Heaven's Gate was a cult founded in the 1970's by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Applewhite and Nettles believed that they were the two witness mentioned in the Book of Revelation 11:3. They began preaching that the Earth would soon be 'recycled' or 'wiped clean', and that the only way to survive was to leave planet Earth with them.Followers had to give up all worldly and human needs and possessions in order to achieve 'the next evolutionary level of existence'.