end of day philosophies to his followers, a belief that was centered around a battle between evil armies led by a messianic leader who was the second coming. his role was to open the seven seals that are mentioned in the book of revelation. in revelation the seven seals represent the apocalypse. the biblical end of days. in the bible only the lamb of god can open the seals. koresh preached that he had that power. by january 1992 disturbing rumors about the self-styled prophet had surfaced. the local newspaper, the waco tribune herald began to investigate koresh and his hold over the davidians. he had what was called his new light revelation and that was that as the messiah, he should generate a new population of people to inherent the kingdom of god. to do that all the women in the group belonged to him. as part of his new light prophecy, koresh dissolved all existing marriages in the group.
if they were married, they would, you know, not have any more relations with their wives. it s true. i do have a lot of children. it s true, i do have a lot of wives. but koresh apparently did not stop there. when david first started teaching, he began to show that god asked prophets to do what we might consider strange things a lot of times. we had evidence that he had sexually abused girls as young as 12. is it my great wonderful looking, something that women just can t resist. we also discovered that that had been going on for a couple of years, and law enforcement had not done anything really to prevent it or stop it. but a field agent from the regional atf office was doing something. secretly. though his investigation had nothing to do with the abuse allegations.
minutes of fame. it s time to leave the building. we banked on the fact that a parent if they found their children exposed to that kind of discomfort would move heaven and earth to get them to a position of safety. we were wrong. the beginning of the end comes just after 12:00 noon. a wisp of smoke floats from a compound window. my instructions over the loudspeakers went from instructions to, please, david, don t do this. david, don t do this. all of a sudden you see bursts of flames. i m, like, my god, i hope they allowed the children to leave. this is not the way to end this. leave your people out, david. be a messiah, not a destroyer.
be a messiah, not a destroyer. i will never forget the exact thought that went through my head when i saw the flames. thank god those mothers will bring their children out now, and we waited and waited and waited, and they didn t bring their children out. the entire scene unfolds before a live tv audience. look at that. this is gorgeous. there is tear gas that started on fire or something. the chub rans of a control room producer is tempered by the reality of the situation. it was quick. the structure was like a wooden match. we never stopped our negotiation efforts.
we re anticipating. we had buses lined up to receive everybody. he stated he received a message from god instructing him to wait. any doubts about who is calling the shots is suddenly gone. now we knew when we had a person who said he was speaking directly to god and god had told him to wait that this was not going to be normal. that was one of the first and more significant glimpses of the disingenuous nature of how david was dealing with us as far as promises and truthfulness. are you a patient person? yeah, i m really patient. you re going to see patience because the only thing that we re going to do is sit and wait.