![]() ![]() “In three hours I perceived more Biblical truths than I had done in the eight years I’d been involved with organized religion,” said Fagan, who moved to Texas to join Koresh’s flock. Livingstone Fagan, one of the Afro-Brits, had been studying for his master’s in theology at England’s Newbold College when Koresh gave a talk there. “I reckon we’re up against Babylon,” he said, “and the odds ain’t on our side!” For true believers, his Bible studies were better than any movie. His preaching mixed biblical versification with homespun wisdom. ![]() Christianity two thousand years ago wasn’t like that.” In the soon-to-come Last Days, he preached, a man would rise to shepherd a chosen few to the Kingdom of Heaven. “You go to a religious social club once a week and act like a yo-yo. Koresh considered mainstream Christianity little more than a modern convenience. God’s not into that, and we won’t tolerate it here.”Ī dented mailbox out front read BRANCH DAVIDIAN CHURCH, but there wasn’t much mail for believers who saw themselves as a breed apart from millions of “mainstreamers” who went to church on Sundays. Don’t be flaunting your education or the color of your skin. There were Australians, Caribbean islanders, several Hawaiians, and others of Asian, Mexican, and Native American descent, plus Pablo Cohen, an Argentina-born Israeli the others called their “Taco Jew.” To any Caucasians who didn’t cotton to foreigners or Blacks, Koresh said, “Don’t be flaunting yourself or what country you are from. Many of his followers were Black, including a contingent of “Afro-Brits” who had picked up stakes in England and moved to Waco. The self-appointed prophet led a diverse group of more than a hundred. Koresh laid out the floor plans and oversaw construction of what he dubbed “Ranch Apocalypse.”ĭavid Thibodeau, the resident smart-ass, had his own name for Mount Carmel. Their plywood walls wouldn’t need to last long because Jesus was coming back soon. With Koresh overseeing the work, they turned what a neighbor remembered as “truckloads of lumber and sheet rock, hundreds of pounds of nails, miles of electrical wire, and enough sand and gravel to fill an Olympic-size pool” into a short-term home for him and 120 followers. They built it in two years after reclaiming Mount Carmel from George Roden in 1988. The Branch Davidians’ flat, windy property measured seventy-seven acres, but they spent almost all their time in a two-acre compound some of them called the Anthill. ![]()
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