Doomsday sect's future in doubt

BOZEMAN, Mont. — It wasn't long ago that thousands of members of the Church Universal and Triumphant followed their leader's call to donate their life savings to build underground shelters against a coming nuclear apocalypse.

Yet Armageddon never came, and after a decade-long decline caused by Alzheimer's disease, Elizabeth Clare Prophet — "Mother" to her followers — died last month at age 70.

In the waning days of Prophet's reign as the church's divinely chosen messenger, its focus shifted from civilization's end to the development of a New Age publishing juggernaut, producing hundreds of books and recordings drawn from Prophet's mystical declarations.

The church still keeps its 750-person shelters stocked with food — "insurance," its leaders say, against possible dark days ahead. Yet with Prophet's death, it's uncertain the spiritual movement she embodied will prove as lasting as all the concrete and steel hidden beneath a Montana mountainside north of Yellowstone National Park.

"You had a clear figurehead that became the focus of the organization, the object of adoration. When that's suddenly removed, it throws people into a tailspin," said Robert Balch, a University of Montana sociologist specializing in cults and unconventional religions.

He said Prophet's death sparks a "crisis of succession" over who will take her place.

As her followers convene at the church's sprawling Corwin Springs compound this weekend for a three-day memorial gathering, the struggle to lay claim to Prophet's legacy already has begun.

Within days of her death, former church member David Lewis claimed to channel Prophet's spirit.

Lewis said this week he wants to "carry Elizabeth's message forward" and is inviting church members to "make a fresh start" with a spinoff group he started several years ago, the Hearts Center.

Like Prophet, he claims the ability to channel the words of Jesus, Buddha and more obscure spiritual figures such as St. Germain and El Morya.

Church leaders have denounced Lewis and said it's too soon to say if another messenger will step forward.

Prophet led the church since the 1973 death of her second husband, Mark Prophet, who founded the church's parent organization, The Summit Lighthouse, in 1958.

The couple preached that one's soul progresses through a series of earthly incarnations. His past lives were said to have included Aesop, Lancelot and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Hers included Nefertiti, Queen Guinevere of Camelot and Marie Antoinette.

Soon after her husband died and became an "ascended master," Elizabeth Prophet began to channel his holy dictations. Over the next two decades she attracted an estimated 50,000 followers around the world.