Apocalyptic
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Fellowship of the Martyrs (2004)
Doug Perry was born in Missouri in 1967 and spent part of his childhood in Mexico in a missionary family. He later returned to Missouri, earned a master’s degree in education, and built a business in Kansas City. On November 23, 2004, he described a turning point in which he prayed to oppose Satan regardless… Continue reading
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Fellowship of Friends (1970)
Robert Earl Burton was born in Mineral, Arkansas, and graduated from San Jose State University in 1963. He taught school in California before experiencing what he would call a spiritual awakening in 1967. By 1970, while living in a Volkswagen bus in Berkeley, he had gathered a small group of followers who believed he possessed… Continue reading
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Family Radio (1958)
Harold Camping was born on July 19, 1921, in Boulder, Colorado, and was raised in the Christian Reformed Church. He earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1942, and worked as an engineer for a government contractor for the duration of World War II. After the war, he established… Continue reading
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Endtime Ministries (1991)
Endtime Ministries, headquartered in Plano, Texas, is a Pentecostal Christian organization established in 1986 by Irvin Baxter Jr. The ministry focuses on biblical prophecy and eschatology, interpreting contemporary global political developments as fulfillments of scripture. Baxter, a former pastor at Oak Park Church in Richmond, Indiana, founded the organization after years of study of the… Continue reading
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End Time Ministries/Mountaintop Ministries Worldwide (1984)
End Time Ministries, which has also been called Meade Ministries and is now known as Mountaintop Ministries Worldwide, was established in 1984 by Charles Meade. Meade was born in 1916 to a farming family in Kentucky. He later claimed to have served on the front lines of World War II, but official service records do… Continue reading
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Elijah’s Ten Commandments Stone Kingdom (1980)
The organization now known as Elijah’s Ten Commandments Stone Kingdom was founded in 1980 by Park Myung Hoo under the name World Elijah Evangelical Mission. A Chinese Korean leader, Park structured the group around a five-level hierarchy consisting of God, Angel, General Secretary, Chief, and Director. The movement was defined early on by Park’s claim… Continue reading
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Drenthe Hermits (c. 2009)
The case of Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten and his family, who were dubbed the “Drenthe hermits” due to their residence in the Dutch province of Drenthe, came to public attention in October 2019. The family, consisting of van Dorsten and six of his adult children, had been living in a secluded farmhouse in the village of… Continue reading
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Chad and Lori Daybell (c. 2018)
Chad Daybell and Lori Norene Vallow Daybell were central figures in a criminal case involving multiple homicides, extremist religious beliefs, and apocalyptic ideology. Both were raised within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and later became leaders of a small, insular group centered on end-times prophecies. Between 2019 and 2020, at least… Continue reading
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Dami Mission (1987)
The Dami Mission was an apocalyptic religious movement founded in South Korea in 1987 by former Presbyterian minister Lee Jang Rim. Officially registered as the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, the group grew rapidly and eventually claimed about 20,000 followers. At its height, it operated more than 300 churches, with international branches in major U.S.… Continue reading
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Church Universal and Triumphant (1975)
The Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) is a New Age religious organization founded in 1975 by Elizabeth Clare Prophet after the death of her first husband, Mark Prophet. The group developed from the Summit Lighthouse, which Mark Prophet established in 1958. The movement’s teachings combine elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Theosophy, with significant influence… Continue reading
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Church of Immortal Consciousness (1983)
The Church of Immortal Consciousness (COIC) was an apocalyptic new religious movement founded by Trina and Steven Kamp and incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1983. The group presented itself as an alternative spiritual community, offering teachings that diverged from mainstream religion. It became best known for its central doctrine centered on Trina Kamp’s claimed… Continue reading
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Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God (1998)
The Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God (COG-PKG) is a splinter group of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (WCG) that was founded in 1998 by Ronald Weinland, a former WCG minister. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, the COG-PKG operates internationally and primarily through the Internet. It is one of several groups… Continue reading
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Church of Almighty God/Eastern Lightning (1991)
