Branch Davidians
BRANCH DAVIDIANS. On February 28, 1993, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) staged a raid on the home and church of a millennialist, sectarian group outside of Waco, Texas. The thoroughly bungled attempt to serve a search warrant took the lives of four ATF agents and six members of the millennialist group and led to a fifty-one day siege that climaxed with a devastating fire that claimed seventy-four more lives. Although many of the people within the Mount Carmel Center simply saw themselves as students of the Bible, particularly the apocalyptic message of the book of Revelation, they became known to the public as Branch Davidians and followers of the self-proclaimed messiah, David Koresh.
Beginnings
The group that gathered around Koresh had a long history in the Waco area, and an even longer history before that. With only a few exceptions, Koresh's disciples had religious roots in the Seventh-day Adventist tradition, which itself grew out of the Millerite movement of the mid-nineteenth century. After painstaking study of the scriptures, William Miller (1782–1849) had come to the conclusion that the second coming of Jesus Christ would occur sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844.
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