who seemed to wish for change at any cost. In general, these workers for social progress desired to reveal the corruption of the world in order to propose a utopian alternative. This project does not look at utopian narratives as much as it analyzes when the mad messiah's vision turns from utopian to dystopian, and when he or she begins to preach the end of the world rather than the beginning of a brave new one.

One might say that what happened at Jonestown (or at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, for that matter) was an ideological apocalypse brought on by the mad messiah. The clash of ideologies and the resistance of those who did not wish to be repressed, exploited, or enslaved brought about the demise of their society. The concept of revolutionary suicide can be an extension of ideological apocalypse since the motivating factor is a desire to protest a prevailing value system or ideology.

Although Jim Jones viewed himself as the only sane man in a mad world, after the Guyana tragedy the rest of the world argued that his type is a very dangerous one and that anyone displaying Jones' characteristics should be forced to stop preaching and organizing. The popular view of Jim Jones and others like him is that he is an unbalanced man with a messianic complex whose problems begin and end with his mental instability. They do not take seriously his critique of society, and nor do they acknowledge that his followers may have been acting rationally by choosing what they thought were their best options. Instead, media, cultural, and literary representations of Jim Jones and his utopian experiment tend to classify the leader and his followers as subhuman (defiled and deranged) and his message as self-serving, power-seeking, grandiose, and manipulative.

An echo of Jonestown occurred in 1994 in Switzerland and Canada, when Luc Jouret, a 46-year-old homeopathic physician, perished with 53 of his followers and their children in elaborate murder-suicide rituals that resulted in the fiery annihilation of people and property.35 Jouret's preachings began as a utopian vision and a protest against what he viewed as a degenerate, polluted, ecologically-decimated world. However, as with Jones, when the remedies began to fail, he looked more to destruction than to salvation. Jouret's cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, centered around "self-realization" coupled with a darker message, that the world would end soon in a convergence of environmental disasters. As in the case of other prophets of Armageddon, the predictions were self-fulfilling.

Many of the self-proclaimed messiahs exert a brutal control over their followers and they abuse them physically and emotionally. David Koresh's reported beating of children and members is not unusual among cults who are under the grip of a messianic leader who has become paranoid because of a perceived loss of control. A vivid example is that of cult leader Rock Thriault, dubbed the "savage messiah,"36 who was convicted on charges relating to the brutal amputation of a cult member's right arm, and for the murder of a woman who died after Thriault cut her open and tore out a section of her intestines.37 With such flamboyant mad messiahs, it is not surprising that the media tends to focus more on evidence of their mental instability and downplay the fact that they arise from a tradition of what Paul Boyer characterizes as religious "laissez-faire." The media also overlooks the fact that not all religious isolationists are dangerous. For example, religious contemplatives! separate themselves from the world in order to study religious texts, meditate, and pray. However, they do not engage in the same activities as a Koresh, Matthias, or Luc Jouret.

Prophetic biblical texts comprised the cornerstone of David Koresh's teachings, and the people who followed him to Ranch Apocalypse were primarily interested in Koresh's views on apocalypse and the millennium. Psychologists who have studied Koresh's influence over his followers have tended to categorize him as a psychopath,38 and the psychologists attribute the followers' devotion to Koresh to his ability to charm, manipulate, and exploit them. Koresh's behavior at Ranch Apocalypse has been documented as cruel, with abuse that included food and sleep deprivation, psychological sadism, beatings, and sexual abuse. At the base of this, psychologists say, was Koresh's paranoia and egomania. He needed the adulation of the members, and did whatever he could to extort it from them, although they could not satisfy him.39 Richard Lacayo characterizes the downward spiral that Koresh and followers fell into as a grotesque codependency relationship: "No amount of adulation seemed to satisfy Koresh, whose egomania apparently disguised an emptiness at his center ... As the Davidians stockpiled guns and ammunition, Koresh's theology centered more obsessively upon the coming Apocalypse, binding Koresh and his followers in a vision of shared catastrophe in order to maintain their focus and resist the overtures of the authorities outside the compound ... [Koresh] looked to [his followers] to confirm his belief that he was God's appointed one, destined for a martyr's death. They looked to him to bring their spiritual wanderings to a close."40 Outsiders who covered the story are inclined to typecast Koresh as an evil messiah, which undoubtedly he was. Nevertheless, some remaining Branch Davidian members remain loyal to Koresh, and to their commitment to devoting their lives to the study of apocalyptic texts.

Koresh was one of many religious leaders who focused on biblical apocalyptic texts. Koresh may have been charming and coercive, but it was the followers' own beliefs that manipulated them. They were conditioned by their beliefs to desire answers to questions about the end of time -- the battle at Armageddon, Doomsday, the New Jerusalem, and the millennium. The view from the outside can be deceptive, especially if the individuals do not understand the fact that within certain fundamentalist groups, which include Seventh-Day Adventists and their offshoot, the Branch Davidians, the fervent study of apocalypse is considered prudent and normal. As Peter Steinfels points out, "millions of American Christians are preoccupied with deciphering Revelation, often seeking cues in books and broadcasts so numerous that they comprise an industry of apocalypse."41 Although he went to extremes, and certainly his actions qualify him as emotionally unhealthy, Koresh was not a complete ano maly to the United States.

