Cult News

Many Davidian followers of David Koresh remain in denial a decade after their “sinful messiah’s” demise.

Despite failed prophecies and an end Koresh did not predict, some still expect a “resurrection,” which would allow the cult leader to somehow fulfill his supposed supernatural role.

Davidian Catherine Matteson now 87 is still waiting. She claims, “Things are going to change soon. He is going to return. He is going to be resurrected,” reports the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Matteson insists her one-time leader was the “last prophet” and that he knew “God’s mind.”

But Koresh’s explicit prophecies long ago expired. And the judgement that he claimed would immediately follow his death never came.

However, this doesn’t deter determined Davidians, who have invested their lives into the now essentially defunct group. Many lost family members and it’s difficult if not impossible for them to face that such a loss was for nothing.

Davidian Clive Doyle still lives near Waco and is waiting devotedly for the return of the man responsible for the death of his 18-year-old daughter.

Doyle like Matteson clings to a belief in a coming Koresh resurrection, hoping his lost daughter will also return to life. He says, “There will be a resurrection, and those of us who died in the past will be brought back,” quoted the Dallas Morning News.

Ironically Doyle himself may have been personally involved in the fire that took his daughter’s life.

Davidians who spread fuel oil and ignited it at three different locations started the fire. This was recorded by infrared aerial photography and additionally substantiated by audio recordings recovered through bugging devices within the compound.

According to court testimony Doyle had traces of fuel on his clothes after he escaped. But the loyal Davidian refuses to accept what happened. And says instead, “I’m not ashamed of who I am and what I’ve been.”

But shouldn’t Davidians like Doyle be ashamed of David Koresh?

The cult leader was certainly a criminal and sexual predator. Some Davidians even cooperated with the purported pedophile, at times providing him with their own children for his sexual gratification.

How do Davidians today deal with such facts?

Koresh’s once estranged mother Bonnie Haldeman now seems to be a true believer. She attempts to explain away her son’s sexual abuse of women and children by claiming it was somehow “justified by scripture.”

Haldeman says, “He showed it to us…We had studies and studies and studies and had to accept that.”

But weren’t those “studies” just “brainwashing“?

DNA evidence has firmly established Koresh fathered at least one child with a minor and the testimony of a teenager established that he molested children as young as ten.

Doyle makes it clear that Koresh’s “Golden Rule” regarding his behavior was essentially, “My way or the highway.”

He states, “We have had to wrestle with that, but we got to where we accepted it as God’s instruction. If people couldn’t accept it, they walked away.”

Bonnie Haldeman also believes her son was a benign influence and a kind man. She told a reporter, “David didn’t have a mean bone in his body. David did not believe in murder,” reports Associated Press.

McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch sees things differently. He negotiated a cease-fire with the Davidians and says, “There was no religion as you and I understand it. He was using religion to stir up hate against the federal government. He preached if you die fighting the beast, you’ll be immediately translated to heaven.”

But Davidian Sheila Martin who lost her husband and four children in the standoff insists, “We could see the logic in all these things.”

Former ATF spokesman Jack Killorin concluded, “It’s not surprising that Osama bin Laden could employ people to commit suicide and fly planes into buildings. … Waco is a monument to our understanding that such things can and will happen,” reports the Dallas Morning News.

Not only the Davidians lost loved ones in the 1993 raid and subsequent standoff. Four BATF officers were killed.

Jane McKeehan the mother of one of those officers says of Koresh and his followers, “They were wrong. They were breaking the law.”

But Clive Doyle doesn’t see it that way and probably never will. He claims, “People died here for what they believed in, so for those of us who are living, it would be a dishonor to their memory to give it up.”

No doubt Daividians died for something they sincerely believed in, but as Killorin observed so did the followers of Osama bin Laden on September 11th.

Doyle commented that the Davidian compound today is “like a magnet for would-be prophets…poor deluded souls.”

Expect the remaining Davidian diehards to soldier on much like al Qaeda, “poor deluded souls,” invested so deeply in their delusion that as Doyle says, they will never “give it up.”