Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grin
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron macke for.
Speaker 2: The best experience listen with headphones. This is a bonus
Speaker 2: episode of season three of Strange Arrivals. Bonus episodes feature
Speaker 2: interviews that I conducted during my research, but that I
Speaker 2: either didn't use or used sparingly in the main episodes.
Speaker 2: There were great conversations that, for one reason or another,
Speaker 2: didn't make the cut, but I think they add valuable
Speaker 2: perspective to the ideas we explored this season. I had
Speaker 2: originally planned to do a couple of episodes during season
Speaker 2: three on the Heaven's Gate group that committed mass suicide
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven, but as my research continued and
Speaker 2: the season took shape, I realized that Heaven's Gate didn't
Speaker 2: quite fit into the larger narrative. In the meantime, though
Speaker 2: I had conduct I did two interviews with leading Heaven's
Speaker 2: Gate scholars, so this week and next we'll present those interviews.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of podcasts and documentaries on Heaven's Gate,
Speaker 2: so if you've seen or listened to one or more
Speaker 2: of those, I think this will give you some great insight.
Speaker 2: If you aren't familiar with Heaven's Gate, this will introduce
Speaker 2: you to some of the issues surrounding the group and
Speaker 2: what they believed. In this episode, I talked with George Crisidis,
Speaker 2: who is an honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at
Speaker 2: York Saint John University in England.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm George Crosidas and I'm currently an honorary research
Speaker 1: fellow at Yorks and John University in England. I used
Speaker 1: to be Head of Religious Studies at the University of
Speaker 1: Wolverhampton until I've retired in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 1: since then I've been doing quite a bit of writing,
Speaker 1: mainly on new religious movements, and I published quite a
Speaker 1: bit on Heaven's Gate as well as other U four religions.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about the formation of
Speaker 2: Heaven's Gate and what the two founders sort of brought
Speaker 2: to it at the beginning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, the two founders when a man and a woman,
Speaker 1: Marshall Heath Applewhite, known variously as Door or as well.
Speaker 1: They the two of them assumed various pseudonyms born Peak,
Speaker 1: Guinea and Pig and finally Tea and the Door, which
Speaker 1: would talk about Bonnie Nettles was the other half. The
Speaker 1: relationship was a platonic one, not in any way an
Speaker 1: amorus one. Bonnie Nettles was the older member of the pair.
Speaker 1: She was a nurse, and she was interested in theosophical beliefs.
Speaker 1: The Theosophical Society is perhaps not so well known today,
Speaker 1: but it's an organization that deals mainly with giving lectures
Speaker 1: on well, anything other than Christian ideas. Really, Nettles was
Speaker 1: particularly interested in channeling, which is communication with spirits, some
Speaker 1: of the spirits being extraterrestrials. She came from a Baptist
Speaker 1: family evidently, but doesn't appear to be much interested in
Speaker 1: mainstream Christian beliefs. The Theosophists were interested in pretty well
Speaker 1: anything other than Christianity, so it was a way of
Speaker 1: exploring other philosophies and points of view. Bonnielo Nettles met
Speaker 1: Marshall apple White in a hospital. The circumstances of that
Speaker 1: aren't clear. Some people say he was a patient, some
Speaker 1: people say he was just visiting. We don't know for
Speaker 1: sure that happened and in nineteen seventy two. Apple White
Speaker 1: was a musician. He was a professor of music at
Speaker 1: the University of Saint Thomas in Texas. His father was
Speaker 1: a Christian minister, and he had studied or he had
Speaker 1: attended theological seminary for a term, which is a bit
Speaker 1: surprising given his interpretation at the Bible. But I was
Speaker 1: at a seminary myself, and there were some people with
Speaker 1: some strange views there. So anyway, when the two of
Speaker 1: them met up, they decided that they had things in
Speaker 1: common and that they had a special mission. And in particular,
Speaker 1: they claimed that they were the two witnesses that I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Book of Revelation. So the Book of
Speaker 1: Revelation is always a good book for inspiring all sorts
Speaker 1: of different and novel ideas. They claimed that there were
Speaker 1: the two witnesses. They started by trial traveling around the country,
Speaker 1: leaving not saying to people sometimes they sick them in tupet,
Speaker 1: saying the two witnesses are here. And they didn't make
Speaker 1: terribly much headway that way. They did this traveling in
Speaker 1: a higher car which they failed to return to the owners,
Speaker 1: and both of them were in prison for fraud for
Speaker 1: a short period. So it was evidently in that time
Speaker 1: in prison that apple White developed his ideas about euphology.
