Why doomsday ‘prophets’ are convinced 2015 is the last year

The “blood moon” is largely considered a rare natural phenomenon scientifically explained as a version of the total lunar eclipse.

But to a section of Christians, the four-part cycle of a reddish moon that occurred two times in April and October this year with two more expected in 2015 is a divine sign that the world is coming to an end at least by next September.   

A time like this, when the end of one year dovetails into a new one, provides a sense of renewal with resolutions and plans on the cards.

However, the New Year also provides the perfect opportunity for sections of those who are religiously inclined to prophesy the end of the world — which coincides with the return of Jesus for those who subscribe to Christianity — or an apocalyptic scenario without any religious foundation where life as we know it is annihilated. 

The strongest prediction so far is the “blood moon” or lunar tetrad, mostly pushed by American preachers Mr Mark Blitz and Mr John Hagee.

It is said to fulfill a biblical prophecy, particularly based on Joel 2:31, which talks of the sun being turned to darkness and the moon to blood.

DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS
Unfulfilled predictions of doomsday have been made for centuries, but this has not stopped the proclamation of new ones.

Some prophesies provide a way out for those who follow prescribed rules and beliefs, others claim post-apocalyptic difficulties for survivors while some are less forgiving with their everything-will-be-wiped-out message.   

Various people, organisations and cults have tried to predict the precise moment this will happen and whereas the Bible states no-one knows the hour or day the messiah returns, there have been doomsayers and “prophets” alike who have always tried to tell the end of the world and have prepared for it.

From psychics to crackpots to pseudo-theologians and pseudoscientists, every once in a while, up comes a man or woman who claims to correctly predict when the world will end.

Doomsday scenarios have also been depicted in movies — from a comet about to collide with our planet, an unrelenting virus that sweeps through the population, a giant supernatural creature that demolishes everything and anything in its path, an alien invasion, vicious weather that makes the tsunami look like child’s play and an impending nuclear war, among others.     

Kenya has not been spared from these predictions. Last week’s death of one of the most bizarre “prophets” of the end times was a reminder of a notorious incident eight years ago.

Mr Moshe Sang had led other followers of House of Yahweh in Nyandarua to declare that the world would end in September 2006. 

SECT FOLLOWERS ARRESTED
He and his sect members begun preparing to outlive the apocalypse by burrowing themselves a few feet below the ground in caves – astoundingly hoping to survive whatever it was they said would come upon the world.

He mobilised his followers to dig ditches they planned to live in, in case a nuclear war broke out, and a major drill was conducted for all followers who arrived at the Mauche church donning rudimentary gas masks and a small well-wrapped bundle containing foodstuffs and a bottle of water they intended to imbibe while living underground.

There was a network of underground hideouts where the members would live as well as a large area where they would meet for spiritual nourishment and briefing.

Among the foodstuffs was fermented porridge flour that would have been enough to feed them for a year hoping that all “sinners” would have been wiped off the earth by then.

“You doubt me but time is coming when  they will be caught unawares once the war kicks off and if the war is not there, let the police arrest me after the deadline lapses,” he said then.

The police were obviously not impressed and arrested the sect followers. And the world did not end as Mr Sang had predicted, triggering a row within House of Yahweh.

Mr Sang’s relationship with his wife also went cold leading to a separation but he maintained contact with his four children whom he supported through school until his recent death.

ERRONOUS INFORMATION
A House of Yahweh member David Yahshua Yegon told Lifestyle this week that Mr Sang was not the leader of the church but a member like any other, insisting that the House of Yahweh leader was based at the world headquarters in Texas, US.

Mr Yegon added that the church’s activities would go on, saying most of the doomsday information given by Mr Sang was erroneous and had since been disowned by other members.

“The House of Yahweh is intact and we have grown from strength to strength with branches sprouting in various parts of the country,” he said, adding that Mr Sang was buried in his parents’ home in Bomet County.

Theologian Buri Edward, a pastor at the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Nairobi, says that by nature, human beings are curious about what happens beyond the world we know.

“There is a certain side of us that is drawn to ‘beyondness’. It’s appealed to by science and by religion. Scientists investigate ‘the other world’ and that is why institutions like NASA (in the US) invest so much in trying to find out what’s out there.

They try to answer questions like ‘are we alone in the universe?’” said Mr Buri, who is based at the St Andrews church.

He added: “Then, theologically speaking, the first thing is that the Scriptures – which is what most of such people use – open the room for such imagination.

