david koresh, the leader of the group, transformed- we can't say literally- but he took armageddon and laid it down in the fields of texas, so that when those government troops came across, they weren't government troops; they were the antichrist. and the violence that ensued, it's as though the government troops walked into his own apocalyptic nightmare and the violence was terrible, and of course, the tragedy in that almost all members of the group died in that fire. so that's a religious apocalyptic theodicy. now on the other hand- and this is even more tragic- we have what we might call a secular apocalyptic theodicy- people in groups who take the armageddon idea, transfer it to a country like the united states, but rearrange the players in the game, and let me tell you a very disturbing one. part of the motivation for timothy mcveigh to blow up the federal building in oklahoma clearly, clearly came from him drawing on the apocalyptic myth. how that works is instead of the antichrist being some demonic religious being, the antichrist for timothy mcveigh, militia groups, patriot gro

we've seen other things like that - david koresh, the ufo people - >> heaven's gate, the ones who - >> - heaven's gate. yeah. and i think that - we were talking about this john, luke, matthew type thing. revelations is an extremely weird book of the bible - >> and we'll get to it in this class. >> hey, neat! - and it seems like a lot of these people are basing their beliefs off of this book, and as we get further into the second millennium, it seems like we're going to see some uprisings and religious fervor and more of these incidents. >> that's so astute, chris, because actually, you read my mind. and believe me, i didn't meet him before class and tell him this, but in the next class on the more unusual kinds of doctrinal interpretation, i'm in fact going to look at the book of revelation, see how it impacts on what we would call religious apocalyptic theodicies, but also on secular ones. and i'll try to make the case that, though it's not religious, what's motivating someone like a timothy mcveigh, the unabomber, or the person that blew up the abortion clinic in atlanta or maybe se