Jonestown, Waco, and Heaven's Gate resonate in the contemporary mind in
the same way that Masada or Mount Tabor resonated in the minds of others
long past. The members of these movements believed that the end of the
world was at hand and that they had to act through violence or suicide
to ensure its occurrence. Frederic Baumgartner explores the long, often
violent, history of millennialism as it has affected Western
civilization. From ancient Zoroastrians to Concerned Christians of 1998,
a belief in the imminent end of the world and the coming of the new age
has motivated hundreds of sects and cults, some of which have burned out
in an orgy of violence to become a permanent part of Western history.