February 5, 2016 (Friday)
The blogs this week have been about my days at Baylor and Waco. Probably the first thought about Waco that comes to mind for most people everywhere else except Waco is David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the horrible end to a siege on April 19, 1993. The story began long before 1993.
When I first moved to Waco in 1949, I was shown around the city and on our way to see Lake Waco we passed the entrance on old Highway 6 to Mount Carmel Center. It was a community of people who lived on a huge plot atop a hill overlooking the lake. “That’s the Carmelites,” I was told. Well, the people who lived there never called themselves “Carmelites,” to my knowledge. They called themselves “Davidians” because their leader considered himself to be the new King David.
In California in 1929, there was a split from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and a group known as the Shepherd’s Rod was formed. They preferred to be known as “Davidians.” Their leader was disfellowshiped. The Seventh Day Adventist Church is in no way connected to the splinter group and the tragic events that eventually took place.
The Shepherd’s Rod group moved from California to Waco, Texas in 1935 and set up a 374-acre compound called Mount Carmel Center, on old Highway 6 at Lake Waco. The group published materials expounding their doctrines. After the death of their founder in 1955, others took his place and added new doctrines of their own and formed a separate group. They became known as “Branch Davidians.” The Lake Waco property was sold and a new campus of 941 acres northeast of Waco was purchased in 1957 and reduced to 77 acres in 1962. This had become known as “Mount Carmel.”
In February, 1959, the group predicted that, on April 22, 1959, God would rid Palestine of Arabs and Jews, making way for the Davidians to set up their headquarters in Jerusalem, where 144,000 adherents would evangelize the world and then Jesus would return. They gathered for days on the Bellmead highway in anticipation of this event. All the various news media gave full coverage to the event. When the prophecies went unfulfilled, the people slowly disbanded and returned to their respective homes.
David Koresh was born in 1959 in Houston. His name was Vernon Howell until he legally changed it in 1990. (Koresh was a form of Cyrus, the king he believed himself to be). He arrived at Mount Carmel in 1981 and in 1988 took control through a series of bizarre events. He requested that his followers be known as “students of the Seven Seals.” He and his followers lived at Mount Carmel. Meanwhile the Branch Davidians disowned any association with Koresh. Before his death, during the siege, he declared that his followers were “Koreshians” and the Davidic Kingdom was in Waco.
You probably know the whole story about the the attempted arrests by law enforcement because of the group’s unauthorized possession of armaments. And you no doubt remember that 83 members of the group (including 17 children) and 4 law enforcement officers were killed during a 51-day confrontation that ended with destruction of the compound and the deaths of its people by fire. Cause of the fire is still undetermined.
One would hope that people would be wise enough to recognize cult leaders when they appear, but sadly, such is not the case. Cults continue to arise, and charismatic leaders continue to brainwash and command legions of followers. The tragedy that made Waco the talk of the world in 1993 can happen again, because many people are without a basic belief foundation, and will obediently follow charismatic leaders.
The Waco tragedy, and others like it, should serve as a warning that doctrine is not about words on a page that have no real application to life. A doctrine is simply a belief. What we believe will determine our actions. As the police sargent in an old TV series used to say to his cops as they departed after receiving assignments, “Let’s be careful out there.”