Vissarion

Vissarion, born as Sergey Anatolyevich Torop, in Krasnodar 1961, is a Russian mystic and spiritual leader of the Vissarionites. He is the son of Anatoly Torop and Nadezhda (nee Malashenko); after his military service in the Red Army, he settled in Minusinsk, where he worked as a patrol officer before losing his job in 1989. On 18 August 1990 he claims that he had a revelation and a reincarnation of Christ. Reborn as Vissarion, the returned Jesus Christ, he soon afterwards he founded a religious movement, the Church of the Last Testament, also known as "Community of Unified Faith", with its head church located in the Siberian Taiga in the Minusinsk Depression east of Abakan, in the small settlement of Petropavlovka. In 2013 the movement gathered 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. Vissarion has two wives, and six children from two marriages.