End Times

ED: David Koresh joined the Branch Davidians in 1981 and became the group’s leader in 1986. Before joining the Branch Davidians, he’d been a devout Seventh Day Adventist. His real name was Vernon Howell. We called up religious studies scholar Ben Zeller to learn more about the Branch Davidians, their origins, and their beliefs.

BEN ZELLER: The Branch Davidians are an offshoot of an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists. So to get a little historical here, the Adventists are a 19th century, new religion that said that the end of the world is coming soon. And they are focused on the return of Christ, the advent. So the advent is the return of Christ.

And Seventh Day Adventists are also a prophetic group. Their founder, Ellen White, proclaimed herself a prophet who would communicate with God and receive direct revelation. So the Seventh Day Adventists bring that, and the Branch Davidians, as an offshoot of an offshoot, inherit that.

They have that same tendency to expect the end of the world. They’re still a prophetic group. They’re an apocalyptic group. And they’re a group which, in many ways, is setting dates and saying, here, it’s coming now.

BRIAN: And Ben, in an age of Instagram, what does soon mean in religious terms?

BEN ZELLER: Well, I mean, “soon” has been a problem in Christian theology since the first century, right? I mean, Paul wrote about that in his letter. So he thought that Christ was coming back soon.

BRIAN: Right, that’s kind of a check’s in the mail kind of thing.

BEN ZELLER: Yes, well, I mean, some groups set dates. And usually the dates are set a few months or a couple of years off. And they say, we’ve calculated based on– usually the Book of Revelation or the book of Daniel– that the end of the world is coming at this particular time.

Most groups don’t set a particular date. Rather, they say that we expect that the apocalyptic timetable is reaching the end point, based on these signs we see around us, which we can interpret. And that these events happening in the world represent different verses in the Bible, and all that’s left is for these other verses to be fulfilled. And when that happens, the end is coming.

BRIAN: I see. Now you apologized for interjecting a little history. We love history on BackStory. So I want to take you even farther back–

BEN ZELLER: Happy to.

BRIAN: –and place the Branch Davidians and the Adventists in, really, a larger group of Protestants who believe in the Apocalypse.

BEN ZELLER: The most amazing thing about studying apocalyptic millennial thought in America is it pretty much defines America. It has defined American religion since the beginning. You can go all the way back, even pre-contact, but in terms of Christianity, in particular– the Puritans had at their heart a millennial vision for establishing this kingdom of God on Earth, which was supposed to inaugurate Christ’s return.

And that became part of America’s DNA. I mean, if you look at the way in which American religion developed, there’s always a strand of millennialism. It’s more often than not, at least initially, what my colleague Catherine Wessinger would call progressive millennialism, which means that they’re expecting things to get better and better, and then Christ will return. But there’s also plenty of what we would call catastrophic millennialism– groups that believe the end of the world is going to come. There’s going to be fire and brimstone and destruction.

BRIAN: And why? Explain to me in theological terms why this fire and brimstone?

BEN ZELLER: This is at the heart of the Christian message. I mean, the basic idea within Christianity has always been, for 2,000 years, that Christ came to fix us and to fix people and to fix our planet. But the job isn’t fully done. He has to come back to finish it.

BRIAN: Where does the fire and brimstone fit in? That’s where I always kind of get lost.

BEN ZELLER: Well, I mean, so theologically speaking, most of the fire and brimstone stuff comes from the Book of Revelation, which is the last book in the Christian Bible. And it describes these fierce battles. It describes people, massive deaths. It describes earthquakes. It disrupts fires.

It describes Satan rising from a pit. So it’s all right there. Most mainstream Christians, you know, they don’t deny that’s in The Bible. They just don’t focus on it. That’s one book.

BRIAN: Right.

BEN ZELLER: It’s at the very end. Apocalyptically oriented Christians– you know, it’s as if that’s all [INAUDIBLE].

BRIAN: Got it. Now I associate many of these apocalyptic groups with charismatic leaders. And certainly David Koresh seemed to be a charismatic leader. Can you tell us a little bit about David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians?

BEN ZELLER: David Koresh is unusual for an Adventist-oriented charismatic leader, because he doesn’t claim to be a prophet. He claims to be an interpreter. But he is a particularly charismatic interpreter.

He’s the sort of person who would lead these Bible sessions for hours and hours. And people would sit and listen and feel like suddenly the text made sense to them. What members said, an ex-member said, was that Koresh could unveil the truth of God to them in a way no one else had.

BRIAN: Mhm.

