Heaven's Gate and Christ's Return

This past week I tried in vain to send a photo of last weekend's hot air balloon rise here in Pagosa Springs. The photo is owned by the Pagosa Sun and is indeed beautiful. Sylvia and I enjoyed the cool, bright morning and the bright balloons against the deep blue mountain skies of the Colorado Rockies.

Rhonda, a friend and fellow writer, suggested that I comment upon the serenity and contentment of the photo and the mountains. That got me to thinking about the experience of the ancient patriarch Jacob recorded in Genesis 28. Jacob was following his father Isaac's wishes to find a wife among members of the family who lived in the far northern plains. He went on his journey with God's blessings. As he went, he had a strange, wondrous dream about a stairway reaching from earth to heaven. Somehow he knew that angels were going up and down. When he awoke he said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." He responded with a prayer, committing himself to the Lord God. Then he erected a pillar and called the place Beth-El, Hebrew for House of God.

Many places of worship, colleges and seminaries, hotels, high schools, towns and villages, even marinas and flower shops from that day to now have been named Bethel. A Google search comes up with over eleven million sites. Do all these places believe they are the house of God? Probably not.

Enter into Google a search for 'Gate of heaven' instead and you come up with an even stranger list. First on the list are some cemeteries. These are followed by a reference to the cult named Heaven's Gate. Remember them from ten years ago? They were 40 people radically devoted to their leader, a former psychiatric hospital patient by the name of Marshall Herff Applewhite. He changed his name, simply calling himself DO. Over the years he gathered a small group to himself in a 9,000-square-foot mansion in Rancho Santa Fe that they called "the Monastery" and "the Craft." Members paid for it doing Web design and other technical services. You can read the details in the link provided above.

The Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide when the Hale-Bopp comet, the brightest celestial visitor to our solar system in a millennium, made, on March 22, 1997, its closest approach to Earth at 122 million miles. This was the sign they were waiting for, DO believed. Their alien spaceship was coming to pick them up. They were now to pass to the next evolutionary level. So they all helped one another wash down phenobarbital-laced helpings of applesauce and pudding with vodka and laid down to die. The lethal combination did its work painlessly and soon all were dead--except one.

A cult member by the name of Rio DiAngelo had been instructed by DO to stay behind. Rio left the group to work in Beverly Hills, CA. Five days after their mass suicide he received a FedEx package with a letter addressed to him, a press release, two videotapes on which were recorded DO's and the students' "Exit Videos," and a map to the house indicating which door they'd left unlocked. Rio found the decaying bodies in the house and reported the incident to the authorities. He was later interviewed by Diane Sawyer on Prime Time Live. DiAngelo remains a firm believer in DO's teachings to this day.

Over the centuries comets appearing in the skies have been connected to all kinds of tragic events. They have often been seen as signs. The background history of modern Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists tells of the influence of comets appearing in the sky as signs foreshadowing Christ's return.

What does a believer in Jesus Christ do with all this bazaar information? The Bible's answer is clear. Be extremely wary of prophets who tell you to come here and go there. Jesus himself made it quite clear to his disciples when they too were tempted by the messianic fervor of their day. Many Jews were waiting for a sign to rebel against the Romans and start a movement that would lead to Israel's restoration as God's mighty kingdom on the earth. "What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" they pressed. "No one knows," Jesus replied. He then went on to say that the angels don't know. He did not know. "Only the Father knows," he said. (Matthew 24). Rather than getting all worked up about this, Jesus instructed his disciples and us to keep our eyes open, watch and wait. In the meantime we are to go about our duties, fulfilling our responsibilities and trusting in his sacrificial death and resurrection. The time of his return, the judgment of all mankind and the beginning of the new age will be revealed when the Father wills it.