False prophets and false Christ’s will make the scene in the last days. There was Prophet Jim Jones of the terrible Guyana tragedy on November 18, 1978 when he lied to his followers and convinced them (or commanded them) to drink Kool-aid laced with poison. 913 people were found dead, including Jim Jones. Jones thought he was the re-incarnated Christ.
All I can say is, “It is appointed unto men once to die but after this the judgment.” In his case, it may well have been more judgment than for others.
And there have been others. David Koresh of the Branch Davidians and the Waco, TX, shootout in April of 1993. When David Koresh (Vernon Wayne Howell) was 19 years old he (supposedly) became a born-again Christian in the Southern Baptist Church but soon joined his mother’s church, the Seventh Day Adventist Church. There he fell in love with the pastor’s daughter and while praying for guidance he opened his eyes and found the bible open at Isaiah 34 which stated that none should want for a mate; convinced this was a sign from God he approached the pastor and told him that God wanted him to have his daughter for a wife. The pastor threw him out, and when he continued to persist with his pursuit of the daughter he was expelled from the church.
In 1981 when he was 22 he moved to Waco, Texas where he joined the Branch Davidians. From there it was apparently all downhill. And Koresh took 80 people with him to their deaths on April 19, 1993.
And one of the latest to hit the scene is De Jesus from Puerto Rico. In the eyes of his flock, Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda is, in fact, the second coming of Christ. As the head of the Growing in Grace International Ministry, he presides over a sprawling organization that includes more than 300 congregations in two dozen countries, from Argentina to Australia. He counts more than 100,000 followers and claims to reach millions more through a 24-hour TV channel, a radio show and several Web sites. He is supported by the generosity of his devotees, who have launched some 450 businesses to pour cash into Growing in Grace’s coffers. Though de Jesus’ followers worship him, others denounce him as a charlatan.
De Jesus, 60, spent his youth drifting from the Roman Catholics to the Pentecostals to the Baptists. Then one night in 1973, he says, he awoke to a vision of two hulking men at his bedside who announced the arrival of the Lord, who, says de Jesus, "came to me and integrated with me." In the early years after founding Growing in Grace in Miami in 1986, de Jesus didn’t claim to be Christ. Instead, he worked as a pastor spreading his doctrine: that
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