The Church of Almighty God (CAG), also known as Eastern Lightning, was founded in China in 1991. Its central belief is that Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and now lives as a Chinese woman who is worshipped as the “Almighty God.” The name “Eastern Lightning” references Matthew 24:27: “For as the lightning cometh out… Continue reading
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Chino-Shoho/Pana Wave (1977)
In 1977, Yuko Chino founded Chino-Shoho, a Japanese new religious movement blending Christianity, Buddhism, and New Age teachings. The group’s “scientific arm,” Pana-Wave Laboratory, later became notorious for its unusual doctrines. It was also considered a UFO or contactee religion, with membership ranging from several hundred to more than a thousand followers. Chino, a former… Continue reading
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Children of God/The Family International (1968)
David Brandt Berg was born on February 18, 1919, in Oakland, California. He was the youngest of three children born to traveling evangelists Hjalmar Emanuel Berg and Virginia Lee Brandt. His maternal grandfather, John Lincoln Brandt, was a Disciples of Christ minister, ensuring that religious authority surrounded him from a young age. Berg’s parents were… Continue reading
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Chen Tao (1993)
Chen Tao, also known as the “True Way” or the God’s Salvation Church, was a UFO religion that originated in Taiwan. The movement combined elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and extraterrestrial belief. It was founded by Hon-Ming Chen, a former associate professor of sociology. Hon-Ming Chen was born on April 22, 1955, in Chiayi, Taiwan.… Continue reading
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Ramón Gustavo Castillo (2009)
Ramón Gustavo Castillo Gaete, born on December 20, 1977, was a Chilean musician who later became known as the leader of a doomsday sect. He styled himself as “Antares de la Luz” (Antares of the Light) and proclaimed that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. Castillo studied pedagogy at the Metropolitan University of… Continue reading
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Ca Van Liem (1993)
Ca Van Liem was a figure who gained notoriety in a remote Vietnamese hamlet in the early 1990s. Blind and charismatic, he proclaimed himself a king and prophet, amassing a following among the local hill tribe villagers of Ta He, a community approximately 200 miles northwest of Hanoi. Liem’s influence grew as he presented himself… Continue reading
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Branhamism (1946)
William Marrion Branham was born in 1909 in Burkesville, Kentucky. According to accounts he later shared, a light entered the room at his birth and hovered over him — an event he interpreted as the beginning of a divine calling. From an early age, Branham claimed to hear voices, including one that warned him against… Continue reading
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Branch Davidians/Davidian Seventh-Day Adventists (1929)
Though best known for the fatal conflagration at its Texas compound in 1993 while under the leadership of Vernon Wayne Howell, better known as “David Koresh,” the Branch Davidians date back to a schism within the Seventh-Day Adventist Church several decades earlier. The group’s foundational beliefs were first articulated by Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian immigrant… Continue reading
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Black Hebrew Israelites (c. 1885)
The Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is a collection of groups that emerged in the late 19th century in the United States among African Americans who believe that they are descended from the ancient Israelites. Some BHI groups consider themselves to be the only true Jews, while others have a more syncretic theology that includes… Continue reading
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Beta Dominion Xenophilia (c. 1985)
Beta Dominion Xenophilia was a small group based in Carroll County, Maryland, from the mid-1980s until the turn of the century. Founder Scott Caruthers began fabulating stories about his life as early as high school. By the time he dropped out, he was telling people that he was being pursued by extraterrestrials. Over the next… Continue reading
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Awaiting Christ Church (c. 1990)
Awaiting Christ Church, also known as Silinde u-Yesu, was a millenarian Christian church in South Africa led by Nokulunga Fiphaza. The movement was characterized by its apocalyptic predictions and its fervent belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. The church originated in the village of Corhana. In 1995, the congregants, who initially worked as… Continue reading
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Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph (1984)
Aum Shinrikyo, renamed “Aleph” in 2000, is best known for orchestrating the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of injuries. The sect’s theology is an amalgam of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu elements with millenarian overtones and the expectation of an impending apocalypse. Chizuo Matsumoto… Continue reading
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Attleboro Sect (c. 1980)
The group commonly called the “Attleboro Sect,” but known to its members as “The Body of Christ” or simply “The Body,” emerged through a Bible study group in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in the late 1970s. Its origins traced back to Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, originally the Radio Church of God, an offshoot… Continue reading