The "apocalypse industry" is a feature of contemporary American religious fundamentalism, and it focuses on apocalypse as a literal, historical event, whose components are unfolding now. This literalist view has its antecedents in Jewish typological readings, and in the medieval biblical scholar Joachim de Fiore. The apocalypse industry complements its literalist approach to biblical text with a heavy dose of allegory. Allegory suggests that apocalypse is a universal, unavoidable, and profoundly personal experience. The end of the world occurs within every individual's life as a spiritual battle of Armageddon between the forces of good and evil; the destruction of the world represents a destruction of an old condition of being; the New Jerusalem represents a reborn, awakened, metamorphosed state. David Koresh shared basic characteristics with Protestant fundamentalist groups who utilized anagogical readings in order to instill a sense of urgency in the congregation, which often resulted in a strengthened congregation and a heightened sense of community through the collective rituals of rededication, revival, conversion, and baptism.

Allegorical interpretation of biblical text flowered during the times of the early Christian church, when there were worries that literal interpretations of scriptures would be utilized by competing sects, who would seduce away the loyal church members. Jerome was one of the first to suggest that literal interpretations could easily become heretical; he emphasizes that a spiritual interpretation is preferable.42

Protestant fundamentalists have not hesitated to utilize allegorical, or anagogical hermeneutics in their explanations of how biblical prophecy relates to higher, spiritual matters. A review of the critics and an understanding of how widely-accepted their views are in certain circles helps the reader see that David Koresh's are relatively popular ones taken to an extreme.

When David Koresh proclaimed to his followers that "Assyria is coming!"43 and that the prophecies of the book of Revelation were being fulfilled, he was following the literalist method of biblical interpretation which includes the following components: 1) the literal interpretation of words; 2) an interpretation of the context; 3) the historical interpretation, in which the immediate historical setting and influence are carefully considered; 4) a grammatical interpretation; and 5) an interpretation of figurative language.44 This procedure is a standard one for Protestant fundamentalists, whose approach is similar to the jeremiad, discussed earlier in this section. A sampling of Protestant fundamentalist publications which emphasize the coming apocalypse yields the following titles: Lewis Walton's Is the "New World Order" The Fulfillment of Revelation 13?,45 John G. Mitchell's Revelation: The Unveiling of Jesus Christ,46 Charles R. Swindoll's Bible Study Guide: Prophecy,47 Billy Graham's Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,48 Jim McKeever's The Coming Climax of History,49 Dwight K. Nelson's Countdown to the Showdown,50 Donald S. McAlvany's Toward a New World Order: The Countdown to Armageddon,51 Batsell Barrett Baxter's America, It's Not Too Late,52 Theodore H. Epp's The Times of the Gentiles,53 Bill Stewart's Daniel: God's Prophetic Events Concerning Israel,54 and Joe T. Odle's The Coming of the King.55

Perhaps one of the most influential of the literalists is Hal Lindsey, whose The Late Great Planet Earth56 proclaims more than 1.4 million copies were sold within two years of its 1970 printing, to achieve sales of 22 million copies by 1993. The Late Great Planet Earth predicts that the Battle of Armageddon as a nuclear war (inferred from the reference to "fire and brimstone" in Revelation) will take place during the 1980s in a valley near Megiddo, located in Israel.57 Significantly, Koresh and his followers referred to "Megiddo" and made other references to apocalypse which made it clear that they were familiar with the Scofield Reference Bible, Hal Lindsey, or successors, and that the source of their interpretation was current Protestant fundamentalist eschatology.

Koresh's obsession with guns and theology has Protestant fundamentalist antecedents. In Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (1986),58 Grace Halsell examines the "Armageddon theology" of Jerry Falwell, who guides a group of apocalypse-minded tourists through Megiddo, about 20 miles southeast of Haifa, and informs them (as did Hal Lindsey) that Megiddo will be the site of the battle of Armageddon. Significantly, Falwell makes no mention of Lindsey,59 just as Lindsey fails to credit his professors at theological seminary and, primarily, the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) who, according to an expos by Gore Vidal entitled "Armageddon?,"60 contributed most of his ideas about the nature of the fulfillment of prophecy.

Halsell's primary thesis is that fundamentalist Protestantism is not based on the back-to-the-Bible literalist interpretation the proponents claim it is. Instead, figures such as Jerry Falwell, whose Old Time Gospel Hour revolves around apocalyptic scenarios, promote thinly-veiled right-wing agendas. They have found that mixing theology and militarism leads to a highly lucrative religion of the gun. During the Reagan years, enthusiasm for apocalypse and a willingness to arm oneself to the teeth in order to prepare oneself for the final showdown "trickled down" to the public in the way that Reagan's supply-side economics was supposed to. Koresh and Co. prepared themselves for the confrontation between Gog and Magog which is outlined in the book of Revelation. Gog was not one of the antichrist's minions, though, but the federal government, represented, finally by the ATF.

One could attribute the pervasiveness of the Late Great Planet Earth apocalyptic motif to mass hysteria and the canny marketing of Falwell, Robertson, and other televangelists who unconsciously were collaborating with the industrial-military complex, whose vested interest in either nuclear showdown or continued buildup, made them all the more likely to be willing to wave Old Glory on camera for The Oldtime Gospel Hour. However, this does not completely explain why the individual members of the Branch Davidian sect were willing to endure Koresh's abuses in order to remain a part of the group. The complex interdependency relationship between followers and their leader can be reduced to the idea that in order to live in a state of maximum comfort and ego-gratification, people will give up freedom.61 Believing in prophecy gives followers an opportunity to feel secure that even though Doomsday is near, salvation is assured.

