Failed US doomsday prophet dies

The woman behind a Montana sect that prepared for a nuclear holocaust that never came has died, leaving her followers pretty much directionless.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet - "Mother" to her thousands of followers - died, aged 70, following a decade-long fight with Alzheimer's disease.

Back in 1990, such supposed made a doomsday prediction that, predictably, failed to occur. The Church Universal and Triumphant still keeps its 750-person underground shelters stocked with food, though attempts to find a successor to Mother have so far produced none:

"Since Prophet fell ill, at least 15 people have stepped forward claiming to be the next messenger"

Station ident: This is the end of the world as we know it ...

Apologies for the break in service - nothing too apocalyptic about that, just a temporary glitch :)

To reinvigorate your souls, enjoy the following sermon from the always-entertaining House of Yahweh, a sect out of Texas that has spawned branches in a number of other countries with their brand of fire-breathing apocalypticism (more about them in the next issue). Delivered by the man known only as "the only man who holds Yahshua's Authority on the face of this earth, the Greatest Teacher in the world, the Greatest Kahan, our beloved Pastor and Overseer Yisrayl Hawkins", it contains the most beautiful bit of post-failed-prediction justification ever ...

Basically, the reason the world didn't end when they said it would in September 2006 was because ... wait for it ... God decided to hold it back a bit.

No kidding, look:

The date that we gave, September 2006, that I found in Scripture was the same date that the hidden codes book shows would be the nuclear holocaust. Of course, that nuclear holocaust, they don't know it, but we know that it's being held back by YAHWEH as Revelation 7 shows. But this will be the beginning of The End of man's governments of the people and by the people.

So God left secret messages in the Bible about when the date of the end of the world would be, but then he changed his mind, but another bit of the Bible said he would anyway, but it's going to happen most definitely ... etc.

Waiting for the End Times Part 1

End Time Watching is big business - just ask those preachers through the ages who have only been too happy to bandy the apocalypse about. There's nothing more likely to get the faithful handing over their precious cash like the thought that it might buy them a one-way ticket to Paradise.

But make no mistake about it, it's as popular now as it was when all you needed was the birth of a two-headed cat and a pulpit to stand in. At least now cynicism can make a rough stab at standing up to blind faith, and the vast majority of reasonable, logical people needing only to cite that last failed prediction to take the wind from the sails of your average Armageddon seller.

Yet even the boom in recent years of scientific scaremongering (which we've reported on here, there and everywhere), whether by scientists themselves or a headline-chasing media, has not meant the fervent have gone away. No, if anything they're even MORE convinced that the end is nigh - bending reality still further to support their claims.

But why do they continue to get away with it? Why do people still believe them? Why do they not listen to sensible, thought-out demolitions of these absurd ideas?

It's refreshing to see a deconstruction of the mechanics of modern religious doomsaying, even though it does strain its metaphors somewhat ...

"Academic dishonesty seems to be the norm when passages don’t coincide with what the prognosticator has already concluded about a topic. Doctrinal concepts, conveyed in actual verbiage, considered malignant to the purveyors’ point of view, are given a sort of theistic chemotherapy, while others are transplanted to help prop up preconceived opinions. The outcome of these tactics is that we find ourselves in an intellectual gymnastics match, with those holding to the sensational being the Romanian all-stars and those who adhere to more realistic views being a team of overweight Slovakians with uni-brows. The irony here is that the latter, despite appearing to be tremendously outmatched, eventually emerges victorious. Why? Because truth always trumps error, no matter how nicely adorned or well groomed that error might be."

The End is Nigh: The Conference!

Y'know, while reading coverage of this year's International Prophecy Conference I'm not actually sure what scares me the most. It's either that preacher Mark Hitchcock has penned *20* books on apocalyptica or that there's a CONFERENCE where people go and talk.

It's no surprise to see Tim LaHaye, he of the bestselling Left Behind series, down as one of the speakers at this conference, though Hitchcock's latest title (The Late Great United States, What Bible Prophecy Reveals about America's Last Days) is a sobering reminder that the evangelical Christian community in America is very much alive and well and busy claiming the current crisis as a sign of the times. He's also author of the cherrily-titled Could the Rapture Happen Today? and Iran: The Coming Crisis.

Hitchcock confidentally proclaims that America will NOT be a superpower during the End Times, meaning it will have already be brought low by "anything from "a nuclear 9/11'' to an economic collapse to the expected Rapture that could swoop 30 million believers into heaven"

"We don't want to be obsessed with it,'' he said. I really hope the irony of that statement is clear.