End of Days by Sylvia Browne

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 9th, 2022 in Stories

In 1919, a man named Victor Houteff joined the Seventh- day Adventist Church. But ten years later, after finding what he perceived to be several flaws in the church and its doctrines, he left to form his own sect, the Davidian Seventh- day Adventists, which ultimately evolved into the Branch Davidians. It was in 1935 that Houteff bought land for his Davidian Adventists outside of Waco, Texas, and named the settlement the Mount Carmel Center.

One day in 1981, a twenty-two-year-old dyslexic high school dropout and failed rock star named Vernon Howell joined the Branch Davidians in Waco. By 1990, he’d staged a heavily armed takeover of the Mount Carmel Center, become leader of the Branch Davidians, and changed his name to David Koresh. As he explained to his congregates, “David” came from his being the reigning ruler of the biblical House of David, and “Koresh” was the Hebrew form of the name Cyrus, the king of Persia who freed the Jewish prisoners in Babylon so they could return to Israel.

David Koresh taught that he was the messiah, the Second Coming the Branch Davidians had been anticipating since their inception, God’s messenger who would personally trigger the apocalypse and then guide his followers safely to salvation. In his tediously repetitive marathon Bible studies, he instilled belief that he would be leading his flock into violent battle with the U.S. government that would mark the end of the world and his followers’ passage to eternal lives. No one within the Branch Davidians was allowed contact with anyone on the “outside,” since those “outsiders” were evil and bound to lead them away from the righteousness embodied by no one but David Koresh.

He had twenty “wives” within the cult, who he promised would have the honor of bearing his “soldiers.” Conveniently, he ordered that all the Branch Davidian men take a vow of celibacy. His youngest “wife” was the ten-year-old daughter of a devout Koresh follower. And in case any of Koresh’s younger wives or other children in the Mount Carmel Center chose to disobey or misbehave, a wooden paddle was always nearby for beatings as severe as “the messiah” demanded. David Koresh accepted and achieved nothing less than total devotion and absolute, unquestioning obedience from his flock.

That fact became tragically apparent during a fifty-one-day standoff, the horrifying realization of David Koresh’s vision of a violent battle with the U.S. government that would mark the end of his followers’ world. The government had indeed been watching Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the suspicious activities at the Mount Carmel Center, and on February 28, 1993, literally dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms arrived with a warrant to search the compound for illegal weapons. After an initial gun battle in which four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed, David Koresh allowed a handful of ATF agents into the compound just long enough to remove their dead comrades.

And then the standoff began. ATF heavy artillery aimed squarely at the compound and probably just as much heavy artillery aimed right back at the ATF. The best of the best FBI negotiators were brought in to keep up a dialogue with David Koresh on the direct phone line the ATF had arranged. The negotiators’ top priority was to secure the freedom of the forty-six children who’d been living as innocent hostages behind the distant center walls. It was finally agreed that David Koresh would broadcast a series of two-minute sermons on the radio and that he would release two children for each sermon. That agreement led to the release of twenty-one children in the first five days.

After a standoff that lasted a total of fifty-one days, the government agencies that had assembled near Waco at the Branch Davidian compound arrived at the horribly flawed conclusion that in the end, if they forcefully attacked, the majority of adults holed up within the center would make their escape to save the children still left inside. Completely miscalculating the control David Koresh had over his followers, and their belief that death would lead them and their children to the eternal glory their messiah had promised, the agents advanced on the compound with a full battalion of tanks and tear gas.