A woman still lives in a beat-up old caravan on the southern edge of the site, and I ask her if she's willing to talk. She gestures to some chairs and a table under what seems to be the only clump of trees in the whole of Texas.

She introduces herself as Amo Drake, formerly Amo Roden, the ex-wife of a former leader of the Branch Davidians. With her new husband, Tom, she has built a small museum and gathered a mass of documentation about the siege of Mount Carmel and its terrible outcome.

'So much has been written about us that's just not true. If you go out into the ruin, you'll see that we've annotated it… We're pretty much in a position to show that the government started the fire, and to show exactly where they did it, and to tell you exactly how they did it.'

The hostility to the federal government is extraordinary. The Oklahoma bombing notwithstanding, there is a sign offering a special welcome to the American militiamen – 'because we know who the good guys are'. Amo insists that she merely wants to make a plea for justice for her church. 'At least we want to remove the terrible slander that the Branch Davidians burned up their own people. That's simply not true.'

The Branch Davidians are named in honour of the coming messianic king – the new David who is spoken of in Isaiah's great prophecy: 'There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots' (Isaiah 11:1).

David Koresh, formerly Vernon Howell, became leader of the community in 1987, after a gun battle with the previous leader, George Roden, Roden is now in an asylum for the criminally insane. Amo, Roden's ex-wife, remained a Branch Davidian, but did not join Koresh's Mount Carmel community.

'We believe that we are the end-time Church, the Church specifically founded by God to gather the righteous to him.' she tells us. 'Most Branch Davidians not associated with David Koresh preach quite literally that Ezekiel chapter 9 – which involves the slaughter of men, women and little children, and which starts at the house of God, where the current prophetic message is being revealed – actually was fulfilled in the destruction by fire of David Koresh. And then there were plagues that fell upon the congregation after that, and that was a purification of the Church.'

It becomes appallingly obvious to me that, in her scheme of things, the conflagration at Waco is itself yet another fulfilment of prophecy. It is further proof of the eschatological significance of this tiny community of the righteous.

Amo takes us on a tour of the ruins, keeping up a non-stop commentary, complete with proof-texts, prophetic interpretations and references to her continuing legal battles with the American government. She introduces us to a Branch Davidian pastor, Charles Pace, who has been leading a Bible study on the site.

Charles Pace is as intense as Amo, and our heads are spinning. 'In 1984,' he claims, 'I gave a study here at Mount Carmel to David's group, and explained to him from our writings and scriptures that what he was spearheading was a movement that was prophesied by our leaders, and it was called 'the Omega of Apostasy', which is the Lucifer movement within our movement. It was a movement that was prophesied and had to be. And it was nine years to the day that we had the fire. Nine in scripture is the number of judgment.'

As the biblical references pile up and threaten to overwhelm us, one in particular leaps out at me. David Koresh and his followers, Pace tells us, represent 'the ultimate Laodicean condition – they think they have all the truth, they think they have it over all the other denominations, but they are the most wretched, the most miserable, the most blind and the most naked, and it showed, right here.'

Laodicea, the last of the seven churches in the book of Revelation, was condemned for being neither hot nor cold – neither fire nor ice.

As Pastor Pace shares with us his extraordinary interpretation of what happened here, I am gripped by a terrible certainty: it will happen again. Maybe not here, maybe not with this particular sect. But sooner or later, with some like-minded group of apocalyptic visionaries determined to short-circuit history and precipitate the end, it will happen again.

We are standing in the ashes of Waco. The very dust under our feet is composed of the charred remains of eighty martyrs, who, before being incinerated, endured a fifty-one day siege. And this man can suggest in all seriousness that here was a community lacking in zeal.

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