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The Cult Dossier · No. 073 · Apocalyptic / Doomsday

Concerned Christians

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c.1980 – 1999 · Denver, Colorado; Jerusalem, Israel

VIII. THE 1990s — THE MILLENNIUM APPROACHES

Fully religious — Christian apocalyptic

Who led it

MONTE KIM MILLER, a former marketing executive who began as an anti-cult Christian countercult ministry leader and gradually declared himself one of the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11, and eventually claimed to speak as the direct voice of God.

What it worshipped and taught

Miller as the mouthpiece of God. He prophesied that Denver would be destroyed by an earthquake on 10 October 1998, and that he himself would be killed in the streets of Jerusalem in December 1999 and rise again three days later, triggering the apocalypse.

Who was in it

Monte Kim Miller; roughly 80 followers, about 60 of whom vanished from Denver in September 1998; the Israeli Interior Ministry.

How it ended, or where it stands

NOT dispersed — driven underground. Deported from Israel and then from Greece, the membership scattered across Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Europe while keeping its allegiance to Miller intact. More than 75 people remained unaccounted for by their families, and the group was still described as in hiding a decade later. No violence ever occurred.

The dead

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Of note

The centrepiece of OPERATION WALK ON WATER, the Israeli police programme that monitored and deported apocalyptic groups before the year 2000 in anticipation of Jerusalem syndrome violence. A rare instance of preventive state action that appears, in retrospect, to have worked.

Its timeline

  1. c.1980s Founded as a countercult ministry warning against New Age influence in churches.
  2. mid-1990s Miller begins claiming direct divine speech; the group turns inward.
  3. September 1998 Around 60 members abruptly sell their homes and possessions, abandon pets, and disappear from Denver — one of the more alarming events in the run-up to the millennium.
  4. 10 October 1998 Predicted Denver earthquake does not occur.
  5. 3 JANUARY 1999 Israeli police arrest 14 members (including 6 children) in a rented house in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevaseret Zion, on suspicion of planning violent acts to provoke the apocalypse. They are deported.
  6. 1999 Further members deported; Miller himself is never located in Israel.
  7. 9 JANUARY 1999 All fourteen deported members are returned to Denver — and then most of them, along with other members, LEAVE THE UNITED STATES FOR GREECE.
  8. DECEMBER 1999 GREECE DEPORTS THEM TOO — eighteen members, expelled for overstaying their residence permits. Family members waited at the airport as they were bussed away.
  9. 2000–2001 THE GROUP DID NOT DISSOLVE. Some settled in Pennsylvania, one in Wyoming, and ALL REPORTEDLY MAINTAINED THEIR ALLEGIANCE TO KIM MILLER. Estimates in 2001 put at least 60 members still active between Greece and the Philadelphia area, with MORE THAN 75 PEOPLE STILL UNACCOUNTED FOR by their families.
  10. 2009 A decade after the Jerusalem deportations, Denver reporting described the group as STILL IN HIDING. Miller has never resurfaced publicly.

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