Speaker 1: And brought together the worldview that they're kind of famous
Speaker 1: or notorious for. They got together again once they were freed,
Speaker 1: and they started organizing public meetings, and the public meetings
Speaker 1: said do you want to know about UFOs, they really
Speaker 1: are here, or words to that effect. And then one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about their lecture series was that
Speaker 1: they said, this is not a discussion about UFOs. And
Speaker 1: that's a key thing I think about new religious leaders.
Speaker 1: Things have never matters of discussion. The confident they know
Speaker 1: and they are ours curiosity, And I think again curiosity
Speaker 1: is a key factor in the development of Heaven's Gate
Speaker 1: and indeed in quite a number of new religions. And
Speaker 1: if you tell people that that's something is the case.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the same in the advertising industry. Advertisers
Speaker 1: evident they are better off saying could this be an
Speaker 1: effective cure for arthritis or whatever, rather than saying, definitely
Speaker 1: it is, And then people get hooked. They start want
Speaker 1: being well Willner's work, and they joined to find out.
Speaker 1: So I don't know exactly how many people attended these lectures.
Speaker 1: I think the audience is vary depending on the venue,
Speaker 1: but they attracted a following and they took them on
Speaker 1: various locations where they camped and they became a community.
Speaker 1: There were as many as two hundred at its peak.
Speaker 1: Now that may sound a lot, but when you compare
Speaker 1: it with other new religious movements, the Raelian movement, probably
Speaker 1: listeners have heard of Ryl who does all sorts of
Speaker 1: outrageous things and gets people going. They've got ninety nine
Speaker 1: thousand followers at the last count, So by comparison, Heaven's
Speaker 1: Gate was small. And the two hundred drops to thirty
Speaker 1: nine who were the ones that finally committed suicide, So
Speaker 1: it was a very small group. It probably would have
Speaker 1: they didn't do insignificance if that disaster hadn't happened. The
Speaker 1: community dispersed. At one point they had organized their public meetings,
Speaker 1: they had set up their camps, but then they were
Speaker 1: told that the various members were to disperse and to
Speaker 1: go and propagate the message whenever they could. And then
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six they set up a remote camp
Speaker 1: in Laramie and Wyoming, and that was when they recalled
Speaker 1: the members of the group. They sent out words somehow
Speaker 1: that they were reassembling, and people came back to this
Speaker 1: camp and it was at that point that they were
Speaker 1: given these rather strange names that people associate the group with.
Speaker 1: They were called things like melody of They've got rather
Speaker 1: strange spellings these names. There was a secord E. It
Speaker 1: was the one that actually left the movement, Glinda d.
Speaker 1: All The names ended in or d y for reasons
Speaker 1: and are totally clear, maybe to sound kind of diminutive.
Speaker 1: They were the kind of children with doors. They're kind
Speaker 1: of parents that might have been it. It's also been
Speaker 1: suggested that because the pair called themselves T and door
Speaker 1: or D was a kind of contraction of door and
Speaker 1: T T so ord why is kind of roughly sound
Speaker 1: equivalent of the two names. We don't know for sure
Speaker 1: what the explanation was, but they were all given these
Speaker 1: special names, and then in the remote champ they would
Speaker 1: organized into groups of two. Each one had a check partner.
Speaker 1: The check partner, as they called him or her, was
Speaker 1: of the opposite sex, but the relationship hadn't to be sexual.