ROOM FOR IMAGINATION

The scriptural philosophy that the earth will end dramatically leaves a lot of room for imagination. The end of the world is provided for in the Bible.

The second thing is that Scripture is vague about the end of the world, which is the second door to creativity and imagination. Then of course, for them it’s not doomsday, it’s a day to glory. They all promise a better place,” he told Lifestyle.

He explained that some preachers seem to specialise in end times, making people who want to unravel the mystery and build hope to follow them.

“The world is cruel in many ways. If there is a person who is telling you about a better place, they tend to attract a certain side of the human being. What we see is normal curiosity simply taken sometimes to dangerous extremes and these turn out to be cults,” he said.

Six years before House of Yahweh hit the headlines, more than 700 doomsday cultists were killed in neighbouring Uganda after that group’s predictions failed to come true.

The deaths were attributed to group suicide or mass murder. Members of the cult led by Joseph Kibwetere, and his principal prophetess, Credonia Mwerinde, had earlier been told to sell all their property.

The Ugandan doomsday prediction was one among many made ahead of the year 2000.

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

But while Kenya’s House of Yahweh had a basic plan in anticipation, hundreds of people in the US take the post-apocalypse preparations so seriously that they have every detail covered.

Known in some quarters as the “preppers”, they were recently featured in a Sky News report that exposed their deep fears — and the “doomsday entrepreneurs” reaping from these fears.

One told the reporter that he was not afraid of the actual events that would destroy the whole world — these he had planned for— but what would happen after that. 

“I think that is what I’m scared of the most,” he said, “Not the actual events. I’ve already prepared for that. It’s the aftermath, when there are no police, there are no military to protect us, we’re going to be protecting ourselves.”

The trigger could be a terrorist attack, a collapse of the financial system, a failure in power generation, or a natural disaster.

Psychologist Mbutu Kariuki says that these doomsday conspiracy theorists are people who take ordinary curiosities and sink into extremism.

Mr Kariuki particularly has no kind words for religious leaders who head outfits that push the doomsday message.

“The leaders are mostly very intelligent people who know what they are doing. They introduce mysteries that they know people have difficulty understanding. They use those to knock people off balance.

The leaders are people who have no shame or qualms. They are psychopaths. They benefit from these relations,” he said.

DOCTRINE AND CONFUSION
Mr Kariuki compared them to thieves and robbers who do not use the gun, but rely on doctrine and confusion.

“It is white collar crime. A lot of times, they even tell followers to sell property and amass that property,” he told Lifestyle.

Mr Kariuki explained that most of the followers are often people with lower intelligence than the leaders and who tend to have an escapist mentality as opposed to mastering their environments.

“It’s not about formal education, it’s about cognitive ability to be able to operate and survive their environments without going to the extreme towards seeking extra-terrestrial search for answers. Everything, including religion, requires moderation,” he said.

In contrast to go-it-alone survivalists, preppers in the US have embraced social media, blogging and self-publishing to share knowledge and build networks in the event of “The End Of The World As We Know It”.

There is even a reality TV show, Doomsday Preppers,  on the National Geographic channel. And some like James Stevens, 73, alias Dr Prepper, who lives on a secluded hilltop in Texas with five years’ supply of food and his own water supply, have been prepping for decades.

SURVIVAL RESOURCES
Prepping even appears to enjoy a degree of subtle government endorsement: for example, on its website, the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells citizens to put together a basic disaster kit with food and water for three days.

But why stop there? Preppers can shop online for everything from a year’s supply of food for one person for about Sh90,000 to pre-fabricated underground bunkers in case of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.

And while House of Yahweh followers had simple caves, which looked like they could collapse under the slightest pressure, in California, the Vivos Group markets luxury bunkers for anyone from a family of four (“discreetly installed just about anywhere in one week”) to a community of 1,000 people outfitted for a year of survival.

“Members need to only arrive before their facility is locked down and secured from the chaos above,” it says.

And in a recent Sky News feature, American “doomsday entrepreneur” Larry Hill explained how he had converted a former underground nuclear missiles silo into a hideout for the rich when catastrophe hits the world.

It even has a Jacuzzi and cinema for residents to relax in safety as the rest of the world is destroyed. But this does not come cheap: Sh270 million is the price for a floor of the luxury facility.

So, as 2015 approaches, will the “blood moon” prediction that the end is nigh before or after the divine sign of the final lunar eclipse in September be fulfilled? Only time will tell.      

Additional information from BBC and AFP