Another Strike for the Chosen One!

Jesse Walker | December 19, 2007

Time's new Person of the Year is an iconic figure. Literally.

The Bolshaya Elnya village in the Nizhny Novgorod Region is home to the "Rus' Resurrecting" sect, a group of local residents who believe that President Putin was both the Apostle Paul and King Solomon in previous lives....

"We didn't choose Putin," Mother Fontinya told the Moskovsky Komsomolets paper, expounding on the first time she laid eyes on the "holy one."

"It was when Yeltsin was naming him as his successor [during a live New Year's Eve TV broadcast in 1999]. My soul exploded with joy! 'An ubermensch! God himself has chosen him!'" I cried.

"Yeltsin was the destroyer, and God replaced him with his creation," claimed Fontinya.

The sect possesses a President Putin icon that Fontinya claims miraculously appeared one day.

"He has given us everything," she said, pointing to the sky.