David Koresh provides an excellent opportunity to examine the tendency of biographers, journalists, critics, and scholars to appropriate the facts of an event or individual's life in order to make a point, or to construct an artificial argument to arrive at a predetermined conclusion.

In the case of David Koresh and his self-fulfilling apocalyptic prophecies, the responses are as diverse as the individuals who engineered them. Although each is a unique document, the books, articles, editorials, and critical essays which deal with the phenomenon and the tragedy fall into general categories. Some use the event as a case study demonstrating the dangers of a militaristic, invasive government that will not tolerate individual freedoms. Others cater to the dominant ideology's suspicions about the fringe, or the Other, and they point to the Branch Davidians as examples of the dangers of cults. In general, the reaction to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians reveals more about the author than the subject.

The first two published biographies of Koresh are highly critical of him. The first, Inside the Cult,62 chronicles the involvement of former Branch Davidian member, Marc Breault, who joined Koresh in 1986 because he was impressed with Koresh's command of biblical texts, especially the book of Revelation. Breault, who was to become Koresh's second-in-command, later claimed that following Koresh was the "biggest mistake of my life."63 Breault's account is, for the most part, an attempt clear himself of responsibility for Koresh's extremes. In fact, Breault claims he wanted to save the Branch Davidians from Koresh: "Marc devised a brilliant strategy. He would become a prophet himself, and beat Vernon at his own game."64 This is certainly more palatable to potential buyers of this widely-marketed paperback than the idea that Breault may have actually caught the messiah-bug himself, and had become as deranged as Koresh.

While ostensibly this book is a protest against the behavior of Koresh, particularly his sexual preference for barely pubescent girls, the fact that Breault devotes so much space to explicitly recounting Koresh's sexual transgressions, makes this book, in effect, a celebration of sex with minors. Breault could have focused on other topics -- he could have detailed the weapons build-up, or he could have analyzed, as others have, the historical precedents of a Koresh-type figure and tried to explain the cultural milieu that would give rise to such a persona. The fact that he doesn't -- that he spends a great deal of the book mired in Sex at Ranch Apocalypse -- reminds one of the formula: Sex Sells. This biography was written to appeal to a tabloid audience, and it is co-authored by the reporter Martin King, who was assigned the David Koresh story in 1991 by "A Current Affair" Australia, a tabloid television program.

As a part of St. Martin Press's "True Crime Library," a series which includes such titles as Lethal Lolita, the Amy Fisher / Mary Jo Buttafuoco saga, Massacre at Waco, Texas by Clifford L. Linedecker (author of The Man Who Killed Boys and Killer Kids), is suspect for many of the same reasons as Marc Breault and Martin King's Inside the Cult. First, the account is a highly sensationalized work which plays up the sex, guns, and rock 'n' roll. Aspects of life on the Koresh compound are recounted in a deadpan Dragnet style, which encourages the reader to alternately snigger, recoil, and ultimately pronounce judgment on the wayward sect. In a passage which describes the fervent, self-confident oratory of David Koresh, Linedecker recreates a scene at Mt. Carmel:

The next night the Living Prophet might serenade his captive audience with a barrage of revelations from his own dreadful surrealistic visions of the Apocalypse and the millennium. His staccato hellfire-and-brimstone pulpit thumping could run fifteen hours, punctuated every now and then by his own wild shrieks mimicking the suffering of lost, tortured souls.65

The Living Prophet made an audiotape of the line of religious mumbo jumbo he used to explain the New Light ... In the tape, which became known as The Foundation, he explained that only the Lamb's seed could establish the House of David. "There's only one hard-on in this whole universe that really loves you and wants to say good things about you," he advised female listeners to the tape.66

In Linedecker's presentation of the events, Koresh seems absurd, even deranged, which he undoubtedly was. However, Linedecker never points out that Koresh's notion that his is the only "hard-on in this whole universe that really loves you" is simply an extreme version of a cultural and historical reality -- this is what men have traditionally told their wives, even if they phrase it in more socially acceptable terms.

However, if Linedecker were to dilute his "True Crime" account by situating Ranch Apocalypse within cultural and social contexts, he would lose the highly marketable impact of passages such as this one:

Roden proposed that which ever of the two claimants [Koresh and Roden] to the leadership was able to resurrect a former cult member from the dead should be recognized as the Living Prophet....Roden began putting the macabre plan in motion. He had the coffin of Anna Hughes, an eighty-five-year-old cult member who had died twenty years earlier, dug up from the Mount Carmel Cemetery and began working on her resurrection. ... Then the would-be Messiah implored and shouted out invocations and petitions over it for days, calling for divine intercession to restore the old woman's life. He ended at least one prayer by invoking his own name, "George B. Roden."67

Later in the book, the reader discovers that Roden is now confined to a hospital for the criminally insane which is located north of Wichita Falls, Texas. However, this knowledge does not illuminate the narrative, or provide revelatory insight into the origins or functions of the admittedly bizarre beliefs and behavior of Branch Davidian leader-aspirants Roden and Koresh. Instead, it only magnifies a voyeuristic quality which characterizes Massacre at Waco, Texas and other True Crime narratives. By constructing the text so that the reader takes on the role of voyeur, the author of True Crime narratives allows the reader, often a person of very little power or influence in matters of law in her or his life, to assume the position of judge, jury, and executioner. This is a psychologically empowering experience, since it allows the reader to reinforce and affirm her or his own beliefs and values in a case which is a black-and-white confrontation with evil. This is part of th! e allure of the apocalyptic narrative, which is used to represent the Koresh saga. The foretelling of the end of time contains a decisive showdown between good and evil which does not admit any confusion about who is on which side.

