In 1929, Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian immigrant, claimed that he had a new message for the SDA church. It was submitted in the form of a book entitled "The Shepherd's Rod." His claims were not accepted and he left to form the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists. The term "Davidian" refers to the restoration of the Davidic kingdom, while "Branch" refers to the new name of Christ. In 1955, after Houteff's death, a split of this movement formed the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, headed initially by Benjamin L. Roden. The group established a settlement outside of Waco, Texas, on the property previously occupied by the Davidian group. Leadership and occupancy of the property had been the subject of inner conflict among the Davidians before Vernon Howell (later renamed David Koresh) took charge of the property in 1988. George Roden, son of Benjamin, had claimed that he was the rightful prophet of the group, but was jailed for contempt of court and in his absence Howell took charge of the disputed land.
In 1981 Howell joined the group as a regular member which at the time was headed by Benjamin Roden's wife Lois Roden who claimed to have a message of her own, one element of which was that the Holy Spirit is feminine in gender. In 1983 she allowed Howell to begin to teach his own message which caused much controversy in the group. There was a general meeting at Mt. Carmel of all Branch Davidians in 1984 and the end result was that the group split into several factions one of which was loyal to Howell. At that time Howell named his faction, "Davidian Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist." It was also at this time that George Roden forced Howell to leave the property. Upon returning to the property under questionable circumstances in 1988, Howell dropped the new name of his association, and assumed the name of the association he and his followers left four years previously. In 1990 Howell changed his name to David Koresh, invoking the biblical Kings David and Cyrus. From its inception, the group was apocalyptic, in that they believed themselves to be living in a time when Christian prophesies of a final divine judgment were coming to pass. Davidians under Koresh believed prophesy to foretell a cyclic series of events, described as a spiral, with history returning to prophetically foretell events but each time, advance in terms of cosmological progress. Koresh supported his beliefs with detailed biblical interpretation, using the Book of Revelation as the lens through which the entire Bible was viewed.
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