| Author | Message | ||
| Jude the Obscure |
From Newsweek 27 Mar 00, page 45: ***************** Joseph Kibweterie, who called himself a bishop, said the world would end on Dec. 31, 1999. When that didn't happen, he changed the date to Dec. 31, 2000. Then he gave new instructions to his followers in a cult called the Church of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. "He told believers to sell off their possessions and prepare to go to heaven," said a policeman. Last Friday, Kibweterie herded his flock into a small church in the hinterlands of Uganda. Witnesses smelled gasoline, and then the church exploded in flames. The bodies were burned so badly that they couldn't be counted precisely; it wasn't clear whether Kibweterie himself had died. Some estimates put the number of dead at more than 235. As modern mass suicides go, it ranked second only to the 914 followers of an American cult leader, the Rev. Jim Jones, who died in Guyana in 1978. And in Uganda, a country racked by AIDS and atrocities dating back to the dictator Idi Amin, the horror was only too familiar. ***************** What do you think? Any Seventh-day Adventists involved? Jude | ||
| Lynn W |
Jude, I don't know the answer to that, but when I first heard about it on the news, I immediately turned to my husband and said, "I'd bet money they were SDA." There's a web-site somewhere that tells about the slaughter of SDAs by SDAs in Uganda. I wonder if they've written anything about it. I also wonder why we haven't heard much more about it. With Jim Jones, we heard about it for a long time. Then they made a movie about it. | ||
| Darrell |
The leader is an excommunicated Catholic priest who claims to have seen visions of the virgin Mary. Apparently the murders came about because people started asking for their money back when the "prophecy" of the end of the world failed. It doesn't sound to me like it was former Adventists. | ||
| Lynn W |
Thanks, Darrell, for setting us straight. Interesting title though - Church of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. | ||
| Bruce H |
I wonder if we should put this in the (CAN THE LAW MAKE YOU SIN) category |
