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- <text id=93TT1555>
- <title>
- Apr. 26, 1993: The End Is Near?
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Apr. 26, 1993 The Truth about Dinosaurs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CULTS, Page 32
- The End Is Near?
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Koresh says he will surrender when he finishes a treatise on
- the Book of Revelation, but no one is holding his breath
- </p>
- <p>By GEORGE J. CHURCH--With reporting by Michael Riley and
- Richard Woodbury/Waco
- </p>
- <p> David Koresh must be the only author ever to have the FBI
- waiting to distribute his manuscript. As soon as the cult leader
- has finished decoding the symbolism of the seven seals in the
- Book of Revelation, FBI agents surrounding the compound near
- Waco, Texas, where Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult are holed
- up, will pick up the longhand manuscript and convey it to
- Koresh's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, who will present it to two noted
- biblical experts for evaluation. Then, Koresh promises, he and
- 95 followers will finally surrender to federal authorities. That
- would end a siege that, as of Saturday night, had lasted 49 days--five days longer than the Gulf War.
- </p>
- <p> Alas, Koresh took four days to finish 30 handwritten pages
- about the first seal, and they still await editing by his top
- lieutenant, Steve Schneider. So, FBI men sourly note, a
- surrender may be months off, even if Koresh keeps his word--and he has reneged on three previous promises to give up. "No
- one at our place is holding his breath," says FBI special agent
- Dick Swensen. Instead the FBI is continuing its psychological
- warfare. At all hours, agents blast harrowing noises out of
- loudspeakers--the squeals of rabbits being slaughtered, the
- whine of a dentist's drill, the thunder of locomotives--presumably in the hope that the Davidians might yield just to
- get some peace and quiet.
- </p>
- <p> Both the FBI and the cultists' lawyers are making detailed
- preparations for a surrender. Koresh, accompanied by DeGuerin,
- would come out first and be whisked away, perhaps by helicopter.
- Others will walk up a dirt road about 100 yards, pass through
- metal detectors to make sure they are not carrying weapons, then
- board buses for a ride of several miles to a processing center
- already set up inside a cavernous airplane hangar on the grounds
- of Texas State Technical College. There they will be stripped,
- dressed in prison garb, photographed and sent to local jails.
- </p>
- <p> DeGuerin and other lawyers meanwhile have begun planning
- a defense strategy for the ensuing trials. They will probably
- claim the protection of the First and Second Amendments for the
- Davidians' rights to practice even a bizarre religion and to
- bear even an arsenal of arms. Defense lawyers will also claim
- the David ians fired only in self-defense when federal
- authorities stormed the compound. Four feds and, by Koresh's
- count, six cultists died.
- </p>
- <p> The principal reason for thinking Kor esh really might
- surrender soon is that for the first time, he says, he has
- received the "message" he was awaiting from God concerning the
- seven seals. Phillip Arnold, one of the experts in apocalyptic
- theology whom Koresh wants to examine his manuscript, and Koresh
- himself have provided some clues to his interpretation. In the
- Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse, the breaking of
- the first four seals by the Lamb of God (which Koresh now calls
- himself) unlooses the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: conquest,
- war, famine and death. Arnold thinks Koresh relates them to
- events in his leadership of the Davidian cult. The opening of
- the fifth seal discloses "the souls of those who had been slain
- for the word of God," which to Koresh might seem an obvious
- reference to the Feb. 28 gun battle. The breaking of the sixth
- seal produces an earthquake, and Koresh has predicted one soon
- in the Waco area. Behind the seventh seal are seven angels who
- blow successively on trumpets, signaling all manner of
- calamities: a rain of hail, fire and blood; locusts arising from
- a bottomless pit to bite men, who wish for death to end their
- torment. Koresh, in a letter dictated to DeGuerin last
- Wednesday, said his writing "will cause the winds of God's wrath
- to be held back a little longer."
- </p>
- <p> But will a ninth-grade dropout who plainly relishes the
- glare of world publicity relinquish it all to lead his followers
- into prison? "Koresh is blowing smoke," says Wayman Mullins, a
- criminal-justice professor and hostage-negotiations trainer at
- Southwest Texas State University. "It's notoriety and
- grandstanding."
- </p>
- <p> Increasingly frustrated, federal authorities are talking
- of forcible ways to end the siege. They are believed to be
- considering using tear gas and other nonlethal chemicals, trying
- to shoot Koresh by sniper fire through a window, or crumbling
- a corner of the building by ramming tanks or other armored
- vehicles into it. But they worry about harming the 17 children
- thought to be inside. In practice, any use of force would have
- to be approved by the White House, which has let it be known
- that it is watching closely and hopes for a nonviolent solution.
- So the feds probably will continue waiting out the Davidians--for how long, nobody knows. At Satellite City, the press
- encampment out near the compound, mailboxes have gone up,
- garbage is regularly collected, an Easter service was held, and
- there is an unelected mayor. The latest gag among a press corps
- going quietly mad with boredom is that Waco has become an
- acronym for We Ain't Coming Out.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-