The 1959 gathering is the founding wound of the whole line, and every subsequent leader's claim was made in its shadow. Florence Houteff named 22 April 1959; over nine hundred people sold houses and farms and came to Waco to be gathered, and nothing happened. Most went home ruined. Ben Roden was already on the ground announcing that he was the sign, and the remnant that followed him became the Branch. Understanding 1959 is what makes 1993 legible: this was a community that had already been through a total prophetic failure and had rebuilt around the conviction that the sequence was still running.