No, no, it’s not an over-the-pulpit First Presidency letter that you somehow missed or yet another rumored fast & testimony meeting talk. The prophet in this case is Leland Freeborn of Parowan, Utah, as reported by the LA Times:
Reporting from Parowan, Utah — Our trip to the Parowan Prophet began with a letter to the St. George Spectrum. It was set among missives proposing that oil companies bail out Detroit automakers, that county inmates be forced to winter in tents, that lawyers be barred from public office. A rough crowd.
This particular letter to the editor in the St. George, Utah, newspaper carried the headline ” ‘Prophet’ shares grim forecast,” and it was signed by one Leland Freeborn of Parowan, who wrote that he was known to many as the Parowan Prophet.
After establishing his bona fides as an international talk radio guest and proprietor of a survivalist website that has “passed more than 100,000 hits,” Freeborn wrote:
“I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the ‘riots’ that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn’t lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said.”
These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the “old, hard-line Soviet guard” to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.
“Prepare now,” Freeborn’s letter concluded. “We are downwind from Las Vegas. I hope you can survive.”
Here’s Freeborn’s letter, along with several others that make for interesting reading as well. Ah, those wacky Southern Utahns! Hat tip to the Drudge Report. ..bruce..
Sigh. Just when I thought there might be a few people in the world who could believe that Utah wasn’t Whack Job Central …
In the April, 1979 general conference, Bruce R. McConkie said, “It may be, for instance, that nothing except the power of faith and the authority of the priesthood can save individuals and congregations from the atomic holocausts that surely shall be.” I don’t have any reason to believe the detailed prophecy that Mr. Freeborn is reported to have made, but the risk of nuclear war continues to be real, and I continue to hope that individuals in positions of power will make good enough choices to keep it from happening.
First, thank you for the citation! I remember Elder McConkie making that statement (or something like it), but was never able to find it — likely because I was searching for “nuclear holocaust” instead of “atomic holocaust” (or, more precisely, “atomic holocausts”).
On the other hand, the probability of a full-blown nuclear exchange (US v. Russia, US v. China) is profoundly lower than any time since the early 1950s. If Elder McConkie had lived long enough to see the fall of the Berlin wall, the freeing of Soviet-occupied eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he may well have reconsidered or modified his statement.
Mr. Freeborn’s prophecies that there will be widespread rioting over Obama’s election between now and his inauguration, and that this is turn will lead Russia to make a preemptive nuclear strike on the US makes no sense whatsoever, including (a) the riots and (b) that Russian leadership would collectively cause their nation’s extinction (hint: our nuclear weapons are in a lot better shape than theirs, and our missiles will actually launch).
Nuclear proliferation and terrorist/rogue state use of nukes is the real strategic concern these days. We may yet see a nuclear bomb explode on US soil, but it’s likely to be one relatively low-yield bomb smuggled in by a terrorist group, not a few thousand multi-megaton Soviet warheads arriving almost simultaneously. It’s the difference between “The Day After” and “The Sum of All Fears” (the original novel). ..bruce..