Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

We only see the clarity of the defining moment, we have a vague sense of what may have happened before, the prelude to the final act, but the aftermath we find perhaps dull, the event has moved on and we, as human beings, only have the attention span in which to express our opinion in which makes sense to us.

For every seismic event we see unveiled on 24 hour rolling news, there is the prologue that we don’t understand, and the repercussions that we have no way of comprehending. We only wish to see the resolution it could be argued, we have no reason in which to delve in to what happened after, the why and the wherefore that makes a story complete. It is the final act in which the story of David Koresh and the Waco Siege in 1993 is perhaps a prime example, a story of the End of Days which has not gone away, for which some, including the British citizens who were caught up in the firefight that ended the siege, are still living with today.

Radio Five Live’s Chris Warburton investigation into The Sinful Messiah, the self -proclaimed new Jesus Christ, is one in which the listener realises with heavy heart that all they thought they knew about a certain event in time, is but barely a scratch on their subconscious, the damnation of our busy lives is to only hear and witness what we need to understand, to make sense if we can, of the world around us.

It is in that world of David Koresh that we come to understand the truth of investigation, that the Waco Siege was more than just a notorious ending which erupted in flames and brought the attention of the media to Texas in early 1993, it had a start, one that the charismatic, but obviously deluded, man was to be found recruiting followers in cities such as Nottingham and Manchester, British cities, in churches frequented by good people, by some who needed to believe just that little bit more in a world in which a messiah would come back to them and lead them to a new promised land.

What happened at Waco, the final moments in which a compound was reduced to ash and which many people lost their lives at, will probably never be truly known, but in Chris Warburton’s eight-part podcast, the knowledge sought and revealed is one of surprise and not lost in irony, of revelation.

In seems fantastic to believe that one man could have such a pull on the minds of ordinary people, that even today there are those willing to defend this “sinful messiah”, but that is surely the point, the world is a dangerous place, we have to be constantly on our guard to not let such individuals get inside our heads. Twenty-five years the ghosts of Waco still haunt us, we may remember exactly where we were when we heard the news of the thought of final act, but how many of us truly know how the story started, how the ripples of time and Koresh’s actions have filtered on down to the present day?

In one of the intriguing investigations to have been aired by the B.B.C. this century, End of Days is a timely reminder of the evil that lives under the surface and the blind that will defend it to the bitter end.

Ian D. Hall