BEN ZELLER: Nearly every member who joined already had a pretty intense Christian background. And the Bible was important to them. But they by and large felt as if the Bible didn’t make as much sense as it should.

In some ways, this is very typical for many Christians. Bible study is very common.

BRIAN: Yes.

BEN ZELLER: In most parts of the country, go to any church on a Wednesday evening and you’ll find a Bible study, or a Sunday afternoon. Koresh opened up the text to them in a way which made it make sense.

BRIAN: Interesting.

BEN ZELLER: His interpretation leads him to believe that he himself is a figure foretold in prophesy, and he has a particular role to serve. So he is sort of a prophet in that sense, but he’s not a prophet in the sense of actually talking to God. He’s born Vernon Howell. He changes his name to David Koresh.

And that’s deeply important for his story and for the group. He takes the name David as a reference to King David.

BRIAN: Right.

BEN ZELLER: And he takes the word Koresh as a reference to King Cyrus, who is of Persia. And he is the first person referred to in the Hebrew Bible as a messiah or an anointed one.

BRIAN: One of the things that comes out in the reporting on this at the time itself was his sexually predatory practices– that he felt he was entitled to access to all of the women among his followers. And again, in theological terms, I just don’t understand why that is part of the theology.

BEN ZELLER: So there’s two ways of looking at this. One is to look at it and say, well, the guy was a charlatan, and he was saying whatever he wanted to say so that he could sleep with whoever he wanted to sleep with. And maybe that’s true.

For Koresh, he would say that this actually wasn’t a desire he had. That from Koresh’s perspective, and from the perspective of members of the group, marriage is a distraction. Sex is a distraction from the spiritual life. He took it upon himself so none of the other members of the group would have to do that.

BRIAN: OK. So that makes sense to me.

BEN ZELLER: Yeah. The other part is that he felt that he was destined to have these special children who would be part of the end of the world timetable. That was one of his roles. His role was to father children who would be part of sort of the Christ’s vanguard.

BRIAN: Here’s another tough question for you. Why were the Branch Davidians stockpiling weapons? Did that fit in any way with their theology or was that simply part of a response to the sense that they were beleaguered and harassed by an oppressive state?

BEN ZELLER: Yes and yes. The weapon angle is fascinating. They actually ran– for one of their businesses they sold guns at gun shows. They would buy weapons. They would, in some cases, convert them into other sorts of weapons. They would convert them from semiautomatic to fully automatic. But they were in Texas in the 90s. And firearms were part of culture. They were running a ranch.

BRIAN: They needed automatic weapons to run a ranch?

BEN ZELLER: Well, I mean, does anyone need automatic weapons? They felt as if they had a right to have weapons, as Americans under the Second Amendment. It does, indeed, play into their theology, which says an apocalyptic war is coming between good and evil, between Christ and Satan. So they were warehousing weapons, because it was part of their theology to have lots of weapons because a war was coming. But they also were warehousing weapons because this was part of their livelihood, and they saw it as an acceptable and appropriate thing to do.

BRIAN: That’s very helpful to me. I had not understood the warehousing distinction. Thank you.

BEN ZELLER: Well, I think, if I can go on a tangent on that, the words we use are so powerful, right? Their home is often referred to as a compound, right? They refer to it as a church complex. And think about what it sounds like when you say the government is sending helicopters and tanks to besiege a compound versus the government is sending helicopters and tanks to besiege a church complex.

BRIAN: Right.

BEN ZELLER: So I think the words we use are important. And I mean, this is why I don’t use the word cult. I use the word new religion or alternative religion. It’s OK not to like them. It’s OK to think their theology is bad. It’s OK to think that this is not a group we approve of. But I just don’t like using a word which immediately castigates them.

BRIAN: Do you blame government officials or the press for the use of this kind of terminology?

BEN ZELLER: I do blame the press. I blame government officials. And I blame the anti-cult movement. And I also blame the Davidians. I cast blame on all sides on this.

But I think what the press did is they were telling the truth about a group that was practicing underage sex and polygamy. I mean, it was– if it were me, I would have avoided language like cult. Because this immediately conjures sort of this image that this is a bad group. I would just let the readers decide for themselves.

The government I place a little more blame on, because they should have known better. They were not listing to religious studies and biblical specialists who could have said, hey, we know what this guy believes. He believes that an apocalyptic war is coming, and you just showed up with a tank. You need to de-escalate before you give this guy exactly what he is expecting, which is the end of the world.

BRIAN: That makes sense. So I’m going to pay your consulting fee right now.

BEN ZELLER: Yeah.

BRIAN: And what would you have told them? This is years before the actual siege.

BEN ZELLER: I would have said this is an apocalyptic group. This is a group which is expecting the end of the world. If you were concerned that they are stockpiling weapons, if you are concerned that they are engaged in illegal weapons work, where you’re transforming these semi-automatic to fully automatic weapons, I would suggest you approach this group the way you would approach any group which is sort of on a precipice, a group which could be pushed easily one way or another. Approach them carefully.

The easiest and best solution would have been for them to just execute a warrant and to show up with four to six people and say, listen, we’re just here because there’s charges about these weapons and you didn’t fill out the right paperwork. And we need to do an inspection here. But not to show up making it look like the end of the world was coming.

They’re expecting you to be aligned with Satan if they think you’re coming for their guns. Because if those guns are part of their arsenal for an apocalyptic battle against Satan, the last thing you want to do is take those away. Now in terms of the sexual activities, you don’t send in the ATF. You send in social workers.

BRIAN: Did anybody leave the religious group?

BEN ZELLER: Oh, yes, yes. Several people left over the course of the siege. What’s actually most interesting to me is some of the material written by some of the survivors who stayed inside and survived the fire, all of whom were, of course, charged in federal court for the deaths of the ATF agents. But most of them are still true believers. They really do, they really did at the time, believe that this was the end of the world. And they were on the side of Christ and of good.

BRIAN: Is it fair to call this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

BEN ZELLER: I think it’s fair to call it self-fulfilling. I don’t know about the fire. There’s this big debate about whether the Branch Davidians set the fire, whether the government set the fire intentionally, whether it was an accident.

I can tell you, theologically speaking, there’s no reason to think that they were suicidal. There’s nothing in that theology. So Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate– there’s reasons those groups ended the way they did. There was nothing in Branch Davidian theology to indicate that they would try to kill themselves.

We can say this was a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that this was a group which expected the end of the world. They expected to be martyred, to fight and die on the side of good, on the side of Christ against Satan and evil. And that is what they saw coming, and that is exactly how the government played into their expectations. And that’s how it ended up, from their perspective. So yes, I mean, it’s a tragedy.

BRIAN: Do you teach your students about Waco?

BEN ZELLER: I do. I do. And I can tell you students come down on all sides in terms of– I mean, there’s no way to like someone who was engaged in polygamy with child brides. There’s no way to come out of this and say, David Koresh, what a stunningly wonderful guy. But even if you agree with his theology, you look at it and think, this looks sort of skeevy.

But that being said, and I remember a student paper. And a student wrote, I don’t like these people. But they didn’t deserve to die. And I think that’s really important.

BRIAN: Is that one of the key lessons that you take away?

BEN ZELLER: It is to me, and it’s so blunt, right? And in fact, I have met some ex-Branch Davidians and current believers. We had a current believer who was away from the group when the siege began. He was off at a gun show.

What a nice guy. And he’s been through hell in his life. I don’t like his theology. But if the other Davidians were like him, I’m sure I would have liked them as people.

And there’s plenty of people I like whose theologies I don’t like. And even if I don’t like them, that doesn’t mean we can go in with a tank and attack their house and kill them

BRIAN: Yes. You mentioned earlier that these kinds of apocalyptic appeals tend to flourish at certain moments in American history. What was it about this moment that was so crucial to people joining this particular apocalyptic movement?

BEN ZELLER: The Branch Davidians emerge out of the American Cold War mindset. The siege happens in the ’90s, but this is a group which had been really– the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s is when the group as we know it is sort of forming. So right in that time period is the Cold War.

And Texas was where they were actually assembling some of the nuclear weapons and a lot of the other armaments. Texas was both the place where you could see the weapons coming off the assembly line, and also they were aware that they were in the crosshairs of the Soviet ICBMs. So particularly, Texans felt themselves to be at the center of the end of the world.

BRIAN: Interesting.

BEN ZELLER: So this is part of the culture in the Cold War, this sort of– particularly among conservative, theologically conservative, biblically oriented Christians. Is to look at The Bible, look at the text, look at the world around them and say, I can put two and two together. I see the Soviets. I see China.

I see the state of Israel. I see these wars. I see the oil crisis. I see the recession. I see the rise, eventually, of the Moral Majority and the Christian right.

And I can look at the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel and parts of Isaiah, and I can say, OK, these verses are lining up over here. We are progressing through the book. And we all know what happens at the end– is the end of the world.

