What do you do when you hand over all your money before a promised Doomsday, but Doomsday never comes? You go find the next best thing: a lawyer. That is the situation in Australia where a court has frozen the assets of Pastor Rocco Leo and his associates at Agape Ministries after followers demanded their money back. While there appears to have been no written contract, this appears a novel inverse of a force majeure claim: the act of God never came.
Former church member, Martin Penney, and another plaintiff are suing to get back more than $400,000 and $1 million they gave respectively to the church based on promises of a Doomsday.
It appears that Judgment Day will be relocated to a more mundane forum at the Adelaide District Court. Of course, the pastor still has time to make good on the Doomsday promise.
Source: ABC.
I couldn’t help BUT laugh out loud at this because according to a Mayan prophesy, the world will end maybe in 2012. I was talking to a professional and he told me some people really do believe this and have high anxiety about it. My thinking is that maybe some of these people are christian in whatever form and really believe this is going to come true.
armageddon is another pentecostalist belief. That came and went and society is still living. Surely such people, who desperately need to hang on to something and use religion as that security ‘blanket’ need to get a life. Some use drugs, some drink, others turn to religion and then when life goes right, what’s merely coincidence, “they” say their “prayers” were answered.
I don’t buy into ANY of this hogwash. It’s not the person/people I don’t respect, it’s their delusional thinking, their rationale that I don’t respect and….it all boils down to….the power religion has OVER people who choose to believe or don’t question what doesn’t exist.
(For Jill):
The most-cited study of a doomsday religion where the prophecy did not come true, which ended up with the followers being even more tightly bound to the cult is Leon Festinger’s “When Prophecy Fails.” They studied an actual UFO cult that arose in the 1950s and was associated with a particular woman. They noted that the people who had made the greatest commitment to the cult were the ones who became most tightly bound to it after the failed doomsday prophecy. Others who had made much more modest commitments found it easier to leave the cult.
Details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
@Anonymously Yours… you took the words right out of my mouth. If this had happened back in 1863-ish, an entire denomination would cease to be. Jesus is comin’. Look busy.
Buddha,
As a child of the 40s, I had the opportunity to live through a great era of musical transition. In my opinion, “the day the music died” for American popular music came with the British Invasion of the 60s–more specifically with the Beatles in 1962/63. I have a saying; the music was best BB (Before the Beatles).
Had the vagaries of life not interfered, I would have most likely been a professional musician.
Mespo, I agree, Mr. Price is a versatile musician.
I too miss Mike Spindell, especially since we are from the same era, although hippy v. goat-roper…
mespo,
True, true.
As to Mike S.? No, not a word. I was hoping he was staying in touch with the Prof. I’ve thought about sending him an e-mail, but I hesitate given the situation. He surely has enough on his mind without questions from me.
Buddha:
Seriously, you could teach a course on modern American music history if you were so inclined.
************
Who says he’s not already?
Any word from Mike S lately btw?