While there were those who believed that the Branch Davidians were killed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), there is no doubt that Heaven's Gate members killed themselves. In some ways their group was like the Davidians: they believed that a higher power was about to intervene on their behalf, they connected that power to Jesus Christ, and they thought they were misunderstood. The Heaven's Gate website referred to the Davidians and to the shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August of 1992, as reasons to prepare themselves for persecution. Both David Koresh and Applewhite were charismatic and mesmerizing speakers who convinced their followers that they had absolute authority and understood the secrets of human existence because they were incarnations of a higher form of life. Koresh trained his followers to perceive the world as hostile and to expect persecution and death as a result...