In 1990, a year after losing his job as a traffic policeman, a Russian man named Sergey Anatolyevitch Torop experienced a mystical revelation. He believed that he had been reborn as Vissarion, the returned Jesus Christ, and soon afterward he founded a religious movement, the Church of the Last Testament. Thirteen years later, he has nearly five thousand followers, known as Vissarionites, who live in a community based in the rural Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. The Church of the Last Testament combines elements of the Russian Orthodox Church with Buddhist themes of reincarnation, as well as preparations for the impending apocalypse; members are vegan and are restricted from drinking alcohol, … Continue reading Davide Monteleone