The Bloodbath in Waco
My birth
name was Vernon Wayne Howell
My childhood was not picture perfect
Because my real father left my mom for another woman
I was in a relationship with a 15 year old girl
When she was with my child
I wanted to marry her
But her parents forbade me to see her
I joined my mother's church to become a
Born-again Christian within the Seventh-day Adventist Church
I joined the Branch Davidians in 1981
In Waco, Texas
I claimed to have the prophetic gift in 1983
As I became their leader by taking out George Roden
I was accused of child abuse and sexual abuse
The ATF raided my ranch on February 28 1993
That became a raid then turned into a siege
On April 19 1993
That killed 76 Branch Davidians and killed four ATF agents
I mysteriously died on April 19 1993
Who am I?
My childhood was not picture perfect
Because my real father left my mom for another woman
I was in a relationship with a 15 year old girl
When she was with my child
I wanted to marry her
But her parents forbade me to see her
I joined my mother's church to become a
Born-again Christian within the Seventh-day Adventist Church
I joined the Branch Davidians in 1981
In Waco, Texas
I claimed to have the prophetic gift in 1983
As I became their leader by taking out George Roden
I was accused of child abuse and sexual abuse
The ATF raided my ranch on February 28 1993
That became a raid then turned into a siege
On April 19 1993
That killed 76 Branch Davidians and killed four ATF agents
I mysteriously died on April 19 1993
Who am I?
William Miller was a Baptist lay preacher who intensively studied Old Testament prophecies, especially Daniel 8:14 ("Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.") By 1822 he concluded that the cleansing represented the Earth's destruction by fire coinciding with the return of Jesus (the Advent) and decided that the prophetic 2,300-day period began in 457 BCE when Artaxerxes I of Persia decreed the rebuilding of Jerusalem and would thus end ca. 1843. In 1840 the "Signs of the Times" began publication to propagate Miller's views. The Millerites came to accept that 22 October 1844 would be the true date, but when that date also passed, the Millerites split into rival groups. Eventually, in 1863, some of these coalesced into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1919 Victor Tasho Houteff (an immigrant from Eastern Rumelia -modern Bulgaria]) joined the church in Illinois but moved to California and began developing his own reformist theology; he published "The Shepherd's Rod" in 1929 and was expelled from the church in 1930. Thereupon, in 1934, he founded Shepherd's Rod (the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists as of 1942) at Mt. Carmel, near Waco in central Texas. Upon his death his widow Florence seized control in a coup, but Benjamin Roden disputed her leadership and founded the rival Branch Davidians. One of the doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventists is that on 22 October 1844, God and Jesus moved from the throne from which they ruled the universe to the judgment throne in order to determine everyone's rewards or punishments, beginning with those already dead (in order to decide who was to come up in the resurrection of the saints and those who were to come up later in the resurrection of the wicked), and continuing on to those who were living (in order to determine who would be translated without seeing death and those would be destroyed by the brightness of Jesus' coming). Florence Houteff set 22 April 1959 as the date of the the new messianic age, but gthe failure of this prediction led to a new splintering. In 1962 Florence announced that she had erred, disbanded her disciples, and sold Mount Carmel to Roden's group. When Roden died in 1978 members were torn between allegiance to his wife Lois and his son. In 1981, 22-year-old Vernon Wayne Howell joined the branch Davidians at Mt. Carmel and began claiming the gift of prophecy in 1983 and began a sexual liaison with Lois, but when she died in 1986 George took control of the movement and exiled Howell and his followers to Palestine, Texas, 90 miles (140 km) from Waco. In 1989 Roden murdered a rival messiah but was judged insane and confined to a psychiatric hospital, giving Howell the opportunity to take over Mt. Carmel; one of his 1st acts was to rename himself David (after the ancient Jewish king) Koresh (Hebrew for Cyrus, the ancient Persian king, the only non-Jew to be referred to as the "anointed one" in the Bible. On 28 February 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided Mt. Carmel; 4 federal agents were killed in the assault. The resultant standoff ended on 19 April, when Koresh and 80 after some 80 of his followers died as the complex burned to the ground following an attempted entrance by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.
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