Blood Sugar Sex Magik: Bible Study with David Koresh

Confessions of a wannabe cult leader

Vernon Talks to God

Vernon Howell skipped school one day because he wanted to talk to God. He went to his church and got down on his knees and prayed.

“Dear Father, I know I’m stupid, but please talk to me ’cause I want to serve you.”¹

God answered soon after. Vernon could hear Him in his heart, and they had some great discussions. A few years later, God tried to cheer nineteen-year-old Vernon up after a sixteen-year-old girl broke his heart when he got her pregnant.

“You’re really hurt, aren’t you? You love her, and she’s turned her back on you, rejected you.” God said.

God even promised that Vernon’s girlfriend would eventually return to him. But He lied. Vernon soon lost contact with the girl forever.

That should have given him a clue that the voice he heard did not actually belong to God. Still, it was a rather open-ended prophecy, and it wasn’t conclusively proven false until Vernon died without ever being reunited with his first love.

Suppose we take Vernon at his word that he actually heard a voice which he assumed was God. We have just eliminated the possibility that it actually was God, a supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful being. That leaves us with the possibility that he was listening to the voice of a demon.

If we don’t accept the existence of demons, then we might consider the possibility that he had a daemon. A daemon is the Greek concept of a supernatural being. For Plato, it is an individual’s higher self or a guardian angel.

Growing up, Vernon was not particularly gifted. He suffered from learning disabilities and was a ninth-grade dropout. He did, however, study the Bible in some depth, which, being dyslexic, could not have been easy. The Bible is the Word of God. Let us suppose that Vernon had read and reread the bible often enough that he had internalized the text.

Imagine that a supercomputer was directed to use the Bible to create a simulated version of God. This simulation would then have a personality directly derived from the scriptures. It would speak in Biblical terms from a Biblical frame of reference.

That’s the sort of simulation of God that I believe Vernon was conversing with. One which his brain had created for him.

Still, Vernon had other ways of receiving messages from God. One such technique was the time-honored practice of Bibliomancy. Bibliomancy is when you open a book at random and pick out a bit of text as an answer to your question.

For instance, Vernon fell in love with the daughter of the pastor of the new church he attended after his first girlfriend had left him. Vernon prayed to God to tell him what to do when he noticed that his Bible was open to Isaiah chapter 34:

16 Seek and read from the book of the LORD: Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the LORD has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. (Isa 34:16 RSV)

Vernon took this as a clear sign that God wanted him to take the pastor’s daughter as his mate. The pastor disagreed, and Vernon soon found himself cast out from the congregation.

After that, he took to wandering and eventually ended up at Mount Carmel, near Waco, Texas. He joined a group called the Branch Davidians. It was led by a sixty-eight-year-old evangelist named Lois Roden.

Vernon told Lois that God had shown him that he was to father a child with her who would become The Chosen One. This had Biblical precedent as Abraham’s wife, Sarah, gave birth to Ishmael at age ninety in Genesis chapter 21.

Lois apparently took the prophecy at face value and soon believed that she was pregnant. This didn’t go over too well with her son George, who had planned to follow Lois as the church leader. George was none too bright and had a history of violence. Vernon’s life was in danger as George saw him as a potential threat to his future position.

God then decided that a fourteen-year-old girl named Rachel Jones would make a better mate for Vernon than Lois. This worked to pacify George for a while. However, eventually, George tried to shoot Vernon with an Uzi, which led to Vernon leaving the church together with around twenty-five followers.

Up until now, Vernon was no one special. He had a few followers, he had a simulation of God running which he could consult and receive advice from, but he hadn’t yet unlocked the secret and accessed the divine power that lay hidden with the pages of the Bible. All of that was about to change.

Vernon Goes to Jerusalem

In 1985, Vernon decided to take a trip to Jerusalem. He had been to Jerusalem a couple of years earlier, with Lois. During that visit, he claimed to have had his first vision of God. This time he took his new wife, Rachel, with him.

While Vernon was in Jerusalem, he wanted to measure the dimensions of the Temple.² Of course, there was the problem of the Temple not existing anymore. Still, it is widely believed that where the Dome of the Rock stands today, the Temple once stood. So Vernon figured that by measuring the area of the Dome of the Rock, he could fulfill the order given in Revelation:

I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count the worshipers there.” (Rev 11:1 NIV)

Vernon was concerned that the prophecy from Revelation might not be literally true, specifically the verses mentioning the number of worshippers that gather in the inner temple and the altar area:

Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. (Rev 14:1 NIV)

So Vernon checked out the size of the Dome on the Rock, and he came to the sobering realization that 144,000 people wouldn’t fit inside. This discrepancy led to a crisis of faith, and he threw himself into study. Surely the Bible held the answer. And indeed it did. He found what he was looking for in Zechariah:

1 I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. 2 Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof. 3 And, behold, the angel that talked with me went forth, and another angel went out to meet him, 4 And said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein: 5 For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. (Zec 2:1–5 KJV)

In the verses above, a man sets out to measure Jerusalem just as Vernon had done, but then an angel informs the man that Jerusalem shall have so many men and cattle that it will be a town too sprawling for human walls to enclose it.

