by Jon Krakauer
Many Utahans share Wims's view that Ron's outbursts in court and his weird religious pronouncements were less than sincere. People think he was merely acting crazy to avoid a death sentence. And they likewise speculate that Ron's claims to have received revelations from God were a cynical attempt to manipulate and deceive. But almost nobody doubts the sincerity of his brother's religious faith. Most folks in Utah regard Dan Lafferty's theology as both preposterous and horrifying, but they concede that he seems to be a true believer.
As it happens, what Dan believes today is not exactly what he believed when he killed Brenda and Erica. “After I arrived in the monastery—after I arrived here in prison—my beliefs went through this major evolution,” he says. No longer does he subscribe to the tenets of Mormon Fundamentalism. “I changed Gods,” he says. “I'd forsaken the LDS Church to go into fundamentalism, and now I've forsaken fundamentalism.” These days his theology is a disturbing potpourri assembled from the Old Testament, the New Testament, The Book of Mormon, fundamentalist scripture, and the hyperkinetic machinations of Dan's own mind.
“When you put your whole heart into a search for the truth,” Dan says, “in due course you start to see the contradictions in what you've been taught. You start to realize that something doesn't feel right and doesn't look right. Something starts to stink. . . . I used to refer to myself as a religious fanatic, but I realize I was kicked out of the LDS Church because I was really a truth fanatic. I have the need to resolve contradictions, which is what got me excommunicated.”
All modern religions are fraudulent, Dan contends, not just the LDS Church. “Organized religion is hate masquerading as love. Which inevitably leads you back to the religion as it originally existed, before it was corrupted. It leads you to become a fundamentalist. You can see where the Church lost the answers by giving up its fundamental principles. So you find your beliefs evolving toward fundamentalism.
“But then I found out that there weren't answers in fundamentalism, either. You see some of the same contradictions. Fortunately for me, I saw this about the time I came here to the monastery. That's when everything started to slowly distill and come together.”
At the core of Dan's transmogrified faith is his newfound conviction that he is Elijah, the biblical prophet known for his solitary ways and unyielding devotion to God. And as Elijah, Dan is certain, it will be his job to announce the Second Coming of Christ in the Final Days. According to Dan, “In my role as Elijah, I'm like John the Baptist. Elijah means ‘forerunner,' the one who prepares the way. John the Baptist prepared the way for the First Advent of Christ. I'm here to prepare the way for the return of the Son of Man.”
Dan believes, as he did when he was a fundamentalist Mormon, that the most salient fact of existence is the immutable division of humankind into those who are inherently righteous and those who are inherently evil. “Some people were chosen to be children of God,” Dan explains, “and others became children of the devil. Either you're a brother—a child of God—or an asshole—a child of the devil. And you can't do anything to change it.
“There are two fathers, God and the devil. And all the children of God possess something none of the children of the devil possess, which is the gift of love. The devil could not program love into his children because love is something he doesn't possess or understand. It's beyond his knowledge. All the children of the devil possess is greed, hatred, envy, and jealousy.”
According to Dan, at a certain point Christ gathered all His children around Him and announced, “‘I want to have a party that's gonna last for a thousand years. You interested? You want to party with Me on this earth for a thousand years?' And we said, ‘Hell, yeah!' So He said, ‘Okay, that's the good part. Here's the bad part: you can't have something for nothing. . . . For six thousand years I'm gonna let the earth become hell before I turn it into heaven. And hell, by definition, is where the devil and his children are running shit. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna let the devil populate the earth with all of his assholes, and then I'm gonna sprinkle you, My children, on the earth a few at a time. And every hour you spend in this hell-on-earth with the assholes, you're going to be building up credits for the Big Party. It's gonna take about six thousand years, but by then we'll have all the credits we'll need for our party. And then I'll come, and we'll harvest the earth—basically, we'll remove all the assholes—and clear the dance floor for our thousand-year party.'
“Christ told His children, ‘I know life is fucking crazy, but I'm here to tell you there's a purpose behind it. We're working for the Kingdom of God. And the way we do that is we just put in our time here. And every hour you put in here is building up credit for the Big Party. That's the promise. That's the covenant. It's going to be crazy down there for a while, but in the end, through Elijah, I will come.' ”
The way Dan sees it, “Since we're all here in hell-on-earth, where the devil and his children run everything that is organized, it makes sense that the children of the devil would trick us into worshiping their asshole god. But before the God of love makes the scene, it will be important somehow to help His children—the children of love—have their eyes opened to who this cool fucker is who will be coming to befriend them on the day known in the Bible as the ‘Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord' (great for His children; dreadful for the assholes)—which is also known in the parable of the wheat and tares as ‘the harvest.'*
“It is prophesied that the ‘Great and Dreadful Day' will be when Christ sends His angels like reapers to gather out of His kingdom all those who are not His and kill them; and that's in part what I was foreshadowing,” Dan explains, “when I took the lives of Brenda and Erica. I know that might sound a little gory or something, but it feels like the right interpretation to me. I don't think the angels in this prophesy are beings with wings that fly down from heaven, but more like what Joseph and Brigham called ‘avenging angels': men already living here on earth who will just be taking care of their Father's business like I was, once they learn who their Father is and have been properly instructed.”
