Wayne Bent believes he is the second coming of Jesus
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — The space between the collarbone and a girl’s breast could be the difference between guilt or innocence for a New Mexico cult leader accused of sex crimes.
But that’s going to be up to a jury to decide. Judge Gerald E. Baca ruled here Monday that he will not hear from the two girls Wayne Bent is accused of having sexual contact with at his northern area compound until next month’s trial.
[…]Bent — the leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church who believes he is the second coming of Jesus — was arrested in May by State Police at his Strong City compound in Union County, northwest of Clayton. He was indicted by a grand jury later that month on two counts each of criminal sexual contact of a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The girls initially said that they were naked while Bent kissed them, according to State Police documents. One of the girls said he touched and kissed her breasts.
But [defense lawyer Sarah] Montoya said Monday that both girls have since denied that the encounters were anything illegal. She said the girl told her in an interview that the kissing happened near her clavicle and not on her breast.
Meanwhile, Bent has gone on a hunger strike — which he refers to as a ‘last fast.’ In a statement posted on his web site he writes:
It matters not to me which way I depart your world, but depart I will, for this is the time for it. But as far as a trial goes, that seems to me to be a moot point just now, for I am entering a religious fast, and the fast of Moses, and I do not expect to remain in the natural world until the time of the trial which was moved into November.
Bent says he and his followers will not commit suicide, but “are leaving the world”:
When the world and its liars came against Strong City, they only guaranteed their own doom. The earth has been warned. I have plainly spoken to it for 12 years. I fasted from speaking to the earth for 100 days, and now I will break my fast to sound this last trumpet. I told you before, but you would not heed and turn to honest reflection. Instead you attacked the messenger.
We are leaving the world because it no longer permits us freedom to follow our heavenly Father’s instructions to us, or to speak freely, without some form of attack against our lives.
Bent’s rambling statement provides ample evidence of his religious delusions. While he claims to believe that “everyone is the second coming [of Christ] who has Christ appear fully in them”, Wayne Bent clearly also believes he plays a special role:
There is one thing that is certain now, and that is that things are not as they appear. My Father has sent me in judgment, and in judgment I will be. I have posted my judgments in writing, many of them on the Internet and some in the books that I have written. I was called to take the Bride of God and to consummate the Marriage of the Lamb. This I have done. I was instructed to allow the virgins to lie naked on my bed at their request, to bond them to my Spirit and to offend the earth, and this I have done. It was designed to judge the nation, and it did.
I may simply change forms and continue my judgments until the wicked are destroyed altogether. Or, if it were possible for my physical form to die in your prison house called earth, the effects would be the same. But I do know this: No Godly Messiah has ever died for very long.
[…]My Father sent me in judgment, and I will judge. If it is possible for my body to die, it would only be for a moment. I would be raised, and then as Jesus, I would oversee the judgment and the end of those who had hated the truth and persecuted my people, and those who had come against my words to
mankind.
See also: Cult leader says his prosecution will bring about the end of the world.