On this date in 1994 a disaster began to unfold in Quebec as an infant was ritually stabbed to death with a wooden stake by members of a group named the Order of the Solar Temple. They believed the boy was the Antichrist. This cult had been formed by a man named Luc Jouret in Geneva in the late 1970s as a supposed extension of the medieval Knights Templar, and of more modern occult groups like the OTO and Golden Dawn. Jouret claimed to be Jesus Christ, and eventually went on to commit suicide.
In fact, within two weeks of the infant murder, over 50 OTS members in Quebec and Switzerland staged a ritual mass suicide variously using poison and firearms. The statement left by the dead claimed they were departing Earth to be reborn in the Sirius system. Numerous other murders and suicides performed by OTS members would occur in Canada and Switzerland for years afterward.
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Today is also the 1926 birthdate of German theologian Klaus Koch. In his The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic (1970) he identified eschatology, or a belief in the coming end times, as the key formative element in the development of Christianity.
