By Rey Moreno
Filipinos believe strongly in miracles. I remember when I was a boy a rumour was circulating of an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the window of a bungalow-style home in the north side of the town proper. One night some of our neighbours decided to check out if it was true. I tagged along. Not surprisingly, there were so many people mingling on the street as they were not allowed to close in. Still the excitement was palpable. Words spread out that there was a tear flowing down on Mary’s cheek. I stretched my neck and opened my eyes wide to glimpse it. No luck. Then people started praying the rosary. In their hearts, they were hoping the miracle would touch their lives favourably.
The Catholic Church allows miracles to pervasively influence the thinking of its congregants as a reminder of God’s power and glory. They can be the antidote of the growing concern that God is mostly indifferent and silent in our affairs. To further alleviate the concern, the Catholic Church has ordained more than ten thousand saints as surrogates for divine intervention. Then came along the spiritual healers, legitimate or otherwise, who peddle their healing power with monetary compensation.
No wonder we have been conditioned as much that we become vulnerable to the sway of the false messiahs. I think about this because of the arrest of a pastor in the Philippines on charges of child and sexual abuse and allegations of human trafficking. He is also wanted in the United States on charges of sex trafficking and bulk cash smuggling. I heard a few “rouge messiahs” in the United States but not in the Philippines. Understanding how they come about is worth the time and effort, I think.
As I tend to do, I hugely rely on books to help me in this search for knowledge. Lucky me there is a book handily available in my home library. It was written by Colin Wilson entitled Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors (2000). Let’s dig in.
The book contains the outlandish claims and disturbing stories of twenty five self-proclaimed messiahs in the last three centuries. But I will only mention these three impostors.
Sabbatai Zevi
Europe, in early 1666, was excitedly waiting for the coming of a forty- year old Messiah from Smyrna named Sabbatai Zevi who would lead the Jewish people in battle against the Sultan of Turkey and restore their freedom and greatness. The anticipation of this historical moment was born out of a Millennium prophecy that a Messiah would finally arrive after two thousand years of waiting. When Sabbatai arrived in Constantinople in February, however, he was promptly jailed. Upon being threatened to be impaled alive, Zevi, according to the rumour, threw his Jewish cap to the ground and spat on it. Then he converted to Islam.
In all the remarkable transformation of Zevi from an unknown ordinary Jew to a Messiah, one person played an important role. His name was Nathan Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi’s belief in Zevi as the Messiah was total and he was able to convince Zevi and the Jewish people that in fact Zevi was the true Messiah. Why was Ashkenazi, described as “a brilliant, eloquent, profoundly religious, a born organizer”, completely taken with the dubious character of Zevi?
According to Wilson, it is because “Sabbatai seemed to be in the grip of some force greater than himself. When the force possessed him, he became transformed. Nathan was an intellectual, who suffered from our modern complaint: self-division, Hamlet’s disease. But when Sabbatai became ‘possessed,’ he seemed to become an instrument in the power of God.”
Vernon Wayne Howell (famously known as David Koresh)
Howell had a difficult boyhood while being raised by a harsh step-father. He suffered from dyslexia and bullied constantly because of his small stature. However, he found safe haven in religion with the Seventh Day Adventists. By twelve years old, he knew the New Testament by heart. He also found his domineering and control-freak nature when he won his school’s running race competition. He was held a sports hero. From then on, he was consumed with physical strength and body-building activities. Turning into adulthood, he diverted his attention to the “conquest” of the opposite sex and became tormented when he was unable to get whatever he desired. Yet he always came back to religion for a purpose in life. He joined the Branch Davidian sect in Mount Carmel, Texas near Waco. He took over from George Roden who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Dale Adair. Adair claimed to be the messiah and Roden tested that claim by splitting Adair’s skull with an ax. In five years, Howell, as David Koresh, became the absolute leader of more than a hundred followers with a dozen or so of heavily-armed guards. He also claimed most of the female members as his wives, telling them that God ordered him to “give his seed”. For the male followers, he explained that “none of you men know the pain I endure to do God’s work. I get tired, I suffer.” The result of this divinely-command lust would come to twenty-two children. Soon the sect was in confrontation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). On the early afternoon of April 19, 1993, ATF agents assaulted the Branch Davidian compound. Fire ensued and engulfed the building where Koresh and his followers were ensconced. Except for nine members who were able to escape the siege, Koresh and his followers had died of smoke inhalation, cyanide poisoning or gunshot wounds. Why did they choose death?
Jim Jones
Jones ran the People’s Temple in Redwood Valley with over a thousand members. The first impressions of his ministry were good. Congregants were entertained with first-class singing to get them in the mood. Then the children choir followed with their angelic voices. But what really drove the people in joining the People’s Temple was Jones’s healing power. There was this story of an eight-year old boy who collapsed with a heart ailment. He was brought to the hospital but the doctor, who examined the child, found no ailment. Jones intervened and the child’s heart problem simply vanished. Another story was that of a woman suffering with stomach cancer. Jones instructed a nurse to accompany the woman to the toilet. The nurse came out holding a mass of smelly flesh that the woman defecated. As Jones became paranoid, he closed his ministry from the public. Then he harangued his congregants for long hours with sermons of impending doom and destruction. He was so obsessed with sex, yet he complained of getting tired of women “begging me to fuck them. The next woman will get a fucking like she’s never had before. My organ is so big she’ll sore for a week.” He resettled his people in Jonestown, Guyana, in South America, which he called the Promised Land. Instead, more than nine hundred people committed mass suicide from cyanide poisoning. Jones shot himself.
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From the stories of these three men, it is apparent that they were “driven by two basic human needs, power and sex.” Like the evil geniuses as they were, they used religion as their instrument to achieve them. With their mastery of the bible, they started their ministries convincing and attracting would-be believers with well-selected and relevant phrases and words that resonated strongly to the emptiness of these people’s lives. Once they were sucked in, they then resorted to brainwashing, threat of violence, constant bullying, limiting access and restricting contact with people outside of the church. Of course, these three “saviours” would not succeed without the help of enablers. They were fully invested in their commitment and turned a blind eye to the despicable behaviour of their masters. In this psychology of discipleship, “they want to find someone in whom they can believe as unreservedly as saints believe in God, and on whom they can transfer all their longings for a golden age and a life without moral responsibility. They are like romantic women looking for an ideal husband, and once they have found him, nothing will convince them that he is anything less than perfect.” They would follow wherever their masters would lead them, including death and destruction. Being in the cult, it was extremely difficult to get out. Terrible as it might seem, they still found redemption in obedience and in the company of their community. They belonged in life and in death. They were convinced that what was offered to them was the true way of life. Their lives that were once boring came alive and found a purpose. There’s no way they would come back to a life full of holes, only to mark time day in and day out. They wanted change, a new reality in which these rouge messiahs cleverly exploited in God’s name. They believed “that God always worked through the prophets, and that God had granted him special insight into the Book of Revelation.” There will be no end to this false longing of a messiah. People will always fall victims from the charisma of a saviour who can tap on the emptiness of their heart, their moment of vulnerability, their emotional and psychological needs, and their inadequacies.
Are they to be pitied? Or should we understand them better?
20 November 2024