Heading for The Hills

By Richard Lacayo

With Moscow and Washington more likely these days to exchange kisses than atomic missiles, it may not seem the most opportune time to declare that nuclear annihilation is just around the corner. But followers of the Church % Universal and Triumphant, a motley New Age amalgam of Christianity and Eastern religion, are convinced that the end is near -- so near that they were heading by the thousands last week for a warren of bomb shelters deep in the hills of Montana.

Throughout the week, cars loaded with baggage, children and guns clogged the roads around Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park, where the church has amassed 33,000 acres since relocating its headquarters four years ago from Malibu, Calif. Responding to the warnings of CUT leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet, at least 2,000 of the faithful have arrived from Europe, South America and across the U.S. With stores in nearby Livingston reporting a run on dried food, aspirin and flashlights, hundreds of trucks were hauling supplies to 46 steel-and-concrete shelters dug deep into the mountain soil. The bunkers range in size from two-person containers to a vast subterranean hall designed for 756 people.

"We have been invaded," says state Representative Bob Raney. "We're occupied by an armed force of people with an intense allegiance to one person." That person is Prophet, also known as Guru Ma, who claims as many as 30,000 followers around the world. Lately she has been telling them that the apparent warming of U.S.-Soviet relations is a Kremlin ruse designed to get Americans to lower their guard. She warns that the world is entering a "dangerous period" in March and April. Or, as her astrologer and spokesman Murray Steinman puts it, "We're at a general trend of accelerated negative karma."

Prophet claims to serve as the voice (or channel, as New Agers say) for the Ascended Masters, a group of heavenly notables who include Jesus and Buddha, as well as CUT founder Mark L. Prophet, her husband, who died in 1973. Many of the faithful have sold all their possessions, quit their jobs and emptied their savings accounts to pay fees of up to $10,000 for space in the shelters. But this is not the first time that Prophet has prophesied Armageddon; in 1987 she predicted that California would fall into the sea. That may be one reason why church officials have been denying that the faithful will be diving for cover anytime soon, insisting that the sudden influx of followers to Montana is merely a response to Prophet's call for a prayer vigil to deflect the danger of a nuclear catastrophe.

With local CUT members pulling their children from schools and leaving their jobs, it would seem that something more is up. That feeling was heightened recently when Prophet sold the local building that houses the church's printing operation, a prime source of revenue. At least one internal church memo set last Friday as the day that members should be ready to go underground. Another memo quotes a representative of Guru Ma telling a shelter-group meeting, "You must do nothing but eat, sleep . . . and work at least twelve hours a day until the shelters are completed."

Many of the 12,000 local inhabitants of Park County, the stretch of mountain country where Paradise Valley is located, have been watching the CUT community with mounting anxiety. Even in an area where guns are a familiar sight, it cannot have been reassuring to hear that Prophet's current husband Ed Francis was convicted last fall of illegally purchasing $100,000 worth of semiautomatic weapons, ammunition and handguns. There are rumors that the church has hired skinheads to guard its property after the faithful have scurried down below. Several teenagers, the children of church members, have run away in recent weeks, fearing they will be forced into the shelters. "We are seeing the results of mind control," says Talita Paolini, who with her husband left the church last year. "The woman is crazy."

But before they can descend into the bowels of the earth, the faithful will have to satisfy some mundane sanitation regulations. County officials plan to forbid occupancy until the shelters are equipped with proper waste facilities. Police have also been busy handing out traffic citations to church members speeding along the highway, rushing to ready their shelters before the arrival of the missiles they fear are coming any day. "If you set a court date," says Sheriff Charley Johnson, "they just smile at you."

With reporting by Patrick Dawson/Livingston