Cult leader sends email hinting end of world is coming

The Aurora Sentinel/February 18, 2002

An e-mail purportedly from doomsday cult leader Kim Miller hints that his followers believe the end of the world is beginning. It is the first communication since a Web site was posted nine months ago.

In the message, sent to relatives of cult members, churches and others, Miller said the seventh angel sounded the trumpet on Feb. 15, which he said was the 777th day of the seventh millennium.

According to the Book of Revelation, the end of the world will start after the seventh seal is broken and the seventh trumpet sounds.

The e-mail, which is also included on his Web site, was the most direct communication since most cult members were deported from Greece in December 1999, according to Mark Roggeman, a Denver police officer who monitors cults.

The original Web site posting only included information about how to purchase his audio tapes.

In the e-mail, Miller does not predict a date for when the world will end.

He refers to recent events such as the Winter Olympics and September's terrorist attacks and warns that people cannot be good Christians and be patriotic at the same time.

"The Lord even served warning to America that he will Judge the Judges through the unrighteous sword-bearing of Osama bin Laden's very own Manhattan Project,'' Miller wrote. "Fear God, not Osama bin Laden, about 911.''

Bill Honsberger, an Aurora Baptist minister who has studied the cult, said the idea that a Christian can't be patriotic American is a new idea for Miller.

About 70 members of the Denver-based cult Concerned Christians disappeared along with Miller in September 1998 after he predicted the city would be destroyed by an earthquake the following month.

Miller, who claimed he was divinely inspired, said he would die on the streets of Jerusalem at the turn of the millennium and be raised from the dead three days later. Israeli authorities expelled members of the group because of fears that they were planning a mass suicide to coincide with the new year.

Group members fled to Greece but most were deported. Some are still believed to be living there and rest are thought to be somewhere in the Philadelphia area, Roggeman said.

Miller had gained notoriety as an avowed opponent of religious cults in the mid-1980s. He later claimed to be one of the two divine witnesses cited in Chapter 11 of the book of Revelation. He also announced that God spoke through him.