THE ANTI-CULT WAR IN WACO!
DO 2854 3/93
1. I've been praying for poor David Koresh and his people, and I hope you have too, because I know how they lie about us and how they persecute us. Those agents of the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) made a literally unprovoked, armed assault on that compound, and God knows how many they killed inside! It seems like the government ended up getting the worst end of it, though, with four of their men killed and 16 wounded. (Editor: It has now been announced that six people were killed inside the compound.) So they really got taught a lesson, and reaped the violence and destruction they sowed. Even if it is an armed camp, you don't go in there with your guns blazing when there are about 40-some women and 40-some children and all these other people in there who were keeping the peace, being perfectly peaceful and not doing anybody any harm. Imagine, they attacked them with helicopters and 100 heavily armed men!
2. The authorities have been giving all kinds of excuses for why they did it. Their first excuse was because the Davidians had stockpiled arms. Goodnight, nearly everybody in the U.S. nowadays is stockpiling arms to protect themselves from the unsafe conditions of the streets, and even home invasions now, where gangs invade people's homes using a woman as a front to knock at the door. Especially in Texas, you can hardly find a home that doesn't have a gun or guns, and if you put that many homes and people together--over 100 men, women and children--they're bound to have a lot of guns.--Especially if they want to protect themselves from known enemies. The ridiculous thing is that instead of blaming the government for how careless they are in letting guns be sold so freely and not cracking down on it, they blame the people who've gotten the guns! They blame people for buying them, when they're the ones that are selling them!
3. So the government's first excuse was that they were stockpiling arms. That was their excuse for attacking them in a shooting war! So what could they expect when they were blazing away at the people inside? That's what those people had been stockpiling arms for, to defend themselves against an attack, and they did! They probably thought they needed to have arms to protect themselves from criminals as the days got worse, but it turned out the government attacked them instead! Well, the government got the worst end of it. In fact, the raid is now being criticized as a big mistake, a big boo-boo. (Editor: One writer said the issue isn't that Koresh has claimed to be Jesus, but that the federal government thinks it's God!--Ha! Civil libertarians are protesting the government's attack on freedom of religion, gun owners are saying the weapons charges are fabricated, and criticism of the government has been mounting as the federal siege of the compound continues.)
4. And did you hear the latest excuse the BATF cooked up about why they decided to attack them? (Fam: Because they thought that they were all going to commit mass suicide?) Yes. But they never said a word about this until six days after they made their first attack. They found out they had to come up with a better excuse to go in there shooting than just the fact the group was stockpiling arms. So on the sixth day after the fact they said, "Well, the reason we really attacked was because we wanted to try to save all those men, women and children from committing mass suicide like Jonestown."
5. We know what lies and persecution are like, and how wild and vicious our enemies are. They'll use the press to get the public so hyped up and so fearful that they'll believe almost any lie against us. It's the Devil that breeds fear in them. Just because we're not just like them, they're afraid. But thank God we're not like them and their children! They've got enough to be afraid of with their own children! They wonder why they're turning out all these criminals! Well, they kicked out God and the Bible and everything Christian, so what do they expect? They sowed the wind and they've reaped the whirlwind! (Hos.8:7).
6. But despite their own violence, the Devil's got to divert their attention somehow toward the cults! And of course this situation with the Davidians will be just another big diversion and another excuse to put out all kinds of bad news about cults and rear again the ugly "fear-of-cults" monster in the media. The ACs love that! They just love to accuse Christians of being cults.
7. And guess who's there in Waco advising the FBI and counselling them on how to handle the Davidians?--CAN, the Cult Awareness Network!--Which is AC-run and financed and anti-Christ as it can be! They're supposed to be telling them how to handle cults?--They're probably telling them to go in and mow'm all down!
8. Well, I hope you've been praying for those poor people, and those poor little kids in the compound. I sure have. And maybe we need to pray even harder for the children that came out, because they'll probably never see their parents again. (Maria: One lone word of a social service worker managed to get out before the authorities squelched it, that the children were found in very good shape emotionally and physically.) Yes, the children were in great shape. They weren't starving, they weren't committing suicide, they weren't in bad shape emotionally. They were probably more emotional because of having to leave their parents behind than anything else. And now they'll go into foster homes and state "care."
9. So I hope you feel sorry for them, and I hope you're praying for them, because it's a really pitiful case. As long as Koresh is alive, I don't know whether they would ever surrender or not. If they do, they'll all go to jail, so it's kind of a no-win situation. Of course, if Koresh stays there and fights it out, they'll be held responsible by the general public and judged guilty of all the things they've been accused of, and there will be much greater loss of life.
