Doomsday Cult Members to Be Deported From Athens to U.S.

Fox News, December 3, 1999
By Julia Campbell

NEW YORK - Greek officials are planning to deport 16 Americans believed to be members of a doomsday cult plotting millennium violence to hasten the resurrection of Jesus Christ, U.S. and Greek officials said Friday. The Americans, who are now being detained in Athens, Greece, are members of the same group that had 14 members deported from Israel in January when Israeli officials feared cult members were plotting a shootout with police in the streets of Jerusalem.

Family members were waiting anxiously Friday for news on the deportations. "We don't know what is going to happen, but if she comes back here, we can go and get her," said Lisa Burtis, whose sister, Connie Blythe, is a cult member. "It's just a sick feeling now, but there's still a little bit of hope," she said.

The group, known as the Concerned Christians, came to the attention of the Greek police in the suburbs of Athens after one of their landlords reported that she overheard conversations and feared the cult was planning a drastic measure, such as mass suicide, said a state department official on the condition of anonymity. "We are concerned about them, especially because there seems to be a number of children within the group," said the official.

Monte Kim Miller, the cult's charismatic leader, has prophesied he would die in Jerusalem at the end of 1999 and be resurrected three days later. Miller, a former anti-cult lecturer, formed Concerned Christians in the 1980s in Denver, Colo., because he was concerned about the effects of the New Age movement on Christianity. The group, however, became more isolated as it grew. Then, in 1996, Miller began to tell people God could speak through him. He predicted Denver would be destroyed by an earthquake on Oct. 10, 1998.

The group, which includes aeronautical engineers, a retired firefighter and a millionaire, suddenly disappeared and moved to Israel early Oct. 1998 until the 14 members were deported in January 1999. The members returned briefly to the United States, and then disappeared again. Relatives of the members learned weeks later that they had settled in Greece. As many as 90 Americans, including 25 children, are said to be living communally in Rafina, a small coastal town outside Athens. The 16 who were detained on Friday apparently had no legal documentation of their residency status, and officials believe some members of the cult may have intentionally destroyed the documents to conceal their identities, the official said.

Family members say they have been frustrated by the State Department's privacy laws, which prevent officials from disclosing the names of those being deported.

Greek officials apparently have been trying to contact the group, but members did not return phone calls, one official said. Dimitris Gemelos, the press consular for the Greek Consulate in New York said officials think that some of the group members may have been living in Greece for more than a year. The State Department official said the whereabouts of leader Miller, who had been living with the cult members in Greece, are currently not known.

The deportation of the members so close to the millennium will be "the dilemma of all dilemmas," said Mark Roggeman, a Denver police officer who has counseled relatives of the cult members. "They have nothing here. What are they going to do? My greatest hope is that it will force them to go back to their families."