Dan believes that God has designated him, as Elijah, to tell the righteous “who their Father is” at the proper moment, and thereby kick off the thousand-year reign of the Kingdom of God. “I'm sure I will be the one who will identify Christ when He returns,” he says. According to Dan, a year or two after he was incarcerated, he “had this experience. . . . I didn't know what it meant at the time. I was just pacing in my cell. It was the middle of the day. And I heard a voice. It was completely different from the revelations that were given through the School of the Prophets. I was pacing and I heard this voice tell me, ‘Write this down: The moon will shine from noon until nine.' . . . That was all I heard. And over the years I thought, ‘What the hell does this mean?' And finally it came together and made sense. I recently figured it out, just in the last year or so: the sign of Christ will be that the moon will shine in the sky from noon until nine at night. How that will happen, I don't know. But when it happens I'm sure it won't be mistaken for anything else.”
By applying his singular logic to the matter, Dan has also figured out why Ron tried to strangle him with a towel back in 1984: it was because the devil had revealed to Ron that Dan was Elijah and had been assigned to let the world know when Jesus had returned. Dan surmises that the devil actually told Ron about Dan's crucial assignment long before God got around to telling Dan about it.
“At some point,” Dan explains, “I believe Ron was instructed that it was important to kill me. The basic reason for it was his father”—the devil—“was trying to prevent the unpreventable.” The devil had been given the world for six thousand years, but those six thousand years are just about over, Dan says, so “it should come as no surprise that the devil wouldn't want to give up control when his time is up.” And the way the devil hopes to extend his reign is to have Ron kill Dan/Elijah, and thus prevent him from announcing Christ's return. “I feel confident,” Dan declares, “that this is what was behind Ron's attempts
to take my life. Because the Bible says that if Elijah doesn't fulfill his calling, Christ can't return.”
Dan says that he should have recognized that Ron was one of Satan's minions back in the spring and summer of 1984, when he and Ron were driving across the West in Ron's Impala, because—contrary to the determination of the experts who testified for the state in Ron's 1996 retrial—his brother was “showing signs of schizophrenia. . . . As we were traveling together and getting to know each other, it was a fairly common phenomenon for Ron to kind of space out and be gone somewhere mentally. I suspect that at such times he was probably listening to voices.” And those voices, Dan speculates, were instructions from the devil.
Dan is sure, moreover, that Ron remains determined to murder him and is patiently waiting for an opportunity to do so: “I'm confident that he is still hearing the voices telling him to kill me.” Dan is aware of everything churned out by the prison rumor mill. And the buzz from death row, he says, is that “Ron is in very good shape and has been working out like a boxer getting ready for a title fight.” Dan takes it for granted that Ron hopes to have one more chance to find himself in Dan's company, and when that opportunity presents itself, “he wants to be ready to take care of business.”
For his part, Dan doesn't think God will let Ron kill him. In fact, he is encouraged by Ron's new training regimen, seeing it as an indication that the End Times are imminent: Dan believes the Prince of Darkness must sense that “it's almost time to start the harvest,” spurring him to whip Ron into good enough shape to make one final desperate attempt on Dan's life, and thereby prevent the arrival of the Great and Dreadful Day. Because Satan knows that if Dan is allowed to live, there will be no stopping Christ's return, and “the devil and all his brothers and sisters will be killed with much ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth.' ”
Until that rapturous moment, however, when “the moon will shine from noon until nine” and Dan can shout from the rooftops that Christ has returned, he bides his time within the grim chambers of the prison's maximum-security unit, where he has thus far spent half of his adult life. But what if the moon doesn't shine from noon until nine? What if killing Brenda and Erica Lafferty wasn't actually part of God's plan but was merely a crime of such staggering cruelty that it is beyond forgiveness? What if, in short, Dan got it all wrong? Has it occurred to him that he may in fact have a great deal in common with another fundamentalist of fanatical conviction, Osama bin Laden?
“I've asked myself that,” Dan concedes. “Could I be there? Is that what I'm like? And the answer is no. Because Osama bin Laden is an asshole, a child of the devil. I believe his real motivation isn't a quest for honesty and justice, which maybe were his motivations in his earlier life. Now he's motivated by greed and profit and power.”
What about Osama's underlings, the holy warriors who sacrificed their lives for Allah by flying jumbo jets into the World Trade Center? Surely their faith and conviction were every bit as powerful as Dan's. Does he think the sincerity of their belief justified the act? And if not, how can Dan know that what he did isn't every bit as misguided as what bin Laden's followers did on September 11, despite the obvious sincerity of his own faith?
As he pauses to consider this possibility, there comes a moment when a shadow of doubt seems to flicker across his mien. But only for an instant, and then it's gone. “I have to admit, the terrorists were following their prophet,” Dan says. “They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I'm not.
