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IN THE FALL OF 1996 I TOOK A JOURNEY across America, traveling to places where time was ending. I set out to get inside the groups-there are many of them--that believe doomsday is imminent. Over a two-month period, I spent time with some of the nation's most committed apocalyptic cults, staying with them in their hideouts in America's mountains and backyards. The organizations' memberships range from a few dozen--like Heaven's Gate--to thousands; they granted me access when I told them I was a writer working for a Russian publication. Their leaders apparently could not resist the temptation to save 150 million more souls outside the United States.
Within their walls I found a mix of the scary and the farcical under the cloak of spirituality. Unlike millions of fundamentalist Christians who quietly accept the possibility of the apocalypse, doomsday sects seek to accelerate Armageddon for personal and often twisted reasons. Contradictions abounded: a cult's neighbors were usually unaware of who was living next to them, yet through the Internet and high technology these groups breezily exchange ideas, paranoid theories and survivalist paraphernalia with like-minded organizations across the country. As the millennium draws near, the pressure inside these kinds of communities is increasing. The vast majority of spiritual and political outcasts will not try to match the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. But there are reasons for concern: Waco once seemed to be a quiet place, too.
LaPorte, Colo.: The LaPorte Church of Christ is a white clapboard structure languishing between a truck-repair facility and a gun shop in this Colorado flatlands town. The congregation is made up of a few dozen local working people. But Pastor Pete Peters, the church leader, has a message that resonates with dozens of militia movements around the country. Peters's brand of paranoia is called Christian Identity--he believes that race war is imminent and that only Identity members will survive. How? By training in camps and stockpiling food and weapons. His home in southern Wyoming is guarded by Rottweilers and decorated with a picture of a handgun and the words WE DON'T DIAL 911 HERE. "These are perilous times," Peters told me. "Good and evil will fight it out, and this is where I'm taking my stand."
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Peters is tapping into the same nervousness that helped Marshall Applewhite shield his followers from the outside world. Applewhite and Peters may be eons apart in style, but both preached that the government was not to be trusted and that it was better off to resist the world. Peters rants about a one-world government organized by the Antichrist; Applewhite spoke of evil E.T.s who are in collusion with the government, giving it high-tech weapons in exchange for human genetic material. It is no surprise, then, that militia groups have been increasingly prominent at UFO conventions. UFO believers eagerly lap up the information on how to construct a bomb shelter and how to purchase weaponry.
Corwin Springs, Mont.: The Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) is preparing for the apocalypse on a magnificent 12,000-acre ranch once owned by Malcolm Forbes near the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park. CUT leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet--that's her real name--is a diminutive woman who, though less coercive than other cult leaders, maintains the unwavering devotion of several thousand followers by playing on their fear of Armageddon. In March 1990 Prophet ordered her flock into the group's network of underground bunkers with the announcement "Fasten your seat belts, the bomb is coming." But CUT's membership has been dwindling, and Prophet is once again escalating her millennialist rhetoric. On a recent night she delivered a chilling sermon to some 400 followers. "We need your sacrifice," she told her devotees, many of whom sat frozen in poses of meditation. "The world is about to fail. I don't know where the bombs are coming from. But we must be ready." All is dark in the hall, except for an enormous lighted globe where Prophet stands flanked by statues of Jesus and Buddha. A sign on the wall says shelter space is now being offered at a discount rate of $5,000-or $10,000 with plumbing.
Despite its outwardly peaceable stance, CUT is ready to defend itself. In 1989 Prophet's former husband was convicted of buying $150,000 worth of automatic weapons. "We need the weapons because during the upcoming chaos, law and order can break down," says CUT member Sandra Shreyer. CUT agreed to give up the cache of weapons and kept its coveted tax-exempt status as a church. "Now only individual members have weapons for self-defense," says church elder Donald Knittel.