Speaker 1: They were a celibate community, and I mean some of
Speaker 1: them had problems about celibacy. Some of them took drugs
Speaker 1: to control their hormones. Some of them, a few of
Speaker 1: them resorted to surgery, sometimes doing it themselves, whereby they
Speaker 1: removed their testicles. I mean that must have involved quite
Speaker 1: a lot of commitment to be willing to do that.
Speaker 1: It would be extremely painful. I would guess they were
Speaker 1: organized into these peers, and then there was a lot well,
Speaker 1: I should say that in nineteen eighty five that was
Speaker 1: the kind of turning point in the movement because in
Speaker 1: that year Bonnie Nettles died of cancer. Now that's a
Speaker 1: bit of a problem. If you've got the two, then
Speaker 1: you'd left with just one, so what do you do
Speaker 1: with that. The belief was that actually Nettles had gone
Speaker 1: to this next level above human. That was one of
Speaker 1: their key teachings. The next level above human the level
Speaker 1: at which the extraterrestrials lived, and the idea was that
Speaker 1: she had left the body, she was the first of
Speaker 1: those who were about to do the same. They would
Speaker 1: leave the body and be sent up to the next
Speaker 1: level above human. And the belief system was that there
Speaker 1: were the extraterrestrials occupied the level above human. There was
Speaker 1: an adversarial community of fallen at extraterrestrials. They were the Luciferians,
Speaker 1: and then there were the humans. Whose aim was to
Speaker 1: go above the human level, to this level above hum many,
Speaker 1: but not everyone would do that. It was only those
Speaker 1: who were tagged. They were especially chosen individuals that the
Speaker 1: extraterrestrials had been brought together. So that was basically the
Speaker 1: philosophy of the group, and that was the kind of
Speaker 1: background against the mass suicide that happened in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: What are the thoughts about why they decided to disperse
Speaker 2: when they did and then come back. Is there a
Speaker 2: theory about why that happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a theory about why that happened.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things about some new religious
Speaker 1: groups is that the leader can give orders simply to
Speaker 1: test commitment. So there was a lot of that that
Speaker 1: happened in Heaven's Gate. Apple White would tell them to
Speaker 1: do certain things that had no obvious justification, you know,
Speaker 1: when they were in these camps, he would say to them,
Speaker 1: the rule from now on is that no one must speak,
Speaker 1: so they had to communicate in silence, and then that
Speaker 1: wasn't working offly well. So apple White said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you can communicate, but only use one word for what
Speaker 1: you want of your partner. So if you were cooking
Speaker 1: eggs and wanted your partner to pass the eggs, you
Speaker 1: would say eggs, and then that was supposed to be it.
Speaker 1: The partner would know what he or she was meant
Speaker 1: to do. So it's unreasonable behavior to expect the people,
Speaker 1: but it's a kind of test of commitment. If you're
Speaker 1: prepared to do that, then you've demonstrated that you're willing
Speaker 1: to obey your leader. So if you tell the group
Speaker 1: you're going to disperse, then you've kind of demonstrated that
Speaker 1: you're in command. Maybe it was an attempt to kind
Speaker 1: of spread the message there, again, we don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's the opposite of so many of
Speaker 2: the groups that feel the need to sort of sequester
Speaker 2: people and have that kind of day to day control
Speaker 2: and actually get fine people leaving to be traumatic. Did
Speaker 2: you talk about or did they talk about why celibacy
Speaker 2: was a part of their teachings?
Speaker 1: Well, again, these things weren't matters of discussion. So when
Speaker 1: you've got a u religious group, particularly one that's in
Speaker 1: the community, then you kind of channel the command down. Certainly,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, there weren't discussions about these things.
Speaker 1: If apple White taught you to do something, then he
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing. He was the kind of
Speaker 1: messionic figure, so you don't question that. I mean, apple
Speaker 1: White would say things like correct if I'd wore, but
Speaker 1: he didn't really mean that. He really meant he was
Speaker 1: right and he knew it. I think also these kind
Speaker 1: of unreasonable commands, it wasn't something that was particularly Germane
Speaker 1: to Heaven's gage. You get other leaders doing that. David
Speaker 1: Koresh and Wakel would say things like you you mustn't
Speaker 1: eat any chocolate today, and then that's what would happen.
