Jesus of Siberia TV - New Yorker online -
There is a place in Russia where people have discovered the secret of living in perfect harmony. A place where the children run free. Where the Earth provides everything you need. And where money is meaningless. Welcome to the Church of the Last Testament. Jesus of Siberia, Vice 2012
5,000 followers from all over the world. ibid.
Vissarion and his followers believe in aliens, think suicide is A OK, and believe the end of the world is imminent. ibid.
‘You’re very Christ-like in your appearance.’ ibid. interviewer
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, smoking, and using money. New Yorker online article 29 January 2013