The twenty-two years were a classroom.
The group dated itself from 1975 and described everything after as coursework. The final statements use the language of a term ending — graduation, closure, the crew arriving — and members recorded farewell videos in which they say, repeatedly and cheerfully, that nobody is making them do this.
The classroom framing does the work that eschatology does elsewhere: it gives the whole period a shape with an ending built in. The group dated itself from the Waldport meeting of September 1975 and counted forward. When the Hale-Bopp comet arrived in early 1997 it was read as the signal rather than the cause, and the website was updated to say so. The farewell tapes, which the group made deliberately and left to be found, show members speaking one at a time, calm and often laughing, stating that this is their choice. Those tapes are the primary evidence for anyone assessing coercion, and they are the group's own.
Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven's Gate — our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion.
heavensgate.com, the statement posted in March 1997 and still on the siteThe site has been maintained unchanged since 1997 by two former members who had left before the deaths.
The same ground, other faiths
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