Other articles and editorials which tackle David Koresh and the Branch Davidian tragedy do not paint the story in such clear-cut terms. Instead, they point to differences in perception and how individuals utilize different words in order to re-name an event, and to recast the signifier-signified relationship. For example, in an article which describes the Branch Davidian survivors' murder trial, Sam Howe Verhovek68 describes the two groups' use of different words but does not discuss the connotative impact of words upon a juror's impression or opinion of an event:

A semantic battle has raged throughout the trial. What the prosecution called a "cult," the defense called a "religious group." What prosecutors called "a distraction device," defense lawyers called a "flash grenade." The defense referred to the Mount Carmel "home"; prosecutors labeled it a "compound."69 Both groups utilize semantics to downplay the ideological component of their group. First, the prosecutors, who represented government interests, including the ATF, minimize the violence by euphemizing a grenade by calling it a "distraction device." Ironically, by employing such militaristic euphemisms, the prosecutors give themselves the ethos of a military operation, which suggests armed assaults, violent exchanges of high-powered weaponry, and potential violations of human rights. Although eye-witnesses of the February 28, 1993 ATF raid on Mount Carmel (Ranch Apocalypse) reported that the government forces were outgunned, and that the Branch Davidians' cache of weapons exceeded the AFT in both firepower and volume, the prosecutors' use of militaristic terminology reinforces the impression that the ATF unconscionably attacked innocent (and harmless) women and children.

Attorneys for the Branch Davidian survivors accused of murdering the four Federal agents killed in the February 28 raid, used language to reinforce the impression of unprovoked governmental aggression and violation of human rights. The defense heightened the contrast between the militaristically-identified defense and themselves by downplaying the volatile components of their lives -- a theology of martyrdom and Armageddon-style no-holds-barred warfare and a suspect religion of rape, abuse, polygamy, and child brides. Ranch Apocalypse was described in only the most benign terms, including "home," to establish a common ground with the jurors, and to persuade by means of consubstantiality, so that each one of the jurors would begin to imagine herself or himself in a situation where survival required fighting fire with fire. They wished to appeal to the popular (particularly in Texas) belief that it is every individual's inalienable right to use whatever force is necessary to protect home, livestock, any assorted chattels including spouse (or spouses) and children.

Nowhere is this position more evident than in an article which appeared in Soldier of Fortune, a magazine whose editors oppose gun control and support a strong and active military. In "Executions or Mercy Killing?: Feds' Ineptitude at Ranch Apocalypse Cited by Experts,"70 author James L. Pate applauds U. S. Department of Justice consultant and forensic expert Alan Stone, who concluded his investigation of the Waco tragedy by criticizing the FBI's "never-admit-mistakes mindset."71 Pate cites Stone's report, in which Stone suggests that the government used inappropriate and excessive force: "'It is difficult to understand why a person whose primary concern was the safety of the children would agree to the FBI's plan,' Stone wrote, noting Reno 'was ill-advised and made an ill-advised decision.'"72 Pate is one of the most influential of the writers who used Waco as a rallying cry for the growing number of individuals who accuse the federal government of curtailing freedoms, invading privacy, and restricting one's right to bear arms.73

Pate uses the April 19, 1993 tragedy as a point of departure to criticize the way that the news media turned the event into an excuse to reinforce the strangeness or otherness of the Branch Davidians and to paint them as monsters, who beat their children to death after setting Ranch Apocalypse on fire, when in fact, forensic dentist Rodney Crow74 found that the "blunt force trauma" which killed many of the children was due to concrete falling from the walls and ceiling. Another concern of the article is examining how a "military mentality overtook the FBI"75 -- in other words, how individuals imposed their own explanations or narratives on an event. Pate suggests that going into a situation with preconceived notions leads to tragedy. Specifically, the belief that David Koresh was a dangerous, drug-crazed, anti-government terrorist-anarchist caused the Federal agents to err. One could say that they evaluated Ranch Apocalypse through night-vision lenses and all they saw was darkness, danger, and death. Alan Stone notes that "If this had been a military operation, the Waco conclusion would have been a victory. The enemy was destroyed without a single loss of life for the FBI. This situation, however was not a military operation."76 Again, the history of David Koresh and his followers was appropriated in the service of an agenda -- this time, to criticize the development of an inappropriate military mentality, and the unleashing of military force upon civilian citizens the government is theoretically committed to serve and protect.

Other authors have used the Koresh example as a point of departure to analyze other issues, such as analyzing how contemporary figures are explained in terms of antecedents, and how genealogies of influence are constructed. The messianic apocalyptic narrative, for which Koresh constituted a living example, has been appropriated to reinforce notions about how history is perceived at different points in time. Paul Boyer is the most clear-cut example of the desire to locate Koresh within a tradition of self-styled messiahs:77

As I watched the event [the conflagration at Waco] unfold, my first thought was of something that happened more than 450 years ago. Early in 1534 radical German Protestants gripped by apocalyptic zeal gained control of the Westphalian city of Munster and proclaimed the New Jerusalem. Soon the Munster visionaries fell under the leadership of Jan Bockelson ("John of Leyden"), a charismatic, theologically obsessed and monomaniacal tailor who, like David Koresh, anointed himself Messiah, imposed his absolute rule with the aid of a cadre of loyal lieutenants and demanded free sexual access to his female followers. (Women who resisted were executed).78 Boyer's is a conventional notion of history, that there are lines of influence that persist, generation after generation, as certain beliefs persist -- in this case, apocalyptic Protestantism. Boyer suggests that the mad messiah of Munster was a product of his times, and arose when divisive, competing religious groups fragmented the populace to the point that there was a need for firm, decisive leadership.

