Bent Says ‘End Of All Things’ Near

By COLLEEN HEILD

The Lord Our Righteousness Church Wayne Bent formed in 1987 is steeped in biblical prophecies. By 2000, after he had declared himself the Messiah, Bent predicted that the end of the world would occur on Oct. 31, 2007.

Since then, as the leader of the group, he contends he is preparing them for the Second Coming.

He speaks of wars, the failing economy and turmoil in the world in one passage on his congregation’s Web site, strongcity.info.

“The seven last plagues are all falling now and the end of all things is at hand,” he wrote on March 2, 2008.

Bent professes to be the son of God and says he was reborn as Michael Travesser.

Among his prolific writings on the Web site are admissions about his sexual “consummations” with women in the group.

Bent, who is divorced, describes how God compelled him to have sex with “two witnesses” — two married followers whose husbands consented to “whatever intimate purpose God had for them to fulfill.

“In an instant of time, we had been forced by God to connect intimately, in the Spirit and then in the flesh.”

He contends the wife of his son also came to him wanting a physical relationship — and he agreed.

His writings also dwell on seven virgins in the compound “all asking to lie naked on my bed.

“No one intimated that they should do this, but the Spirit,” he says on his church Web site.

He contends he never had sex with any minors.

A spokesman for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Md., said Thursday that Bent had a pastoral ministry with the church in Southern California from 1970 until he voluntarily left in 1982.

Bent had harsh criticism for the church on the Web site, saying “the whole city of Adventism wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and when they died, they wanted to go to their heavenly petting zoo.”

(c) 2008 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.