10. He says he's waiting to hear from God, so let's pray he will hear and will make the right decision.--And about the only peaceful one he can make is to surrender.--Which probably means jail for all of them, and all the parents considered "unfit" for having the kids at all.
11. So please pray for those poor people. We know what it's like to be persecuted and lied about as they have been. Of course, we haven't been persecuted quite that much yet, but the day may come when we will be.
* * *
More Comments on the Branch Davidians
12. The authorities are trying to cover for their failed attempt to flush out the Branch Davidians. They thought they were going to get them so easily, so now they're humiliated and are trying to make this group sound even worse. They have to really make them sound bad to try to justify their own poor judgment in attacking them.
13. They arrested two women in their 70's that came out and charged them with murder, if that isn't ridiculous!--As though those two old ladies were in there shooting guns! (Editor: One of these women was legally blind! Murder charges were later dropped, and the authorities are now holding both women as "material witnesses."--Which means they don't have anything to charge them with, but don't want to let them go yet.) The authorities are just so frustrated and so mad, they wanted to get revenge! I'll tell you, the System is like a cornered beast when it's frustrated; it'll strike out at anything. They're expending their frustration on the people they can get ahold of. God knows what they'll do to the children who've come out--it's a wonder they don't charge them with murder. That's the way the System is, anything to cover up its own mistakes.
14. The U.S. is supposed to be such a democratic society. You're supposed to be able to say what you want, believe what you want and have religious liberty. But then some people don't have any liberty at all, depending on what they believe and what they say!
* * *
15. (Maria: Even if Koresh and his group are a little bit odd, there are a lot of odd people in the world who have some followers. But people get so up in arms and outraged over people who are different, they think they've got to "rescue" them from their differences. But when it comes to rescuing people from crime and all kinds of other things, they don't get so up in arms about it; just when it comes to "rescuing them from a cult!") It's just the Devil using that as an excuse to attack the Lord's children. It appears that the Davidians love the Lord. Koresh is glorifying the name of Jesus, and glorifying God too. He says he's waiting to hear from God.
16. They try to get away from the System and the System won't leave them alone! Bless those poor people, Lord, and help them! Get them out of that mess somehow. You can even make the persecution a blessing as You have for us.
* * *
17. To attack people who were just living there minding their own business and going about their own religion is worse than the Nazis or the communists! This whole thing is showing the foolishness of the System and what fools they made of themselves in going about it in such a foolish, cruel way, when they knew there were all those guns inside. They thought they were going to become heroes and "save" all these people and grab their guns, but they had the tables turned on them. To shoot their way into a situation like that, where they knew there were all those women and children, was absolutely ridiculous! The federal authorities have made such fools of themselves over this incident that now they've got to do something to justify themselves.
18. Just last year the local authorities came to investigate the Davidians for alleged abuse of children. They took David Koresh off to the police station to question him, and they went in and examined the children, and decided that the adults were not guilty of child abuse, so they couldn't get them on that count. So they had to cook up another excuse to try to get them: Because they were stockpiling weapons.
19. From all we've heard, they seem to be good, sincere people, but apparently they're misled on some things. It seems David Koresh had a very violent bent for a long time. The story that's told about his background is that he split off from the Branch Davidians 8 or 9 years ago to head a different faction. (And the Davidians themselves had split off from the Seventh-day Adventists about 60 years ago.) Then there was some rivalry between Koresh's faction and the main group of Davidians, culminating in a shoot-out between the opposing factions. They say that David shot the other guy, and he and some of his friends were taken to court, but that it was all finally dismissed. He may have pleaded self-defense or something like that. So it looks like that group's been used to guns for quite awhile.
20. He may refuse to be taken alive! I don't think it was very wise of Koresh to be so impudent and challenge the FBI to come and get him. Of course, you don't really know if the FBI and the media are telling the truth or not! We don't know what he's really saying.
21. The world is believing what it wants to believe, and there are plenty of people like CAN and the ACs and our enemies who are very happy to feed them all the lies they want to believe. Out of the mouth of the dragon there is pouring a flood of propaganda, and the earth is sure swallowing it!
22. Think of all the real criminals there are running around loose, and here they're tying up hundreds of federal agents surrounding those poor innocent people who wouldn't have shot anybody if they hadn't been attacked! But that's the American government and the American people for you--violence is always the answer to everything. (See also The Waco Tragedy, ML #2859, pg.___.)
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family