The apocalyptic expectations of the Munster cultists arose at a moment when the purifying zeal of German Anabaptists was pushing the Reformation in radical anti-establishment and anti-hierarchical directions that Luther and many others found intensely threatening. Bockelson and his followers heaped scorn on the secular and religious establishments of their day.79 Boyer points to a parallel between the times of Bockelson and Koresh:

In a similar way, Koresh was also a creature of his time and place, an archetypal anti-establishment figure of the American present and past. As the 1992 election campaign made clear, disgust with established structures runs deep, along with a large amount of free-floating apprehension. Public intellectuals' rejection of (even disdain for) spiritual analysis has opened the door for free-lance expositors who find meaning in the symbolic language of the apocalyptic Scriptures ... Koresh is as much an archetype of contemporary America as a weird exception.80

In contrast, Leon Wieseltier81 utilizes the case of David Koresh to celebrate plurality in a democratic society, where polyphony and the multivalency of opinions demonstrate democratic thought. As Wieseltier point out, "It is not Koresh that deserves to be defended, but the possibility of Koresh."82 In his view, the mad messiah in apocalyptic narratives is a natural outgrowth of a culture which encourages individualistic expression through religion. In this perspective, the apocalyptic narrative is a personal Bildungsroman which locates itself in the person of Koresh, who enacts, in his dealings with his followers, how a culture begins to know about itself.

In this case, the culture knows itself through ordeals, which occur individually and collectively -- as tests of faith to one's religion, and tests of loyalty to the leader. This is the ordeal of totalitarianism within a context of democracy -- a strange and tense contradiction in terms. In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, M. M. Bakhtin discusses the problem of the Bildungsroman, which is categorized as the image of the individual in the process of becoming.83 The problem, according to Bakhtin, is a spatial-temporal one84 -- how does literature represent an individual's essential becoming by means of signs that show time. This applies to Koresh, who represented in many ways an archetype of an essential American type (or nightmare), the mad messiah. So, the apocalyptic narrative is tailored around the problem of how to represent the progress of becoming a mad messiah, and thus, it is geared to providing a rallying point (either pro or con) for Americans who are in search of a mirror in which to identify themselves.

The spatial-temporal dimension that Bakhtin refers to is slightly modified in the case of the apocalyptic narrative -- instead of utilizing signs to compress time or to give an indication of its passing, in the apocalyptic narrative, the signs allow the reader to find correspondences between the Bildungsroman and the archetypal apocalyptic narrative. So, readers who consider the case of Koresh and the Branch Davidians, saw the signs (the opening of the Seven Seals, the confrontations between good and evil, the final conflagration) that tied Koresh to the archetypal narrative. As the mad messiah promised to deliver the faithful followers from history (from being caught up on the wrong side), the onlookers and other members of the culture became more aware of their own identity -- it emerged as the narrative unfolded. Thus the messianic apocalyptic narrative functions as a cultural Bildungsroman -- it is about the essential becoming of a culture.

The April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco tragedy underscores the power that a narrative can have in unifying a group, changing public opinion, or goading the psychologically fragile into terrible acts. It may be that the person or persons responsible for the bombing were not acting in response to the Waco tragedy, but in the aftermath of the bombing, Waco sympathizers were blamed for the bombing. Some even expressed their approval of it. Further, an entire body of apocalyptic literature came into prominence when attention was focused on militias and their self-styled messiah leaders with their messages, which follow the genre of the apocalyptic jeremiad.

What happened at Waco on April 19, 1993 partially happened because of the nature of apocalyptic narrative and how leaders consciously or unconsciously turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Waco became a rallying cry and an apocalyptic narrative in itself which was used to explain current events and political trends. The cry intensified as time went on. The urgency of the apocalyptic narrative did as well, which is evident in many of the publications which have been underground best-sellers among the right-wing extremists, white supremacists, and militia members. It is not just a call to change beliefs, but a call to action. The August 10, 1995 indictments of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in connection with the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City were the culmination of events which strangely echo the narratives of two of the most popular of these books.85

The Turner Diaries, published in 1978, is a novel by William L. Pierce, a neo-Nazi former physics professor writing under the pseudonym Andrew McDonald. The Turner Diaries details the activities of a group of white supremacist revolutionaries whose supreme commanders are called The Order. Members of The Order drive a truck carrying a homemade bomb made of fertilizer and oil inside the headquarters of the FBI one morning, resulting in mass destruction, death, and chaos. This act is called a "propaganda of the deed" and it is intended to inspire others to strike their own blow. The fact that Timothy McVeigh was a fan of this book is well-documented.86 He sold copies of The Turner Diaries at gun shows87 and gave a copy to Terry Nichols. Of course, The Turner Diaries are not the only books that tell how to wreak mass havoc. The Turner Diaries were at home among other gun show best sellers, which sport titles such as Homemade C-4: A Recipe for Survival; Sniper; Citizen Sol! dier: A Manual of Community Based Defense; Survival Global Slavery; and Living Under the New World Order. All these, and more, were available at the post-Oklahoma City, summer 1995, Texas Gun and Knife Show held in Austin, Texas.88

Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right, is a journalistic account by James Coates who details how The Order, a right-wing group of criminal terrorists staged car robberies, ran a counterfeiting ring, and gunned down a Jewish talk-show host, Alan Berg, in Denver in 1984. In Armed and Dangerous, Coates documents how The Order followed the procedures set out in The Turner Diaries and even made the book required reading for its recruits. A copy of Armed and Dangerous was found on Nichols' coffee table. McVeigh also had a copy -- his was checked out from the Kingman, Arizona library and was so overdue that the return date was no longer on the library computer.89

The Turner Diaries were clearly a blueprint for The Order. Were they the same for the person(s) responsible for the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing? The impact and influence of The Turner Diaries raises a number of thorny issues regarding freedom of speech, responsible publishing, ethics, censorship and the dissemination of inflammatory writings. The Turner Diaries calls into question the persuasive power of the apocalyptic narrative, and the fact that it can inflame people to commit and then rationalize heinous acts. An analysis of The Turner Diaries also calls into question the moral and ethical burdens involved in the teaching of any kind of activism. In his analysis of the "Waco-Obsessed Right" author Alex Heard agrees that it is good to question authority and the government, but then asks the questions, when does it go too far? Because it asks the reader to take violent action so that "ultimate justice" can occur, the apocalyptic narrative brings fiction into real life for the construction of history.

The Waco-obsessed political right, militia members and other extremists are aware of the fact that by priming themselves for battle with the government, they are participants in the making of history. In fact, they see current events from an apocalyptic perspective: the government is the antichrist while the militias are on the side of the good. Richard Mosley's Day 51 heightens the sense of impending Armageddon by describing how the government is planning to enter into armed confrontations with the "cults." James Pate, writer for Soldier of Fortune, suggests that U.S. Special Forces helped the ATF during the raid at Waco and that the government is an evil force whose purpose is to destroy truth. Linda Thompson, co-founder of the Indianapolis-based "patriot" organization, the American Justice Foundation, has produced two videos which argue that the Branch Davidians were exterminated by government forces acting as hit-men in order to eradicate religious freedom and the rights of private gun owners.90 In Waco, The Big Lie, Thompson claims that the Ranch Apocalypse fire was deliberately set by government tanks equipped with flame-throwers, and that the four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who died during the initial February 28, 1993 raid on the Davidians' compound were former bodyguards of President Bill Clinton. The four were killed execution-style by their fellow agents, Thompson says, because they could reveal too much about President Clinton's sordid past. This was not the last time Clinton had a confidante murdered, many of the right believe. White House Aide Vince Foster's suicide was no such thing, they argue, but instead, it was an execution by Clinton's henchmen done because Foster knew too much. In Thompson's sequel, Waco, The Big Lie Continues, the theory that the four ATF agents were murdered is taken even further and the video criticizes the FBI, President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and news media grou! ps.91 Linda Thompson has been quite vocal, and in the fall of 1994, she announced that she was the "acting adjutant general" of the "Unorganized Militia of the United States" and proposed a march on Washington to protest the Brady Bill. She was unable to gather enough support and the march never occurred.92

Although the militia movement is growing and heavily armed, their views are not shared by the majority of Americans. According to an ABC News Nightline Poll published on May 18, 1995,93 militia members tend to attract support among people who are discontented with the government, particularly with gun control. This connection is clear when one realizes that among those who believe the government has gone too far to control guns (about a quarter of the public), one in four of these is a militia supporter.94 Among militia supporters, fifty-four percent believe the government threatens their rights. On the day this poll was taken, twenty-five percent thought violence against the government can be justified. However, among the general public, when this poll was taken, eight out of ten reported that they distrusted militias. Forty-nine percent believed that militias, not the government, threaten their personal freedoms.

Nevertheless, some militia members consider the government the antichrist in an Armageddon to be waged in the near future. Their intensity causes them to demonize the government to the point that they stretch credibility. One of the most vocal of them, Mark Koernke, known for a time only as "Mark from Michigan," has sold copies of his videotape, America In Peril, which puts names, numbers, and places into the apocalyptic narrative.95 Armageddon in America is just around the corner. America In Peril was released at the same time that federal officers were beginning the Waco siege, and it seemed apocalyptic in the literal sense. It unveiled all the secret machinations of the government, and revealed that the new world order has actually taken over the government. All federal agencies are part of a larger conspiracy, argues Koernke, and there are 300,000 foreign troops training in America, including a contingent of Gurkhas from Nepal who are stationed in Montana.96 Unmarked black helicopters monitor citizens, and new detention camps are being readied for all protesters. What Koernke is saying is not new. In fact, his beliefs have been floating around for years, according to Rick Strawcutter, a right-wing Michigan cleric.97 However, the timing of the video, coupled with Koernke's experience in the Army Reserve as a low-level intelligence officer, made Koernke's views seem credible. Koernke's views are shared, more or less, by other militia groups across the nation. The apocalyptic element of the narrative unites them all. For example, Tom McKeone, member of the 125-member Pennsylvania Bucktail Militia, expresses the militia's view that the "Multi-jurisdictional Task Force" (MJTF) will storm private citizens' homes and take away guns.98 The government agencies operate outside the law and they harass private citizens. The Militia of Montana (MOM) has become a leading arm of the nationwide movement. Their newsletter, Taking Aim, predicts ! an inevitable and very bloody final confrontation between the U.S. government's puppetmasters (the New World Order) and home-grown guerrilla forces (the militias) who finally fight back. According to John Trochmann, spokesperson for the MOM, "When the troops come in, they'll come in such force it will be incredible! In forty-eight hours, they can have one hundred million troops here. They'll come out of the ground! They'll come from air drops! They'll come from everywhere!"99 And when the invasion happens, the militia will be ready, Trochmann asserts.

