Anniversary of Waco Assault
Rev. Douglas Olds
19 April 2020
Today is the 27th anniversary of the final assault on the Branch Davidian Compound at #Waco after a 51 day FBI siege.
75 people died, including 1/3 of them innocent children.
There is currently a Netflix series on the Waco Siege that is fairly well done in dramatizing the failures and overreach of the American Government. As a Christian, I found more to question regarding the series' sympathetic treatment of David Koresh and his adult followers. Koresh focused on disputed end-times scripture without a diligent immersion into and understanding of the full Biblical witness. He leaped to historical conclusions that were tragically unwarranted. His followers gave up their autonomy to place themselves under a charismatic delusional leader. The episode should caution anyone against the delusions of military eschatology. Christ will come again with a sword, but that sword is his Word, not paramilitary force and adventurism.
Moreover, as the television series portrays, Koresh asserted the right to private sexual profligacy, contrary to the commandments against adultery and defiling his own marriage bed and that of others contrary to Hebrews 13.4. His predatory fecundity also conflicts with Jesus's words that there will be no progeny in the culmination of the Age (Mark 12.25). Koresh was deluded in so many ways--sexually, Biblically, violently-- and he led his deluded followers into a theological box canyon in which the comparably deluded agents of government picked them off by fire.
The truth is that the Kingdom of Heaven is ontologically peaceful in both its preparation and its realization. Avoid all gun-bearers and sexual libertines--esp. those who claim God's warrant!
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