Speaker 1: And particularly if you're saying things that relate to people's diets,
Speaker 1: that is quite an effective way of controlling people. So
Speaker 1: you do tend to get this kind of control in
Speaker 1: your religious groups, particularly when they're in community.
Speaker 2: Interesting. See you had mentioned in our email exchange the
Speaker 2: idea behind charismatic leadership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think anyone really understands charismatic leadership, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I can understand it. The problem
Speaker 1: about charisma is that charisma is not something that people
Speaker 1: haven't got. Charisma has got to be recognized by others, right,
Speaker 1: So it's no good me saying I've got charisma. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty nobody notices that that doesn't make sense. Right,
Speaker 1: So charisma, basically it's an ability to attract followers. But
Speaker 1: that's sort of very helpful because it doesn't explain how
Speaker 1: you can attract followers. So everyone has got to look
Speaker 1: at the kind of ingredients that are in the charismatic leader.
Speaker 1: And I mean, somebody's charisma might be a turn off
Speaker 1: to other people. Certainly, the people that are held up
Speaker 1: as charismatic leaders in new religious movements, as far as
Speaker 1: I'm personally concerned, they are turned off. I mean, we
Speaker 1: all know people that we find really inspiring and others
Speaker 1: are really not inspiring. Having listened to Apple white S lectures,
Speaker 1: I would have to put him in the second category
Speaker 1: from my point of view, the tedious, They're boring. He
Speaker 1: gives a very strange interpretation of the Bible. Onward, he
Speaker 1: knows very little. His teachings come from a combination of
Speaker 1: this belief in UFOs, and then to that he adds
Speaker 1: a kind of biblical justification that's derived from a few
Speaker 1: accounts in the Gospels, some bits of revelation, a little
Speaker 1: bit of Paul and I don't think he ever refers
Speaker 1: to the Old Testament at all, so there's very little
Speaker 1: biblical knowledge, but nonetheless his followers seem to have been
Speaker 1: impressed by that. Partly, I think to be charismatic, you've
Speaker 1: got to have confidence. Psychologists have commented on a new
Speaker 1: religious leaders have often said that they're narcissistic, that they
Speaker 1: have a very firm belief in their own potential and
Speaker 1: qualifications and status, and I think that's true of a lot.
Speaker 1: I think, having looked at a number of charismatic leaders,
Speaker 1: I think there are a few other ingredients that I
Speaker 1: would add. You've got to arouse curiosity. As I said,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that in the study of new
Speaker 1: religions we don't talk about a lot. You've got to
Speaker 1: kind of make people wonder if what you're saying is true,
Speaker 1: but at the same time not question it. And then
Speaker 1: if you can put that across to people, then that's
Speaker 1: part of being a charismatic leader. Controlling people, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: is another one. If you can give commands that they've
Speaker 1: got to obey. I think also the scholar David Brombley
Speaker 1: says that it's important for these leaders to maintain their
Speaker 1: charisma so in other words, you've got to make sure
Speaker 1: that there's nobody that assurps your authority. So in the
Speaker 1: case of Apple White and Metals, they were the only
Speaker 1: ones that had communication with the extraterrestrials. So that was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they made it clear this
Speaker 1: is not a UFO spotting group, because once you do that,
Speaker 1: then other members are going to say, well, I've had
Speaker 1: messages from the extraterrestrials. And once you do that, once
Speaker 1: you democratize the channel of communication with the ETS, then
Speaker 1: you've lost control. In fact, Rile they leader of the Aralians,
Speaker 1: he did have somebody that cleaned rivalship. At one point,
Speaker 1: this particular student of his had said that she had
Speaker 1: been in touch with the Elohim, the extraterrestrials, and Rail's
Speaker 1: way of dealing with that was simply to say, you're out.
Speaker 1: You're not part of the organization. So it's important to
Speaker 1: maintain this chartismatic position that you've established.