“I believe I'm a good person,” Dan insists. “I've never done anything intentionally wrong. I never have. At times when I've started to wonder if maybe what I did was a terrible mistake, I've looked back and asked myself, ‘What would I have done differently? Did I feel God's hand guiding me on the twenty-fourth of July 1984?' And then I remember very clearly, ‘Yes, I was guided by the hand of God.' So I know I did the right thing. Christ says, ‘If you want to know if something is true, believe. And I'll help you know the truth.' And that's what he did with me.
“I'm sure God knows I love Him. It's my belief that everything will work out, and there will be a happy ending to this whole strange experience. I've just had too many little glimpses through the thin fabric of this reality to believe otherwise. Even when I have tried not to believe, I can't.”
Serene in the knowledge that he has led a righteous life, Dan Lafferty is confident that he won't be festering here in maximum security much longer. He is sure that “any day now” he will hear the blare of the trumpet heralding the Last Days, whereupon he will be released from this hell of strip searches and prison food and razor wire to assume his rightful place in the Kingdom of God.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE AMERICAN RELIGION
Accounts of Mormons and the Mormon Church . . . tend toward one of two extremes. On the one hand, accounts of Mormonism from the church's founding by Joseph Smith in the 1820s have emphasized the sensational, the lurid, the scandalous, the heretical and the titillating, for the reason that, well, there is much in Mormon history, culture, and doctrine that is sensational, lurid, scandalous, heretical and titillating, as measured against mainstream American culture then and now. . . .
On the other hand, other accounts of Mormons—accounts of the people rather than the articles of their strange faith—have often emphasized the cheerful virtue, the upright and yet often relaxed, pragmatic goodness of its adherents, their ability to hold together families and raise decent children and provide the consolations of community in the confusing modern world more successfully than many others. These accounts often pass over in discreet silence the sometimes embarrassing tenets of faith that, especially if one were Mormon, might have been thought an inestimably important part of making that moral success possible. If opponents of Mormonism have often asked, “Can't we stop the Mormons from being Mormon?”, ostensible admirers of Mormons as people have often asked, at least by implication, “Can't we have Mormons—but without Mormonism?”
KENNETH ANDERSON,
“A PECULIAR PEOPLE: THE MYSTICAL AND PRAGMATIC APPEAL OF MORMONISM,”
LOS ANGELES TIMES, NOVEMBER 28, 1999
A genuine first-hand religious experience . . . is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which, in purer days, it drew its own supply of inspiration.
WILLIAM JAMES,
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Most Mormon Fundamentalists share Dan Lafferty's confidence that Armageddon is imminent. In Colorado City the new prophet, Warren Jeffs, is absolutely sure of it. Although the prophecy of his father, Uncle Rulon, that the world would be swept clean in a hurricane of fire by the year 2000 did not come to pass, the events of September 11, 2001, have renewed Warren's optimism.
In public statements Warren has condemned the bloody work of Islamic terrorists, but he preaches to the faithful in Bountiful and Colorado City that the attacks on New York and Washington were a magnificent portent and a cause for great hope. Excitedly, he tells his followers that the eruption of terrorism against the United States is an unmistakable sign that the End Times are indeed at hand, and very soon now God's chosen people will be lifted up to experience Eternal Glory. Up in Canada, dozens of photos of the jets exploding into the World Trade Center, clipped from magazines, have been mounted in the halls of the Bountiful school, lest any of the students dou
bt that the Last Days are upon us.
As for the mainline LDS Church, it has always maintained that “the hour is nigh,” and that there will be plagues and desolations before the Second Coming of Christ. Church authorities in Salt Lake have, for a long time now, urged all Mormons to store a year's worth of food and survival supplies to prepare for this period of privation. But beyond quoting scripture predicting that the world will end seven thousand years after it was created, LDS leaders are circumspect about exactly when the Apocalypse will occur.
In the meantime, the church has more than sixty thousand missionaries roaming the globe at any given moment, converting new members at an astounding rate. The respected sociologist Rodney Stark raised eyebrows in 1984 by predicting that there would be 265 million Mormons on the planet by A.D. 2080. After reassessing his calculations in 1998 to reflect more recent growth rates, Stark revised his prediction upward; now he believes that the LDS Church will have close to three hundred million members by the final decades of this century.
If the expansion of the LDS faith continues at its current pace, within sixty years governing the United States will become “impossible without Mormon cooperation,” according to the eminent scholar Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University—and an unabashed admirer of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. In 1992, in his influential book The American Religion, Bloom wrote:
Two aspects of the Saints' vision seem starkly central to me; no other American religious movement is so ambitious, and no rival even remotely approaches the spiritual audacity that drives endlessly toward accomplishing a titanic design. The Mormons fully intend to convert the nation and the world, to go from some ten million souls to six billion.
Later in the same book, Bloom made a bold prediction about what the LDS leadership will do when it gains sufficient political leverage: