Windy Sydney

This is directly from the LA Times, I take no credit for the article Peter H. King wrote!

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."

It took an hour to reach the prophet, a high-country drive through stunning red-rock formations, the color of which matches the politics in this corner of southern Utah. A freeway billboard, depicting a nuclear mushroom cloud, provided directions to the prophet's two-story house.

The frontyard seemed a staging ground for rapid flight -- two or three motor boats, a raft, a canoe, a recreational vehicle and an old sedan, parked with its engine running.

The man who answered our unexpected knock wore a cowboy hat with a big feather stuck in the band, and a beard suggestive of St. Nick. We asked to see the prophet. He said we had the right guy.

Freeborn hobbled out the door on crutches and eased into a wheelchair on the porch. As it turned out, he was heating the car not for rapid escape from a nuclear cloud, but to take a neighbor to the doctor.

"I only have nine minutes," he said.

It was enough time to sketch out his history -- a Mormon of substance, a father of 12, he had crashed his airplane in 1975 and fallen into a three-week coma, during which he went through "to the other side" and emerged a prophet.

Freeborn, now 66, took "a plural wife," as he put it, and parted ways with the church. He forfeited his wealth, spreading word of his prophecies. He appears to live now mainly on sales of newsletters and survival information packets advertised on his website.

Asked for examples of successful prophecies, he offered O.J. Simpson's murder acquittal and Al Gore's winning of the popular vote in 2000. But his core insight has been a repeated dream of seeing nuclear flashes to the west while shopping at a Wal-Mart during Christmas season.

And this, he warned, appears to be the year.

As Freeborn rose to leave, he said he would be hosting a weekly religious meeting that night. He urged us to come.

"If you can write a story," Freeborn said, "you can save a lot of lives in L.A."