Speaker 2: So another thing that you mentioned was that you talked
Speaker 2: to you know, quote unquote survivors, but people who did
Speaker 2: not engage in the in the suicide and were sort
Speaker 2: of interested in how they kind of framed what happened
Speaker 2: and their relationship to it. You can you talk about
Speaker 2: that a little bit, certainly, I.
Speaker 1: Think gave you or I had had a group that
Speaker 1: we belonged to had committed suicide and we haven't been
Speaker 1: around at the time, we'd be thinking, gosh, I had
Speaker 1: a lucky escape there. But funnily enough, the three survivors
Speaker 1: I've spoken to have said quite the opposite. They've not
Speaker 1: said so we wish we were there. That they've not
Speaker 1: said we had a lucky escape. What they have said
Speaker 1: was that we actually left the group before the suicide,
Speaker 1: and we did it voluntarily because we weren't ready for about
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So they're still expecting that there will
Speaker 1: be a further opportunity that they'll have. Now, the extraterrestrials
Speaker 1: only arrive every two thousand years, evidently, so they're going
Speaker 1: to have to wait a long time. So their belief
Speaker 1: is that they will die and reincarnate, and their hope
Speaker 1: is that they will reincarnate at a time when there
Speaker 1: is the opportunity for the extraterrestrials to have tagged them
Speaker 1: and to take them up to the level above humanly.
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of hope they're saying, well, we
Speaker 1: just went ready for it.
Speaker 2: So they weren't spiritually ready, Like they didn't feel as
Speaker 2: though they were committed enough or didn't feel like they
Speaker 2: had the willpower that was going to be necessary when
Speaker 2: it happened. What was their sense of what it took
Speaker 2: to be ready?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they again, I think they felt that
Speaker 1: probably they didn't have the willpower to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they liked the idea. I mean, perhaps they just
Speaker 1: didn't want to commit suicide at that particular point, but
Speaker 1: they're still very enthusiastic about Marshall Appelwhite.
Speaker 2: Was the concept of sort of mass suicide and that
Speaker 2: being necessary. Was that in sort of their theology from
Speaker 2: the beginning or was that something that happened later.
Speaker 1: It was something that happened later. I think they had
Speaker 1: various expectations over time, because the Bible says that the
Speaker 1: two witnesses are going to die, They're going to be killed,
Speaker 1: but they will rise again after three and a half days, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean that was roughly the period that Jesus
Speaker 1: took from death to resurrection. So three and a half
Speaker 1: days was the time scale that the Book of Revelation said,
Speaker 1: Apple White had suggested at one point that they would
Speaker 1: attract opposition, that there were people that would be able
Speaker 1: to kill them, but that's what would happen. Now that
Speaker 1: didn't take place. So what you have to do if
Speaker 1: you're a religious leader is to say, well, not exactly
Speaker 1: that we were wrong, but it's going to happen in
Speaker 1: some other way. And eventually, when they were part of
Speaker 1: this community in the very large mansion that they bought,
Speaker 1: then they were progressively taught that they're dying and rising
Speaker 1: again would be the suicide. And then that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the end for them because although their bodies would be dead,
Speaker 1: then their spirits, so their minds, of ours alls would
Speaker 1: be taken up and they would be given you bodies
Speaker 1: appropriate to the level above human. So that was the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you tell people that you want them to commit
Speaker 1: suicide at first acquaintance, that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I used to begin my lectures on this saying to students, actually,
Speaker 1: I'd like you to know something. I'm the Messiah. I've
Speaker 1: got a suicide plan for tomorrow at lunchtime. Who's coming.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you say that to people, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to come. And unless they're taking the nick and so
Speaker 1: it takes a while to persuade people. And I think
Speaker 1: the puzzle that I have is, how do you go
Speaker 1: from my situation where no one will follow me. I
Speaker 1: know thirty nine disciples, let alone persuade them to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: How would I move from where I am now to
Speaker 1: where apple White got himself and actually successfully persuaded thirty
