Two dates to note for March 23:
In 1970, Hal Lindsey's bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth was published. Reasoning that the world would end within a 40-year generation of the foundation of Israel (1948), Lindsey claimed the Rapture would occur seven years before then, in 1981. These dates were pushed back at least twice by Lindsey in later books such as The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon (1980) and Planet Earth 2000 A.D. (2004).
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In 2004, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon - the Korean founder of a Christian cult called the Unification Church - had himself crowned Messiah in Washington, D.C. before an audience containing a dozen U.S. lawmakers of both parties. Moon is a heavy political contributor, as well as owner/publisher of The Washington Times and a highly active Republican.
