Police: Members of Denver doomsday cult are in Israel

Associated Press/November 23, 1998
By Dina Kraft

JERUSALEM -- Ten members of a missing Colorado doomsday cult are in Israel, where the cult's leader has predicted he will die next year, police said Sunday.

Cult watchers had warned that members of the Concerned Christians might head to Israel on instructions from their leader, Monte Kim Miller. Miller has said he will die in Jerusalem in December 1999 and be resurrected three days later.

But the Jerusalem police, who established a special task force to prepare for an influx of pilgrims during the millennium, said the group does not yet appear to pose a threat to themselves or others.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it wasn't clear what the cult members wanted to do. The official said the group believes the world will disappear and added that police were keeping an eye on them.

As many as 72 of Miller's followers sold their belongings and left their homes in the United States before Oct. 10, the day their leader predicted Denver would be wiped out by an earthquake marking the beginning of the apocalypse.

Israeli foreign ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel was concerned about the Denver group and has been trying to keep tabs on doomsday seekers who may be drawn to the Holy Land for the millennium.

Cult watchers like Bill Honsberger, a Christian missionary who has monitored the group, have said the cult's leader could be capable of leading his followers to mass suicide.

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