2 of 4
To be sure, Newport is not the first scholar to insist that we must take the theological views of David Koresh and his followers with utmost seriousness if we are to understand what happened during those fateful days that led to the great fire of April 19, 1993. James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher, whose book on Waco I reviewed in the very first issue of Books & Culture,1 argued at length that the Waco tragedy was largely the fault of federal agents who systematically misunderstood Koresh's beliefs, and therefore his intentions, in the lengthy negotiations that led to their decision to raid the compound. But Newport is not willing to lay the blame squarely on the government negotiators. This interpretation too, he is convinced, is based on a failure to grasp the full significance of the theological system that was—and is—at work among the Branch Davidians.
It is hard to imagine a more thorough exposition of Koresh's teachings than what Newport provides. Indeed, he offers 170-plus pages of theological background before getting around to the specifics of Koresh's thought. Newport manages to provide a fairly clear structure to a theological story that includes many esoteric interpretations of myriad passages in the biblical books of Daniel, Isaiah, Zechariah, Revelation and the like—esoteric, I might add, even for those of us who were once schooled in the detailed notes of the Scofield Bible! And woven into this complex theological narrative are many plots and subplots about power struggles among various leaders.
But the overall pattern of doctrinal development is made clear. For Newport's purposes, the basic story begins with early Seventh-day Adventist teachings, particularly Ellen White's scheme for interpreting Bible prophecy. Victor Houteff, who saw himself as refining White's interpretations, established a splinter group in the 1920s that originally called themselves the "Shepherd's Rod" movement, but eventually adopted the label "Davidian," to signal the central importance in their thinking of the biblical motif of the Kingdom of David. When Houteff died, his wife, Florence, took over the leadership, but her authority suffered a fatal blow when she predicted that major end-time events would occur "on or about" April 22, 1959. Clearly disillusioned when her prophecy failed, she and her leadership team not only acknowledged that they had been wrong on the specifics but went much further: they had come to see that there were serious flaws both in their own movement's approach to biblical interpretation and in the larger Adventist system from which they had derived their basics. In March 1962, Florence Houteff and her trustees simply disbanded the community headquartered in the Texas compound that was later to become the home of the Koresh movement.
There was a group, however, who remained loyal to Victor Houteff's pre-Florence teachings. They set up shop in Riverside, California, and their movement still operates, maintaining, for example, a web archive of Houteff's writings.2 Much more significant for Newport's story, however, is the group headed by Ben Roden, who soon laid claim to the Mt. Carmel property near Waco, Texas. Roden adopted the name "Branch Davidian" for his offshoot, a reference to the prophecy in Zechariah 6:12 (KJV): "Behold the man whose name is THE BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD."
The Davidian movement's use of biblical references of this sort has to be understood in the context of general theology of types and antitypes in the Scriptures. The ancient Kingdom of David, for example, was a temporal-physical phenomenon that pointed beyond itself to a future end-time Kingdom of Christ, the Son of David. But in the last days God would raise up an antitype of the ancient David, who would assume a kingly role: Victor Houteff claimed this role for himself, as did David Koresh. Both also saw themselves as present-day antitypes of the likes of Elijah and John the Baptist—and of "THE BRANCH" of Zechariah's prophecy.
share this page
RSS Feed
