August 10: Coping with Cognitive Dissonance in a Baha'i Sect

In 1969, Dr. Leland Jensen, leader of a small Baha'i splinter group in Montana, entered prison for sexually molesting a 15-year-old girl. That night, in the early hours of August 10, he had a revelation that he was the "promised Joshua". In the years after his eventual release from prison, between 1979 and 1995, he issued 20 separate predictions of global disaster. These included several nuclear strikes on New York City, the smashing of Halley's Comet into Earth, and many others. On the eve of Jensen's largest prediction - April 29, 1980 - his hundreds of followers across multiple northwestern states entered fallout shelters to ride out what they believed would be 20 years of Tribulation before Christ's return to Earth in 2000.

After each failed prediction, Jensen and his right-hand man Neal Chase issued press releases explaining how they had been correct. For instance, when New York was not destroyed in a nuclear attack on March 23, 1994 (after previously not being destroyed in a nuclear attack on November 29, 1992), Chase pointed to a gas pipeline explosion in New Jersey the following day, which one witness compared to a nuclear blast.

Source: Balch, Domitrovich, Mahnke, Morrison - "Fifteen Years of Failed Prophecy: Coping with Cognitive Dissonance in a Baha'i Sect"