Speaker 1: nine people. I mean, that's a puzzle. I've got one
Speaker 1: of two ideas about that. Part of the problem with
Speaker 1: suicide groups is that they tend to be groups that
Speaker 1: are closed. They're kind of isolated. I've actually visited the
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate site and it's fairly remote, well by British
Speaker 1: standards anyway. It's got a lot of acurage. I couldn't
Speaker 1: see exactly how much, but when you look at the
Speaker 1: pictures that were taken, it looks a very busy place,
Speaker 1: but that's only because of a lots of ambulances and
Speaker 1: emergency vehicles there. It's not on the main road. It's
Speaker 1: to our thinking. It's in the middle of nowhere. That
Speaker 1: are properties nearby, but they're very large properties with very
Speaker 1: large so if you wanted to see your next door
Speaker 1: neighbor you'd have quite a walk. So from our point
Speaker 1: of view, it's remote. I've actually been to Waco as well,
Speaker 1: and it's twelve miles outside the town of Waco. So
Speaker 1: again you've got a community that is fairly closed. The
Speaker 1: contact with them kind of every day at normal human
Speaker 1: beings is fairly limited. In addition, when you think of
Speaker 1: the amount of time some of them spent with Apple Wide,
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to read newspapers, watch television, kind of
Speaker 1: find out in any detail what was happening in the
Speaker 1: outside world. Some of his followers spent a whole twenty
Speaker 1: two years without normal human contact, simply listening to Apple
Speaker 1: White all the time. Now, if that's your own resource
Speaker 1: of information, then you're going to observe it, you're going
Speaker 1: to take it in Probably you're not going to be
Speaker 1: in a position to argue with him, even if the
Speaker 1: argument is allowed to say, well, I don't accept your
Speaker 1: understanding of the Bible because religious literacy is not very high.
Speaker 1: Fewer than half Americans can't name the four Gospels. Now,
Speaker 1: from my point of view, that's pretty basic. I don't
Speaker 1: remember not knowing what the four Gospels were. But if
Speaker 1: you're in that country where you don't get religious education
Speaker 1: in school, so you only get it if you've been
Speaker 1: to church, and maybe you don't go to church. Then
Speaker 1: twenty years, twenty two years of healing Apple White, you'll
Speaker 1: think that that is the true interpretation of the Bible.
Speaker 1: There was one member that actually went on record as saying, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm really impressed by T and DAW's knowledge of scripture. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean obvious, she couldn't have known very much about
Speaker 1: the Bible to say that, because apart from anything else,
Speaker 1: he only refers to very veitue Bible passages, which in
Speaker 1: chair pres in this rather strange way. So they get
Speaker 1: kind of combination of being in community, being almost isolated
Speaker 1: from the outside world, being there for a very long
Speaker 1: time with no kind of touchstone of reality outside the organization,
Speaker 1: and then that's going to make for a situation where
Speaker 1: you think, well, maybe this is right. The apple bouts
Speaker 1: the leader. So some people would say that's brainwashing. And
Speaker 1: I don't like the chair. We try to avoid using
Speaker 1: it because it's not what it means, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: psychological conditioning that you're subjected to.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a lot of that stuff can be
Speaker 2: applied to us Jim Jones. I think another through of
Speaker 2: obviously huge mass suicide and the.
Speaker 3: Threat he felt from members leaving, you know, and and
Speaker 3: he had you know, in the middle of the jungle
Speaker 3: and being conditioned by doing these sort of fake suicide runs.
Speaker 1: There was a difference with Jim Johns, and this is
Speaker 1: part of the puzzle about Heaven's Gate and Jim Jones.
Speaker 1: Community went under threat. There was an opposing organization called
Speaker 1: Concerned Appearance, and the trigger for the suicide was that
Speaker 1: they had sent a senator out to investigate the organization.
Speaker 1: So they were the community in a sense under threat.
Speaker 1: But the puzzle about Heaven's Gate is that there was
Speaker 1: nobody that was after them. There weren't opponents, and they
Speaker 1: weren't anti cult people that were saying we want to
Speaker 1: rescue our children. In fact, to went children. The aphrotage
Speaker 1: age was forty seven when the suicide started. It's a
Speaker 1: real puzzle in many ways.
Speaker 2: My conversation with George Crisistas will continue after the break.
Speaker 2: So when you've talked about a sort of a handful
Speaker 2: of Bible passages that Apple White kind of used, was
Speaker 2: is there any sort of connective tissue between them? Is
Speaker 2: there some common theme or are they picked by random or.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't ground them. There are mainly passages about tending
Speaker 1: the soil actually, because one of his expressions was the
Speaker 1: earth is going to be spaded under. So in other words,
Speaker 1: the yeah, earth in its present form was at an end.
Speaker 1: The extraterrestrials we're going to dig up the earth and
Speaker 1: renew it. So Apple Boy would quote passages like my
Speaker 1: father is the gardener and how we were the workers
Speaker 1: in the vinyard. It was that sort of thing that
Speaker 1: he brought up. Plus, as I said, bits of revelation.
Speaker 1: I can't be called the exact passages, but the idea
Speaker 1: was that the earth was kind of at an end,
Speaker 1: but also the earth was a kind of vinyard that
Speaker 1: may be tender and it may be radical transformation.
Speaker 2: Okay, interesting. So what was the root of their belief
Speaker 2: in UFOs. Was there something in particular that caught their
Speaker 2: attention and I'm talking about Apple White and Nettles, or
Speaker 2: just that they were in the culture and it was
Speaker 2: something they kind of latched onto.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a both Nettles had been into channeling, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we know what sort of channeling in particular.
Speaker 1: But certainly some people that do channeling of spirits find
Speaker 1: that their spirit guide is actually someone in another planet
Speaker 1: is somehow communicating. Now, it may have been that Nettles
Speaker 1: thought that, we don't know for sure, but also there
Speaker 1: was a whole ambient culture at the time. The movement
Speaker 1: started in the mid seventies, So in the mid seventies
Speaker 1: there was certainly an interest in UFOs and in space travel.
Speaker 1: The Americans had landed on the Moon in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: so big interest in that. There was a book that
Speaker 1: came out. I don't know if theers will recall it,
Speaker 1: Chariots of the Gods by Eric Vondanakin. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember that one.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, and the show that followed it.
Speaker 1: It was very popular, and what Dannikin von Danikins said
Speaker 1: was that it wasn't just that there were people in
Speaker 1: outer space, they had actually been here, and that's what
Speaker 1: the Bible talks about. Now. I don't think we know
Speaker 1: whether Apple White had read von Danikin or not, but
Speaker 1: this was certainly in the ambient culture. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have read that, but even some colleagues of mine
Speaker 1: not only had read it but actually found it convincing
Speaker 1: that when the Ezekiel and Delarja talk about chariots, these
Speaker 1: are actually spacecraft that they're talking about. They visited the air.
Speaker 1: It was a very physical interpretation of the Bible and
Speaker 1: the world that Christians think about as heaven. There wasn't
Speaker 1: any kind of supernatural world. There was a physical world.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of far distant. It was where
Speaker 1: people in outer space lived and they were about to
Speaker 1: visit the planet, or we had already done so, and
Speaker 1: that was the idea. And then in the cinema, of course,
Speaker 1: there were lots of films that were very popular and
Speaker 1: on television Star Trek Doctor who had the Daleks. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they were very influential in terms of religion,
Speaker 1: but there was the whole ambient culture of the film
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. Each year, I think came a
Speaker 1: bit later close encounters. I think lots of us when
Speaker 1: you saw these films and found them great entertainment, but
Speaker 1: didn't attach very much by way of truth to them.
Speaker 1: But some people did. There is some people did think
Speaker 1: this showed that there were an extraterrestials And I've known
Speaker 1: a few people that said, yeah, they've been here. One
Speaker 1: thing that I think I pointed out in an article
Speaker 1: I wrote on Head and Skate is that when you've
Speaker 1: got a leader of a religious movement, they usually make
Speaker 1: some plan for who's going to take over, because in
Speaker 1: most religions, the leader accepts that they're going to die
Speaker 1: and leave followers behind. So you get this with well
Speaker 1: with the president Dalai Lama, for instance, he hasn't named
Speaker 1: the success there, but there are non methods whereby you
Speaker 1: select the next one so people know what to do,
Speaker 1: or maybe a leader has got the right hand man
Speaker 1: or a woman that is kind of ready to take over.
Speaker 1: With apple Bite, this wasn't the case. It was only
Speaker 1: apple White. There were no other teachers that did the teaching,
Speaker 1: propagated the ideas. And it appears he was also quite
Speaker 1: seriously ill before the suicides of nineteen ninety seven, so
Speaker 1: that perhaps indicates that he had actually planned to end
Speaker 1: his movement the way he did, because otherwise there would
Speaker 1: have been nothing left. I would suspect that the rest
Speaker 1: of the group we wouldn't have known really what to do.
Speaker 1: I think there's that aspect that there needs to be
Speaker 1: considered as well. The other thing that's important about the
Speaker 1: suicides is that they occurred probably exactly two thousand years
Speaker 1: after the birth of Jesus, because nineteen ninety seven, I
Speaker 1: think historians agreed that Jesus wasn't born in year zero
Speaker 1: or the year one. It was possibly for BCEE, So
Speaker 1: that being the case, nineteen ninety seven would be exactly
Speaker 1: two thousand years on. So around about that time there
Speaker 1: were a number of groups that either expected an immediate
Speaker 1: return of Christ or in the case of Waco, that
Speaker 1: was the crunch point as far as the groups were concerned.
Speaker 1: Was also the Soul of Temple where there were mistivious
Speaker 1: deaths suicide, maybe murders. In that period. You were kind
Speaker 1: of at the end of the millennium, and that was
Speaker 1: reckoned to be significant in many ways for a number
Speaker 1: of groups.
Speaker 2: Is there something that I haven't asked or that you
Speaker 2: think is important for people to understand about having skate?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've covered most things. The other thing
Speaker 1: I would want to say about community religions is that
Speaker 1: one of the incentives to join is that a traleish
Speaker 1: you of decision making. So many people that live like me,
Speaker 1: You've got to think, how do we add our living
Speaker 1: or how do you pay a mortgage. What are we
Speaker 1: going to have to eat today? Are these mundane decisions
Speaker 1: that we don't have to make. If you're in the
Speaker 1: religious community that is all organized the way Heaveth and
Speaker 1: Skate was, you don't make these decisions. They're made for you.
Speaker 1: You're kind of looked after. And apple White was the
Speaker 1: kind of father figure, so it's almost like a reversion
Speaker 1: to childhood. You've got your parents there that will make
Speaker 1: the decisions for you. It's also the case that it's
Speaker 1: not young people that join, and certainly not in the
Speaker 1: case of Heaven's Gate. The average age, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: was forty seven, so I think the oldest was seventy
Speaker 1: two and the youngest was I think twenty seven. If
Speaker 1: had a number right, you've got a large age range
Speaker 1: in the group. And unlike a number of religious groups
Speaker 1: where maybe somebody has finished school and there's having a
Speaker 1: gap year, we don't have so many gap years now
Speaker 1: in Britain. But if people had a gap year, then
Speaker 1: there were things caught to do with it, and that
Speaker 1: was quite typically how some people got involved in new
Speaker 1: religions like the Unification Church, but that wasn't the case
Speaker 1: with Heaven's Gate. These were professional people. There were people
Speaker 1: that were computer programmers. There was a gummy chef, there
Speaker 1: was a nurse, there was a mechanic. One of them
Speaker 1: was a nutritionist. So they were all professional people. So
Speaker 1: it's very easy to think you must be really stupid
Speaker 1: to join a group like that, But these people weren't stupid.
Speaker 1: They made a conscious decision to join Apple why it
Speaker 1: And they obviously found him convincing and people can be
Speaker 1: convinced about all sorts of things, including wanting to commit suicide.
Speaker 2: Strangeer Rivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Speaker 2: Mild from Aaron Mankey. This episode was hosted by Toby
Speaker 2: Ball and produced by Rima El Kayali, Jesse Funk, and
Speaker 2: Noemi Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and
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