Russian authorities arrest religious leader who claims to be Jesus’ reincarnation

Almost three decades after he founded the Church of the Last Testament, attracting thousands of followers to the depths of Siberia, where he installed a community, Vissarion, the man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, was eventually arrested by Russian authorities.

The operation set up to take him gave an action movie. Sergei Torop, 59, a former traffic policeman converted to a religious guru, was driven by masked soldiers to a helicopter in an intervention that involved agents of the Russian security service FSB, as well as police and agents from other special agencies. He will be accused of running an illegal religious organization that extorted his followers and subjected them to emotional abuse, according to The Guardian.

With Vissarion, two of his closest assistants were arrested, one of them Vadim Redkin, a former drummer in a Soviet-era ‘boys band’ and has long been the right-hand man of the religious leader.

The religious view of the founder of the Last Testament Church has changed since what he called “awakening” happened, when he lost his job in 1989. Initially Vissarion claimed that Jesus was taking care of people from an orbit close to Earth and that the Virgin Mary “commanded Russia”, but the speech changed until it reached the stage where it said it was Jesus’ last reincarnation.

In 2002, he explained: “I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Whatever God means He says through me ”.

Torop, or Vissarion, was one of the mystics who emerged in the early 90s after the fall of the Soviet Union, when a certain ideological vacuum was installed. But, unlike others, it stood the test of time. With long hair and long beards, he created an image in everything similar to Jesus of Nazareth and ended up living in southern Siberia, literally followed by thousands of ‘faithful’ who settled nearby, currently about 4,000, grouped in rural settlements in the Krasnoyarsk region, self-sufficient and living under heavy discipline. Vissarion, on the other hand, together with its nearest nucleus, occupied the top of a hill called “The House of Dawn”.

Among the converts are not just Russians but some people from other countries. They live by fulfilling a selection of rites extracted from orthodox Christianity, communion with nature being one of the main philosophies. Veganism is imposed and the circulation of money is prohibited, as is alcohol consumption or the most modern technology. They dress in austere clothes and orient themselves according to their own calendar, counting the years from 1961 – the year of Vissarion’s birth -, with Christmas being replaced by a feast day, on January 14, the date of founder’s birthday.

In May, at The Moscaw Times, Vadim Redkin shared that requests for more followers had tripled after the pandemic started because of the new coronavirus. “People are looking for something and are attracted to our lifestyle. They look for a way out of isolation and loneliness ”, he justified.

The fate of the cult’s followers is, for the time being, unknown, and it is not clear why the authorities led this operation after so many years to practically ignore the existence of the Last Testament Church. For some Russian media, the explanation lies in the fact that the community has been involved in a dispute that interferes with local commercial interests.

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