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By Root 560 0

TX 75041 U.S.A. I guarantee this on my life.” What would God look like? Not surprisingly, he would look like Chen, only he would be able to walk through walls, speak numerous languages, and clone himself into as many copies as necessary to greet anyone who came into the home that day. Exactly one year later—March 31, 1999—the chosen few were to travel to a rendezvous point on the shores of Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana, from where they would board flying saucers to take them to heaven, with a brief stopover at Mars. Chen and several followers went so far as to go to Gary, Indiana, in January 1998 to perform a “purification ceremony” involving rice, fruit, and ceramic dragons, all in the bone-chilling thirty-seven-degree waters of Lake Michigan. In 1997 they traveled through British Columbia and into Alaska, in a quest to find a six-foot-tall, twenty-eight-year old man who looked like Abraham Lincoln, but whom Chen described as the “Jesus of the West.” But there was no available account of what they did on the March 31, 1999, date.

Like so many other New Age religions, God’s Salvation Church grew out of a cultural milieu fascinated by UFOs. They moved to Texas from Taiwan in the summer of 1997, purchasing over thirty homes for about $500,000 in cash, and moved in about 150 of the faithful. They dressed completely in white, including white cowboy hats and white tennis shoes. Members were told by their leader that he talks to God through a diamond ring on his hand and receives divine messages through golden balls floating in the sky. Why Garland, Texas? Because, the forty-two-year-old “Teacher Chen” (as he is known) explained, it sounds like “God’s Land.” The other reason, Chen continued, is that in 1999 Asia will succumb to a nuclear holocaust he calls the “Great Tribulation.” Proof of the coming disaster, he says, can be seen in the recent storms, fires, and economic problems experienced in Asia. Galactic goings on, not El Nino, are the cause of the severe storms in Asia and America, he explained.

As doomsday grew closer, Chen predicted that God would appear on Channel 18 at 12:01 A.M. on Wednesday, March 25, 1997. When God was a no-show, Chen recanted his prophecy and said that his prediction that God would appear in Garland was “nonsense.” With that the media hype was over and the more than one hundred reporters went their separate ways, assuming that a Heaven’s Gate replay was unlikely. But Chen’s followers remain undaunted. Chin-Hung Chiang, for example, explained that the world actually did end, spiritually: “The world of the spiritual is invisible. It’s very difficult to explain what is going on.”

Even those who help bring about their own apocalyptic end—Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, and Waco come to mind—there is often a positive spin put on the ultimate outcome. Jim Jones told his flock on November 18, 1978 (as can be heard in the shocking audiotape with screams in the background): “I’m glad it’s over. Hurry, hurry my children … . No more pain … . Death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you you’d be glad to be stepping over tonight … . This is a revolutionary suicide. It’s not a self-destructive suicide.” Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven’s Gate group were the epitome of this brand of apocalyptic spin doctoring. As we all saw in the videotaped final interviews with the suicidal members, they were gleefully looking forward to their passage on a UFO to The Evolutionary Level Above Humans, where there would be no gender, no need for food or sustenance, and “an eternal body—an everlasting body.” Heaven’s Gate is the passageway to this next level, “a transitional training ground—a proving ground for potential new members of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Destruction-redemption.

The most apocalyptic guru of them all was David Koresh, who believed he was God’s representative on Earth and as such he would lead his people to the promised land—but only after a great conflagration. As cult expert Richard Abanes concluded from his study of the Branch Davidians: “Koresh would