Back in 2010, José Luis de Jésus Miranda, leader of a Miami-Dade-based cult and the self described Antichrist, told us that the world was going to end on July 1st, 2012. Apparently the man who has a "666" tattoo on his forearm and openly refers to himself as "The Man Christ Jesus" has reworked his math -- he's now announced that the Earth will instead meet its final destination a day earlier on June 30, 2012. Oh, shucks, we had plans that day.
The leader of the Growing In Grace International Ministry, Inc., and -- fun fact -- a former heroin addict, made his prediction to his followers, most of whom are scattered throughout Latin America, in a broadcast last week.
New Times profiled Miranda and his shady church extensively back in 2006.
Apparently he's missed the publicity.
Just about the cheapest way for any fringe "religious" figure to strum up some media attention is to declare that the world is going to end.
For whatever reason, people tend to be obsessed with the end of the world. Maybe it's got something to do with our thoughts on our mortality. Maybe it's because we can't really wrap our heads around why we're all here in the first place anyway, so on some subconscious level it makes sense to us that it could all be gone in an instant. Whatever the reason, predictions about the end of the world tend to excite us. We're all crazy masochists, really.
But this is a prediction coming from a guy who used church donations to make alimony payment to his first wife. So, we're not sure what's the bigger mystery: why people are obsessed with the end of the world, or why this guy has any followers in the first place.
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