From the moment that federal agents blundered into their frontal assault on the Branch Davidians’ armed fortress on the morning of February 28, David Koresh knew that God had finally delivered the enemy into his hands. For nine years Koresh had relentlessly drilled his followers to prepare for Armageddon, had preached its inevitability, had forecast its imminence. This was the ending that Koresh had prayed for and staked his reputation on—the final battle, the trial by fire. It didn’t matter if the fire came from automatic rifles or a match and a can of kerosene; this was what Koresh had promised. Anything less would have been a monumental betrayal of his claim to be David Koresh, Angel Warrior of the Armageddon. Did anyone really expect the prophet of Ranch Apocalypse to meekly surrender his sheep to the enemy and come out with his hands up?
The first thing to understand about Koresh is that he invented himself. “Koresh” is the Hebrew name for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Israel. It means “a lot of fire.” Koresh was a con man who got caught up in his own duplicity, a pathological liar who long ago lost the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy. Raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tyler, Koresh (or Vernon Howell, as he was known then) came by his doomsday mentality early in life. Seventh-day Adventists are conditioned by their faith to expect end-of-the-world prophets and to listen to anyone who claims to be anointed, however tenuous that claim may appear to nonbelievers. The Branch Davidians are an offshoot of this faith, founded by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff who broke with the mother church over his interpretation of the books of Ezekiel and Revelation. In 1935 Houteff moved from Los Angeles to Waco and established the world headquarters of his sect. After his death, a succession of leaders emerged, each putting his or her own spin on the book of Revelation, each gaining and holding power by predicting the date when time would end. Koresh was merely the most recent (though surely the most infamous) of the cult’s roster of doomsday forecasters.