Because the end is so predictable (Doomsday and mass destruction), to participate is, at least in part, a self-conscious, self-aware act. The self-styled messiah fully intends to become a martyr. He or she also expects to be remembered, and thus have a life after death presence in the memory of the people. This is an odd intoxicant -- one can see one's own life come together with a meta-narrative which puts a deterministic lock-step into the individual's life. No wonder Timothy McVeigh had nothing to say after he was arrested.

The deep-seated mutual suspicion between critics and supporters of the federal government probably won't go away any time soon, and an apocalyptic, Doomsday, sense of a catastrophic ending pervades both sides. Those who support a strong government see militias as potential terrorists and they envision anarchy if militias prevail. Anti-government groups fear the end of the United States and all civil liberties. Both groups' sense of an ending is likely to activate the self-fulfilling side of the apocalyptic narrative. Another aspect of the apocalyptic narrative which is in full force post-Waco and post-Oklahoma City is the demonizing of self-styled messiahs. First David Koresh was portrayed as a monster, which made it much easier to place him on the side of evil. Ironically, while he said he was battling the antichrist's minions who appeared as the government, the U.S. media was busy making Koresh into an Antichrist. Similar spin-doctoring has happened with anti-government spokespeople in the post-Oklahoma City times. The leaders of the militias have been simultaneously demonized and lampooned. Irrespective of guilt or innocence, Timothy McVeigh became a stand-in for the antichrist. In a brief by District Judge C. J. Matsch, which was covered in The United States Law Week, this point was reinforced. Attorneys for McVeigh used the argument that narratives influence perception when they requested a change of venue for McVeigh's trial:

The intensity of the humanization of the victims in the public mind is in sharp contrast with the prevalent portrayals of the defendants. They have been demonized. The videotape footage and fixed photographs of McVeigh immediately after his arrest have been used regularly in almost all of the television news reports of developments in this case. All of the Oklahoma television markets have been saturated with stories suggesting the defendants are associated with "right wing militia groups." File film shows people in combat fatigues firing military style firearms to illustrate the suggested association.100 By demonizing McVeigh and associating him (or proclaiming him spokesperson) of militias, the stories shown in the Oklahoma television markets use the apocalyptic narrative for their own ends. By demonizing those who have a Doomsday message one unconsciously adopts the same discursive style, and begins thinking and expressing ideas in the same terms, in the same narrative genre, and with the same outcome. One polarizes the two sides and makes it more difficult to find a middle path to follow. Perhaps some of the militias' critiques of the government are well-founded. But, by demonizing the spokespeople, the media has made it difficult to listen to them. The media also portrays the self-styled messiahs as out of touch with reality and irrationally stubborn. This query by The Dallas Morning News is characteristic: "How does law enforcement deal with a self-proclaimed messiah who convinces followers that a bloody battle with the government is the only path to salvation?"101

By the same token, the militias' all-or-nothing extremism has made it difficult for those sympathetic to a secure and strong central government to take any of their claims seriously.

1 In 1990, Vernon Howell legally changed his name to David Koresh. To avoid confusion, he is referred to as David Koresh, except in the parts of this study which describe the times before he changed his name, where he is referred to as Vernon Howell.

2 Marc Breault and Martin King, Inside the Cult: A Member's Chilling, Exclusive Account of Madness and Depravity in David Koresh's Compound (New York: Signet, 1993, 27.

3 Breault 27.

4 Breault 27.

5 Clifford L. Linedecker, Massacre at Waco, Texas (New York: St. Martin's, 1993) 81.

6 Linedecker 81.

7 Paul Boyer, "A Brief History of the End of Time," The New Republic 17 May 1993: 26.

8 Michael deCourcy Hinds, "Texas Cult Membership: Many Lives, Shared Fate," New York Times 19 April 1993, late ed.: 43.

9 Hinds A18.

10 Ivan Solotaroff, "The Last Revelation from Waco," Esquire July 1993: 54.

11 Solotaroff 54.

12 Breault 37.

13 Rebecca Lee, "The Jerusalem Syndrome," The Atlantic Monthly May-June, 1995, online, America Online, 14 Aug 1995.

14 Lee 14 Aug 1995.

15 Lee 14 Aug 1995.

16 Lee 14 Aug 1995.

17 Breault 96.

18 Linedecker 95.

19 Leon Wieseltier, "The True Fire: In Defense of Spiritual Strangeness," The New Republic 17 May 1993: 27.

20 Boyer, "A Brief History" 32.

21 See Charles Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993) 10.

22 Boyer, "A Brief History" 33.

23 Boyer, "A Brief History" 33.

24 Linedecker 95.

25 Linedecker 96.

26 Robert V. Remini, "A Prophet Without Honor: Review of The Kingdom of Matthias by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz," The Atlantic Monthly (Jan 1995), online, America Online, 8 Aug 1995, para. 2.

27 Remini, para. 3.

28 Remini, para. 3.

30 Michael Scott Cain, "The Charismatic Leader," The Humanist Nov./Dec. 1988: 21.

31 Cain 22.

32 David Chidester, Salvation and Suicide: An Interpretation of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 1988, 5.

33 Chidester 62.

34 Chidester 129.

35 Richard Lacayo, "Cults: In the Reign of Fire," Time 14 October 1994: 28.

36 Paul Kaihla and Ross Laver, Savage Messiah: The Shocking Story of Cult Leader Rock Thriault and the Women Who Loved Him (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1993).

