SO THE messiah has been found. Where about? Cowdenbeath. Only kidding. Have another try. Thrumster? No, Jerusalem. Israeli police have announced that they have arrested Goel Ratzon, whose first name means “saviour" in Hebrew. Apparently, Mr Ratzon has been running a tightly-controlled cult which has some very dubious practices. He is now on remand in a Tel Aviv jail awaiting his day in court.
Mr Ratzon would appear to be a very strange kind of messiah. For starters, he has 32 wives. Now that seems to me to be rather a lot. Maybe I’m just naïve, or a bit old-fashioned.
If all his wives have credit cards, he might be in a lot of trouble. It seems, though, that he has thought of that possibility. His wives can’t leave the hoose without his permission. And he doesn’t give permission.
According to police reports, this weird messiah lords over his household with strictness. He has drawn up a rule book which spells out severe restrictions and financial penalties for the women in his life, some of whom have tattoos of his name and face.
The rule book bans conversation anywhere but the living room, and it prevents the women from asking Ratzon questions. “No woman shall sit idle when there are dishes to be washed, cleaning to be done, children to look after,” says another rule.
Right, boss.
“The evidence shows the suspect controlled his women with a firm hand, including their possessions and their money,” said a police statement.
“He would dictate what they could and could not do, limit their movements and impose sanctions and various punishments, including the use of violence if they refused to obey.”
Messiah Ratzon's lawyer, Shlomtzion Gabai, told Israel Radio: “As far as he is concerned, no sexual crimes have been committed. The women consented willingly to relations. He may be different, but he's not a criminal.”
He certainly is different. He’s quite distinctive, really. He has long white hair and a white goatee beard. If you were to get a magic marker and whiten the hair in my photograph and sketch in a white goatee beard, you’d get the picture. A scary picture. Try it now.
Ratzon appeared in an Israeli television documentary recently. Some of the women were shown combing his hair and feeding him.
Hey, this is not exactly crucifixion. This messiah doesn’t go in for that tough stuff about carrying your cross. He has obviously seen the light.
Having your hair combed and being fed is obviously quite a bit easier than being whipped and crucified.
Ratzon, who is in his 50s, is also rumoured to be the father of more than 80 children. That also seems to me to be rather a lot. Again, I may be a bit naïve or old-fashioned, but that’s a fair number of bairns by anybody’s reckoning. In the documentary, some of the women threatened to kill themselves if anyone ever tried to harm their leader.
One said: “He is the messiah everyone is talking about. He is already here and he hasn't been revealed yet. The day he decides to reveal himself, the land will shake.”
Ratzon said of himself on television: “I'm perfect. I have all the qualities a woman wants.”
God’s gift to women clearly doesn’t bother with all that modesty stuff.
Goel Ratzon is one of a line of people claiming to be gurus or messiahs, or even God. Probably the worst one was Jim Jones, the preacher from California who set up the Peoples Temple cult in Georgetown, Guyana. The charismatic Jones demanded total obedience from his followers. The area was renamed Jonestown. Jones wasn't into modesty, either.
He was no harmless half-wit. Various forms of punishment were used against members considered to be problems. Methods included imprisonment in a plywood box and forcing children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes upside-down.
For some members who attempted to escape, drugs were administered. Armed guards patrolled the area day and night to enforce Jonestown's rules.
All this was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to what was to come in November, 1978. Jones had become increasingly paranoid, and he ranted about conspiracies against his community. The US Congress decided to investigate, and Congressman Leon Ryan headed a team of investigators. Ryan conducted negotiations at the airport in Georgetown and shooting broke out. Congressman Ryan was killed.
Back at the Peoples Temple headquarters, Jones persuaded almost all of his followers to drink cyanide poison. A total of 918 people died, including Jones.
The Jonestown suicides were simply the most gruesome events in a series of either daft or dangerous episodes involving the formation of communities of obedience led by megalomaniac characters.
Remember David Koresh, the crazed leader of the Branch Davidian sect? He convinced his followers that the US government wanted to wipe them out. A siege by the FBI ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian ranch outside of Waco, Texas. Koresh, 54 adults and 21 children were found dead after the fire.
All this is to say that when people hand over their critical faculties to a guru or a messiah or whatever, the results can be distressing. It may seem simple to say that this is only an American phenomenon, but that would be naive.
Religion can be a great blessing, but there are occasions when it can be dangerous. Communes flourish in times of crisis and hardship. In the current world uncertainties, when many of the old foundations seem to be shaking, false prophets will take advantage of people's vulnerabilities. This is a lesson which history can teach us.
In critical times, people may seek to have their anxieties calmed by authoritarian preachers brandishing Bibles, or other sacred texts. The current corrosion of trust in politics and global financial systems has the potential to create a vacuum into which some seriously unbalanced people, using the language of religion, will make their disastrous bids for personal power.