Russian citizen Sergei Torop was a traffic police officer. He was dismissed from his job in 1989 at the age of 28. Sergei, who was unemployed, emerged with a completely different identity 1.5 years later, just as the Soviet Union collapsed.
He took the name Vissarion and founded a church called the Church of the Last Covenant, but furthermore, he attributed a brand new identity to himself.
He claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus.
He said: "I am not God, but his living word. God now speaks through me."
Torop moved to the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, dragging thousands of people with him.
Sergei Anatolyevitch Torop (born 14 January 1961), known as Vissarion "He who gives new life" or "life-giving"), is a Russian spiritual teacher and founder of the non-profit, religious organization Church of the Last Testament, described by many organizations as a cult. According to the followers of Sergei Torop and some of his own explanations, on 18 August 1990, at the age of 29, Sergey had a “spiritual awakening”. He gave his first public teaching after awakening in Minusinsk on 18 August 1991.
Thousands of people from Russia as well as other countries flocked to the region.
He met with the world media many times and became a world-renowned name.
Then suddenly, last month, he was caught in an armed police raid accompanied by helicopters and imprisoned for establishing an illegal religious organization, extorting money from his followers, and emotional abuse.