BRIAN: And we’re kind of making sense of something that very sober experts labeled MAD, mutually assured destruction.

BEN ZELLER: Absolutely. I mean, in some ways, this is a very– it’s a very sane response to an insane situation. I am having visions of Dr. Strangelove.

BRIAN: Dr. Strangelove. Which I show to my students every year.

BEN ZELLER: In some ways, the brilliance of Dr. Strangelove is it hits the nail on the head. What a bizarre situation humans had made for ourselves. And if you are a deeply believing, Bible believing Christian, for whom you go to the text for the center of your identity and your meaning, it makes sense that that’s how you respond.

BRIAN: Yes.

BEN ZELLER: And I don’t know if that’s any more or less silly than a person who reads The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is paying attention to the Doomsday Clock. I mean, I think that in some ways they’re doing the same thing.

BRIAN: How popular is apocalyptic thinking today, Ben?

BEN ZELLER: Apocalyptic thinking has never gone away. It’s built into, as I said, the DNA of America, but also the theology of Christianity. And just beneath the surface you find, particularly among Christians who live what I would call biblically-centered lives, where they look to The Bible and they read The Bible to interpret the world around them. It is present.

BRIAN: Right.

BEN ZELLER: Now the election of Donald Trump, in some ways, throws a wrench into some of this. Because the basic idea for many sort of apocalyptically-oriented Christians is that it has to get much worse before it gets better. So ironically, by electing someone who’s friendly to apocalyptically-oriented Christians, it actually might slow down the Doomsday Clock.

On the other hand, many sort of theologic conservatives or apocalyptically leaning Protestant Christians are greatly cheering the announcement about moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, because they think that might hasten the timetable for the apocalyptic battle in Israel.

BRIAN: Ben, 60 million copies of the novels in The Left Behind series about the coming of the anti-Christ have been sold to Americans. Does that give us a sense of how many Americans subscribe to this apocalyptic view?

BEN ZELLER: Even if you don’t have 60 million people who are going to go out there and say the end of the world is coming, you have 60 million people who think it’s plausible that the end of the world is coming. And that has very real consequences. For example, do you fight against climate change if you think the world is going to end tomorrow or next month or next year or next decade? Are you overly concerned about a potential nuclear war if you think nuclear war is part of what’s foretold in the Book of Revelation, and maybe that’s the way God wants it to be? Apocalyptic Christians in England were reading Brexit, are reading Brexit as part of their apocalyptic timetable.

BRIAN: Interesting.

BEN ZELLER: Anything can fit into the apocalypse, anything happening in the world around you. And if you have a perspective that the end of the world is coming, when you look around, you’re going to see it. And there’s secular, and there’s sort of liberal, and there’s other sort of variants of apocalypticism too. I have to say, as much as I support environmentalism, I have to admit some of the environmentalist language which is used is pretty apocalyptic, right?

BRIAN: That’s a great point.

BEN ZELLER: I remember, I was doing some research. I was looking at coverage of the ozone hole back in the– I guess– the ’80s, the ’90s. And the language used to describe the ozone hole was talking about worldwide collapse of societies and the economic systems.

BRIAN: Absolutely, and before we started worrying about ozone, there was that wonderful book called The Population Bomb, which you either remember or you read about– which is a great example of apocalyptic thinking on the part of environmentalists.

BEN ZELLER: And if you want to go before that, re-read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

BRIAN: Oh, no. I’ve read it.

BEN ZELLER: The first chapter is an apocalypse.

BRIAN: Absolutely.

BEN ZELLER: First chapter is an apocalypse.

BRIAN: I mean, she very much uses the nuclear metaphor.

BEN ZELLER: Yeah, it’s all there. It’s all there.

BRIAN: Ben, I want to thank you for joining us today on BackStory.

BEN ZELLER: It is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me.

ED: Thank you.

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This episode of BackStory was produced by Brigid McCarthy, Nina Earnest, and Emily Gadek, and Ramona Martinez. Jamal Millner is our technical director. Diana Williams is our digital editor, and Julie Thompson is our researcher. Additional help came from Sequoia Kirylo, [INAUDIBLE], Courtney [? Spania, ?] and Aaron [? Teeling. ?]

Our theme song was written by Nick Thorburn. Other music in this episode came from Ketsa, Podington Bear, and Jazzar. BackStory is produced at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. We’re a proud member of the Panoply Podcast Network. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Provost’s Office at the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the Dorothy Compton Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.