Vernon interpreted this as meaning his attempt to measure the Temple was flawed because he did not consider that, in the End Times, Jerusalem would be transformed, raised to a higher level of existence.

Actually, what he has done is conflate Jerusalem and the Temple, which is perhaps justified as both Zechariah and Revelation mention the measuring of an area. The Temple is itself in Jerusalem, so there is plenty of overlap. This interweaving of texts was the secret of his interpretive genius.

During this six-month period in Jerusalem, he had a visionary experience seemingly taken directly from the pages of Revelation:

“I met up with these angels, these presences made of pure light. They were warriors surrounding the Merkabah, the heavenly throne, riding on fiery horses, armed with flaming swords. They only allow those who can reveal the Seals into the higher realm, into those innumerable worlds that exist alongside our own.”³

He was taken up into the heavens, and then basically this happened:

8 And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 9 And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. 10 And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. 11 And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. (Rev 10:8–11 KJV)

Eating the scroll meant that he had internalized the entire Bible.

“In a flash, I received a complete key to the Scriptures, how the puzzle fit together. I knew then it was my destiny to unlock the Seals and open the way for our community.”

Vernon claimed that the seven angels that brought him his revelation were the same seven angels reportedly seen by cosmonauts aboard the Salyut-7 spacecraft. As this ‘event’ was not reported until October 22nd, 1985, we can probably assume that Vernon had his vision in Jerusalem after this date.

The Lord of the Seven Seals

When he returned to Texas, those people that knew him said he had become a changed man. Where before his attempts to teach the scripture had been boring and uninspired, he now had the ability to interweave the millennial core texts of Revelation and Daniel with the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Haggai to create a powerful vision of apocalyptic transformation.

More importantly, Vernon returned with a new teaching. He claimed that thanks to the vision he had received in Jerusalem, he was now able to interpret the encrypted meaning of the seven seals.

This reminds me of something that happened to me. Back in the late ’90s, I had worked out the interpretations of various verses of the Bible by using the Gospel of Thomas as a key. I shared these interpretations with various email groups that were interested in studying esoteric Christianity.

Eventually, I found myself in a group called Messianic Christianity. When I shared my interpretations, members of the groups told me that while they did not agree with my teachings, they appreciated my method of presentation, when compared to the atheists they usually debated. I was, as it were, speaking to them in their own language, but I wasn’t saying what they wanted to hear.

More interesting still was their claim that I had no right to attempt to interpret the various parables of Jesus. That only Jesus could do that after He returns. The idea that only Christ can properly reveal the meaning of cryptic verses of the Bible comes directly from the section of the seven seals.

1 And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. 2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? 3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. 4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. 5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. 6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. 7 And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. (Rev 5:1–7 KJV)

These seals can only be open by the Lamb.

This is where the Messianic Christianity members got the idea that only a reborn Jesus Christ can reveal the meanings hidden within His more mysterious sayings and parables.

Generally, the Lamb mentioned in Revelation is identified as Jesus Christ, but Vernon had determined that he himself was the Lamb. He didn’t believe that he was actually Jesus Christ, rather he saw himself as a Christ, as the term means ‘Anointed’. He saw himself as the last messiah.

There was one fatal catch, however. The very act of opening the seven seals casts the one who opened them into the cosmic battle between Good and Evil. He becomes an actor in the apocalyptic stage play, where every action he takes leads inevitably to the martyrdom of himself and his followers.

Vernon understood that only by dying would he and his followers be transformed. When the time came, the ATF and the FBI would react reflexively, playing their assigned role with the same ruthless efficiency as a legion of Roman centurions.

Vernon had tapped into an ancient source of power and used it to build a community over which he had unquestionable power. He soon ordered the men to become celibate as he took their wives and daughters for his own.

He changed his name to David Koresh. David for King David, who had seven wives. Koresh is Hebrew for Cyrus, after Cyrus the Great, leader of the first Persian Empire, who led the invasion of Babylon and freed the Jews.

People were drawn to him because of his skill at interpreting the seven seals. But his interpretations required he and his followers to first die in battle with the forces of Babylon. Those that died would then return together with David, who would lead them into the final conflict that will end with the creation of a New Heaven and Earth.

Suppose however that he and his followers do not return. Suppose, just for argument’s sake, that the events outlined in Revelation do not occur and there is no final apocalyptic war between the forces of Good, led by David Koresh, and Evil. Suppose that, in spite of David’s considerable interpretive skill and in spite of possessing his own personal simulation of God, David sacrificed his and his followers’ lives because he had failed to understand the true nature of the Book of Revelation.

Perhaps it is not a puzzle waiting to be solved, but rather a trap waiting to be sprung.

Sources:

1. Wilson, C. (2000). Rogue messiahs: Tales of self-proclaimed saviors. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Pub.
2. Apocalypticism Explained
3. Thibodeau, D., Whiteson, L., & Layton, A. (2018). Waco: A Survivor’s Story. New York, NY: Hachette Books.