"If the Bible is true, then I"m Christ.
Welcome to the thoughts of one named Vernon Howell. America knows him better as David Koresh. Anyone even half way familiar with current events knows the David Koresh that the media portrayed before the compound went up in flames on April 19, 1993, but what was David Koresh like up to the events leading to this event? After reading this paper one should have a better understanding of David Koresh as a person and his religious ideas.
David Koresh was born to a single mother in Houston, Texas in 1959. Growing up he was an indifferent student, yet very interested in the Bible and it's teachings. He spent hours on end as a teenager memorizing Bible passages word for word. His next love to the Bible was playing the guitar. Later on in life he would use these two acquired talents to recruit his followers. Koresh's religious experiences picked up its pace after he dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. He was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, yet he felt more at home as a radical thinking teenager in the teachings of a spin off known as the Branch Davidians. One should be aware that Koresh did not create the Branch Davidian cult. Their roots trace back to Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian immigrant who was expelled from an L.A. church in 1929. Houteff's main interest was passages found in the Book of Ezekiel. These passages dealt with an angel of God separating the faithful from the sinful right before Jerusalem's fall to the Babylonians. Houteff created a spin-off congregation in 1935 on the outskirts of Waco. From this action begins the cycle of cult leaders in Waco.
After 20 years of leading his cult Florence, the wife of the now deceased Houteff, took over the branch. She controlled it for about five years until it broke up after failing to accurately predict the beginning of the end of the world. This occurred on April 22, 1959.