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04/20/93
Cult's actions no surprise to religious experts
By Daniel Cattau / The Dallas Morning News
In the end, the apparently suicidal fire that killed most of the Branch Davidian sect came as no surprise to religious scholars who had been following the standoff with federal agents.
"What a tragedy. What a tragedy,' said Dr. Lonnie D. Kliever, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University.
"The reaction of the people inside the compound was predictable from the first attack on them,' he said, referring to the Feb. 28 raid on the cult compound in which four federal agents were killed.
And the way the end came-by fire-carries a strong symbolic meaning throughout the Bible:
God destroyed the enemies of ancient Israel by fire. And God was manifested by appearing before Moses as a burning bush on Mount Sinai.
"The idea that God in his transcendence is so holy . . . that he shows himself in the phenomena of nature, particularly fire,' said Dr. Eugene H. Merrill, professor of Old Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary.
But he warned against using any biblical justification-or even parallels-for cult leader David Koresh's actions.
"We're looking at a twisted mind,' he said, adding that "we have to wait to see who set the fire.'
Federal authorities said Monday that they were certain that the Branch Davidians set the blaze and that most willingly stayed inside. They said they believe Mr. Koresh ordered the action, although it isn't clear who actually carried out the mandate.
Mr. Koresh's theological rantings for nearly seven weeks received such widespread publicity that they could not be ignored. At various times, he claimed to be Christ, the Lamb of God or various figures in Jewish history.
There are numerous references to fire in the Bible, and he relied heavily on apocalyptic sections.
These books predict that the end of the world will come in a consuming fire that will destroy the wicked and save the virtuous- who, in some prophetic literature, will join Christ for a 1,000-year rule on earth.
Fiery imagery abounds in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel in the Hebrew Bible, and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.
Take Revelation 8:1-5. In these verses, the Lamb of God opens the seventh seal as an angel stands at the altar in heaven holding a golden censer, burning incense for all the saints in heaven.
"Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it onto the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.'
The mass suicide brings to mind not just biblical imagery but also the Jonestown tragedy 15 years ago, in which more than 900 followers of Jim Jones died from drinking cyanide-laced drink in Guyana.
Mr. Jones even practiced suicide drills using a poisoned soft-drink mix-or "white knights,' as he called them. He told his followers that the suicides would be a symbolic protest against an evil world. Their lives would be transformed, the cult leader said, and they would live with him eternally.
The suicides occurred hours after U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California and four others investigating the cult were ambushed and killed.
Although there are some parallels, Dr. Kliever noted a major difference.
"The Jonestown suicides were a pre-emptive strike against perceived enemies,' he said. But the professor added that the Branch Davidians' suicides appear to have been "a reactive strike against a real threat.'
The fire outside Waco was set after federal agents rammed the Mount Carmel compound with tanks and pumped in tear gas. Authorities said they had hoped only to prompt the cult members to surrender.
Where the two mass suicides are similar, according to some scholars, is that they both show an all-or-nothing approach to the outside world-and the government.
The cult followers believe that they are good and the world is evil.
By self-immolation, "they are making a statement to the world,'
said Dr. James Breckenridge, who teaches a course on cults at Baylor
University in Waco. "They are saying, "You are not worthy to take us
into your custody.' '
Dr. Kliever of SMU said that these millennialist religious groups "take very literally the description of the end of the world in the Book of Revelation.'
The Davidians "chose either fight or flight,' he said. The first time they fired their weapons at federal agents, and the second time they opted for a "radical kind of flight in terms of self-immolation.'
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