37 Paul Kaihla and Ross Laver, "Under the Spell of a Madman: excerpt from Savage Messiah: The Shocking Story of Cult Leader Rock Thriault and the Women Who Loved Him," MacLean's 27 September 1993: 64.

38 Richard Lacayo, "In the Grip of a Psychopath," Time 3 May 1993: 34.

39 Lacayo, "In the Grip of a Psychopath" 35.

40 Lacayo, "In the Grip of a Psychopath" 35.

41 Peter Steinfels, "Revelation: Script for Cult Apocalypse," New York Times 25 April, 1993, late edition: A8.

42 J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1958) 17.

43 Solotaroff 55.

44 Pentecost 34-44.

45 Lewis R. Walton, Is the "New World Order" The Fulfillment of Revelation 13? (Scottsdale, AZ: Arizona Video Ministries, 1993).

46 John G. Mitchell, Revelation: The Unveiling of Jesus Christ (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1976).

47 Charles R. Swindoll, Bible Study Guide: Prophecy (Fullerton, CA: Insight for Living, 1972).

48 Billy Graham, Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Minneapolis: Grason, 1983).

49 Jim McKeever, The Coming Climax of History (Medford, OR: Omega Publications, 1982).

50 Dwight K. Nelson, Countdown to the Showdown (Fallbrook CA: Hart Research Center, 1972).

51 Donald S. McAlvany, Toward a New World Order: The Countdown to Armageddon, 2nd ed. foreword, Tim LaHaye. (Phoenix: Western Pacific Publishing, 1992).

52 Batsell Barrett Baxter, America, It's Not Too Late (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1974).

53 Theodore H. Epp, The Times of the Gentiles (Lincoln, NB: Back to the Bible, 1968).

54 Bill Stewart, Daniel: God's Prophetic Events Concerning Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966).

55 Joe T. Odle, The Coming of the King: Events Surrounding the Coronation of the King of Kings, Foreword R. G. Lee. (Nashville, TN: Broadman P, 1974).

56 Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth. with C. C. Carlson. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1970).

57 Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth 164.

58 Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986) 21.

59 Halsell 21.

60 Gore Vidal, "Armageddon?" Armageddon?: Essays 1983-1987 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1987) 101-14.

61 Max Dublin, Futurehype: The Tyranny of Prophecy (New York: Dutton, 1991) 68.

62 Marc Breault and Martin King, Inside the Cult: A Member's Chilling, Exclusive Account of Madness and Depravity in David Koresh's Compound (New York: Signet, 1993).

63 Breault 51.

64 Breault 208.

65 Linedecker 89.

66 Linedecker 123-24.

67 Linedecker 70-71.

68 Sam Howe Verhovek, "Hardly Mentioned at Cultists' Trial: Their Leader," New York Times 25 Feb 1994, A38.

69 Verhovek A17.

70 James L. Pate, "Executions or Mercy Killings?: Feds' Ineptitude at Ranch Apocalypse Cited By Experts," Soldier of Fortune (March 1994): 62-65.

71 Pate 62.

72 Pate 62.

73 Alex Heard, "Inside the World of the Waco-Obsessed Right. The Road to Oklahoma City" The New Republic 1 May 1995, online, America Online, 9 Aug 1995, para. 8.

74 Pate 64.

75 Pate 65.

76 Pate 65.

77 Boyer, "A Brief History" 30-33.

78 Boyer, "A Brief History" 30.

79 Boyer, "A Brief History" 30.

80 Boyer, "A Brief History" 30.

81 Leon Wieseltier 25-27.

82 Wieseltier 26.

83 M. M. Bakhtin, "The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel)," Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee, ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: U of Texas P, 1986) 19.

84 Bakhtin 25.

85 Chicago Tribune, "Bomb Plot May Have Been By the Book(s)" 22 August 1995, online, America Online, 23 Aug 1995, para. 1.

86 Chicago Tribune para. 4.

87 Charles M. Sennott, "Mainstream, Fringe Pack the Gun Shows" Boston Globe 16 August 1995, online, America Online, 25 Aug 1995, para. 2.

88 Sennott para. 3.

89 Sennott para. 4.

90 Alex Heard para. 4.

91 Heard para. 7.

92 Heard para. 9.

93 ABC News Service, "ABC News Nightline Poll," 18 May 1995, online, America Online, 25 Aug 1995, para. 4.

94 ABC News Service para. 2.

95 Michael Sokolove, "Paranoid Politics: The Blurry Line Between Extremism and Madness," Philadelphia Inquirer 20 August 1995, online, America Online, 27 Aug 1995, para. 3.

96 David Van Biema, "Mark Koernke and the Michigan Militia," Time 18 June 1995, online, America Online, 23 Aug 1995, para. 1.

97 David Van Biema para. 6.

98 Daniel Rubin, Virginia W. Wiegand, and Glen Justice, "Militia Movement Sprouts Across Nation," Philadelphia Inquirer 1 May 1995, online, America Online, 28 Aug 1995, para. 2.

99 Michael Kelly, "The Road to Paranoia" The New Yorker 19 June 1995: 74.

100 C. J. Matsch, "Venue," The United States Law Week 64 (5 March 1996) 2533.

101 Lee Hancock and David Jackson, "Waco Hearings Look Different From All Sides" Dallas Morning News 1 August 1995, online, San Jose Mercury News Center, 21 Aug 1995, para. 3.