From the October 16, 2009, edition of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (MT):
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, longtime spiritual leader of the controversial Church Universal and Triumphant, died Thursday evening at her apartment in Bozeman. She was 70.
She suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and died with her daughter, Moira, and granddaughter by her side, her daughter, Erin Prophet, said Friday.
As the charismatic leader of the New Age sect that many considered cult-like, Prophet led her followers along a path that over the years included apocalyptic predictions, run-ins with local environmental groups, legal trouble and even a late-in-life “miracle” pregnancy that resulted in the birth of her fifth child when she was 55 years old.
Prophet retired from the church in 1999, but her followers still call her “Mother” and listen faithfully to the dictations she recorded while channeling messages from the “Ascended Masters” over the years. A much smaller CUT than the one Prophet moved from California to Montana in the mid-1980s continues to operate from its headquarters on the Royal Teton Ranch in Corwin Springs.
Reading this bit of news brought back some curious memories of growing up in western Montana. No, I never met Prophet, nor was I member of the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT). But I knew people who were, notably the music teacher at my high school. And Prophet and CUT were often in the news while I was in high school in the late-1980s. While CUT, which now usually goes by "The Summit Lighthouse", was supposedly all about light and peace and cosmic harmony, it made headlines for its cultish activities and apocalyptic obsessions, especially the accumulation of a large cache of weapons (you know it had to be large to garner attention in Montana), predictions the world was going to end in nuclear holocaust in 1990, and the construction of bomb shelters.
Prophet claimed to be "the servant of the light in all students of the ascended masters and in all people" who was able to channel messages from "masters" such as Jesus, Paul the Venetian, and Saint Germain. Her approach was syncretistic to the hilt and her personality quite charismatic—and more than a little creepy, as you can see in this 1992 video. But, as is often the case with apocalyptic date-setters who are obsessed with impending global doom and who make irrational and potentially destructive demands on their paranoid followers, lives were seriously damaged, even destroyed. My high school's music teacher and his wife eventually moved to the CUT complex. Their only daughter, who was a classmate of mine, refused to go along, and I heard that she eventually broke off all contact with them.
What is especially interesting is to see how heavily Prophet drew upon specifically Catholic language and concepts in concocting her skewed spiritual brew. For example:
I loved devotion. I loved Jesus. I loved the saints. I loved God. ...
We regard the saints in heaven as those who have graduated from earth’s schoolroom, whom God has received. They are the other stones—"lively stones."
We call them Ascended Masters, whereas Christians call them saints. We do not worship the Ascended Masters but we recognize that they are our elder brothers and sisters and that they can help us on the path of life. ...
We believe in the communion of saints, here below as Above.
But, of course, Prophet's teachings actually undermined and denied essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity. She taught that Jesus was only one of many great teachers or avatars, and that he had told her directly that Christian churches "had not been given the full teaching that he had given and that this teaching must be brought forth again in this time, 2,000 years later." Her cosmology, anthropology, and soteriology were all standard New Age fare, consisting of a veneer of western, Christian language coated over eastern, monistic concepts, and served on a neo-gnostic plate: "So I see our divine plan outpicturing itself in succeeding episodes and I see the bodies we wear simply as coats. And when the coat gets worn out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our mission is through." In other words:
1. Jesus is great!
2. But...
3. ... he isn't enough.
4. I have the full teachings of Jesus and several other teachers.
5. I have been given Jesus' authority. Don't ask for proof. Just do whatever I tell you.
6. Give me your life, your money, your mind, your soul, your future.
And this is especially diabolical: "And we believe that this communion comes through the agency of the Holy
Spirit and through the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ and that it is ordained." Satan is not the father of lies because he flatly denies the truth, but because he misuses and abuses the truth. "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."
UPDATE (Oct. 7, 2009): I came across the following this morning; apparently the late Prophet and novelist/pop spirituality guru/grand historical researcher Dan Brown share some core beliefs:
Prophet affirms belief in Jesus Christ and labels herself a Christian; but is clearly a gnostic version of Christianity. She contends that in the ancient battle between gnosticism and Christian orthodoxy, the wrong side won. The orthodox Christians, she says, were just seeking power for the clergy, so they repressed the true teachings of Jesus that require no clergy to actualize. She says church leaders hid the mystical sayings of Jesus from the people by excluding them from Scripture. She claims that when church leaders chose which books were to be accepted as Holy Scripture and included in the Bible, they were merely using those choices to consolidate their own power. (The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview: Conflict and Dialogue (Eerdmans, 1998), by John P. Newport, p. 179).
No mention of what Prophet may have thought or taught about the Masons...
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