Eugene, Ore.: Jim Roberts, 58, is a former marine who leads one of the most secretive Old Testament cults in the country. After spending two days with some of his followers, I became convinced I was witnessing a virtuoso form of mind control. His followers, grouped in eight to 10 nomadic cells that are currently recruiting kids in college towns across the nation, say they are ready to die for him. I caught up with one such cell at a rented cottage in Eugene. The group's elder, Timothy, 45, directed all conversation. Yes, he said, the end of the world was approaching. "The world has reached an unbearable level of corruption," he said. The younger members nodded in agreement and stared at me mutely. Men and women aren't allowed to talk to each other without Timothy's permission, and, like Marshall Applewhite's followers, they are forced to abstain from sex and must spend the day in pairs. Dinner, served with much decorum, consisted of garbage. The Brotherhood believes that money is essentially dirty. The members feed themselves by rummaging through supermarket Dumpsters and carefully removing all traces of rot. They keep themselves well manicured, however, believing that one must meet one's maker in a cleanly state. To them, Roberts is Jesus, and they dress like his apostles, wearing sandals and homemade tunics even in winter.
Like Applewhite, Roberts was leading a seemingly normal life when he lost his job and many of his friends and became convinced that society was not to be trusted. In the mid-1970s he began teaching followers they had to abandon all ties to society and "purify" themselves. "The world will need martyrs," says Timothy. "We are ready."
The first task of a cult leader is to sever connections between initiates and their families. Roberts does this by telling recruits that true enlightenment can be achieved only when they are separated from loved ones. Passages from the Bible, in which Jesus asks his apostles to forsake their families, are placed on a novice's bed. "My parents are dead to me," says Dale, 19. Does he regret abandoning his choice? "Sometimes I want my mother or a beautiful girl I see," he replies. "But then I remember what I'm here for."
Abilene, Texas: This is a city with 150 churches--but the House of Yahweh, which sits on a guarded, 40-acre compound outside town, has a niche all its own. On Old Testament holy days, the compound is packed with cars from all over the country and suburban housewives sit shoulder to shoulder with inner-city families straining to hear words of doom. Church leader Yisrael Hawkins stands at a podium surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards. Hawkins's message is that the world is ending and that he is one of two Witnesses prophesied in the Book of Revelation. According to Scripture, these Witnesses will have powers to nearly destroy the world--a claim that gives Hawkins, a former cop and rockabilly bandleader, something of a messiah status to true believers.
Hawkins built his following by holding forth on the Internet and by buying time on public-access TV channels in 90 cities. Hawkins runs his doomsday cult as a business: he sells mobile homes to the faithful--but they reportedly forfeit the trailer, without getting their money back, if they leave the group. He also seems to hold a frightening degree of control over his followers. Many have pierced their ears as a sign of loyalty, and more than 200 of them have legally changed their names to Hawkins in the past year. "We believe that unless we follow the teachings of our leader, the world as we know it may end," says Shaul Hawkins. Abilene police would like to investigate reports of weapons stored on Yahweh's grounds but are reluctant to enter the compound. Hawkins's followers, they say, learned survival skills from the Posse Comitatus, which in the 1980s was one of America's most violent militia groups. Several former posse members live on the compound.
As the millennial sideshow puts up its tents, such cross-fertilization is likely to increase. For this is the golden age of the doomsday industry. And as frightening as their coercive techniques may be, the success of such groups lies ultimately in their ability to tap into basic anxieties about the age ahead.
The Total Overcomers were not alone. There are thousands of cultlike sects headquartered throughout the country--many of which are a dangerous blend of apocalyptic theories, mind control and paranoia. A sample of groups:
1. The Brotherhood. A nomadic group founded in the '70s, its members live according to out-of-context Biblical passages. Members are poor and often eat out of garbage cans.
2. International Churches of Christ. The group has been barred from recruiting on many college campuses because, critics say, it blackmails those who try to leave the sect.
3. Church Universal and Triumphant. Long preparing for the world's end, this group has allegedly been stockpiling weapons since 1974 and has built several bomb shelters.
4. Church of Christ. Pastor Pete Peters uses Scriptures to advocate white supremacy and the execution of gays and to preach against Jews and the "new world order."
5. Ananda Marga. "Path to bliss" made headlines in the 1970s when its founder was jailed on conspiracy-to-murder charges. Some followers lit themselves on fire.
6. House of Yahweh. The leader claims that his arrival was prophesied in the Bible, that the world's end is near and that he offers the only path to salvation.
7. The Way International. Once in decline, this group is growing. Former members tell of sexual abuse in the ranks, paramilitary training and food deprivation.
8. Nation of Yahweh. The leader of this group--which preaches that blacks are the true Jews--is in prison under the federal racketeering law for murder and arson.
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