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Doomsday, the cult, and the Book of Revelation

There is something in most of us which responds powerfully to the idea of Doomsday -  the apocalyptic end of the world,  all worries and sorrows swept away as well as all joys and loves.   Interesting piece on the Book of Revelation  here; which is  interpreted as actually being a polemic against the Roman Empire and the dangers of Christians compromising with its values.   The topic comes up because the doomsday cult which walled itself up in a cave in Russia is now being gradually persuaded to surface, the world not having ended after all.  The children are all safe, thank God (or whoever) and much of the persuasive work was done by Fr. Hermogen,  a specialist in the Book of Revelation.  He was able somehow to meet the doomsday cult  on its own terms.

Doomsday siege in icy cave

In a snowy cave in Russia, some thirty men, women, children and a 16 month old baby are barricaded in, waiting to survive the "apocalypse" which their dangerous leader Fr. Pyotr Kuznetzov  of the "True Orthodox" breakaway church  predicts for May next year. The doomsday sect liken tax ID numbers to the "mark of the beast", but that is the most reasonable of their beliefs. They threaten to blow themselves up, want the canonization of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, and are said by Aleksandr Dvorkin, Professor at the  Religious and Cultic Studies Centre in Moscow, to be totalitarian and exploitative.  There is considerable concern about the safety of the followers as the temperature drops.