Koresh said he was the Lamb who could open the seals.
He argued it from Revelation 5: someone has to be found worthy to open the scroll, and he claimed to be that person — a sinful man, not a divine one, which is the distinction members repeated to reporters and to negotiators. The claim also underwrote his taking other men's wives, including girls under the age of consent.
Koresh's claim is precise and easy to get wrong. Revelation 5 describes a sealed scroll and asks who is worthy to open it; Koresh said he was, and that this made him the Lamb of that chapter and not the Jesus of the gospels. Members made the distinction firmly and repeatedly to outsiders. He was, on his own account, a sinful man whose sinfulness was doctrinally necessary — a Christ for the guilty. That claim also underwrote the New Light doctrine of 1989, under which he took other men's wives as his own, including girls below the age of consent, and it is the part of the record his surviving followers have had the hardest time with.
Responsibility for the tragedy of Waco rests with certain of the Branch Davidians and their leader, David Koresh, who: (a) shot and killed four ATF agents on February 28, 1993, and wounded 20 others.
John C. Danforth, Special Counsel, Interim Report to the Deputy Attorney General Concerning the 1993 Confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas, 21 July 2000, section IIThe Special Counsel was appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno in September 1999 under Order No. 2256-99, after the Justice Department disclosed it had used pyrotechnic devices at Waco.
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