Last Christmas, I bought my son some gifts online, and unbeknownst to me, the retailer used the purchase to sign me up for free trial subscriptions to about half a dozen useless magazines, which began showing up unbidden six weeks later, much to my surprise. It took many phone calls to track down where the magazines came from and to make sure I wasn’t being charged for them. The bottom line is that I have an unwanted weekly subscription to People magazine. I was shocked to discover an advertisement in the back of the current week’s edition making use of the ancient astronaut theory to promote an evangelical Christian limited liability corporation registered in Wyoming. The ad comes to us under the auspices of World’s Last Chance, LLC, a corporation-cum-ministry headed by Galal P. Doss, a former Seventh-Day Adventist from Egypt with a track record of making bizarre prophecies, such as his failed prophecy that the pope to succeed Benedict XVI would be a demon pretending to be the resurrected John Paul II. Doss headed an Egyptian cosmetics company before leaving Adventism in 1999 over concerns that the Adventist church was too “soft” on social issues. His efforts to convince Coptic Christians of the error of their faith earned a reprove from the head of the Coptic church in the early 2000s. Doss remains the head of the Family Cosmetics Sae company, and his business success seems to help him to fund his ministry. Registration information for the World’s Last Chance website lists Doss as the owner, and his name also appears on documents filed in Wyoming for the operation of the LLC. The text-based advertisement, whose primary purpose is to attack the Pope over his failure to move the Sabbath to Saturday, covers a full page and has no pictures. In dense, narrow letters it claims that the prophecies of the book of Revelation are currently coming to pass and that the end of the world is near. It concludes its review of Revelation by asking readers to “imagine the panic that will grip the financial markets” when God destroys trees, crops, and fresh water. Yes—the most important consequence of the coming apocalypse is how it will affect the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Modern evangelical Christianity can be so confusing. The relevant section of the advertisement refers to the fifth trumpet of Revelation: “The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth” (9:1-3, NIV). According to the supposedly literalist Doss, this refers, bizarrely, to the arrival of fake space aliens in UFOs, saying that the passage foretells … a celestial invasion of demons posing as “aliens.” The pain that these “aliens” will inflict is likened in the Bible to the sting of scorpion. The Scriptures state that people will want to die to escape the pain, but will be unable. And what do the demon-aliens want? Why, to have church services held on Sunday, of course! This, Doss says, will make God furious because Sunday is a bad, nasty, horrible day, and only Saturday can make God smile. The demons will bring about the apocalypse and fake an entire alien invasion so that the majority of Christians, who make up only 30% of the world’s population, will continue to worship on the day they have set aside as the Sabbath already. It seems like a bit more effort than it’s worth.
“We know this looks CRAZY from the outset. We know it,” Doss writes. The advertisement has appeared in a range of national publications over the past few months, including USA Today. The idea that demons are masquerading as aliens goes back to the UFO prophets of the 1950s and 1960s, who attempted to fit the then-new idea of UFOs into a biblical framework. This is, however, the first time I’ve seen the demon-aliens obsessing over the Sabbath as the reason for their appearance.
24 Comments
Clete
3/27/2018 09:58:41 am
I guess everyone receives, at times, unwanted mail. About six weeks ago I received a mailing from the Republican National Committee. It had a series of questions asking if I supported the Republican efforts to repeal some of the social legislation passed over the last eight years. It then got to the meat of the mailing, asking me to support the Republican party with a donation. I am not the NRA and what little money I have I need to support myself and my wife and not some useless congressman or Senator.
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Scott David Hamilton
3/27/2018 10:07:13 am
The most unlikely thing in Doss’ whole scenario is that any world leader would defer to the Pope on... we’ll, anything, let alone how to deal with aliens.
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An Anonymous Nerd
3/27/2018 11:27:52 am
None of this is new. I've seen similar notions on Youtube for some time now. The number of views on those videos can be depressing.
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Machala
3/27/2018 11:50:58 am
The cosmetic company must be doing VERY WELL. Do you know how much money it costs for a full page ad in _People_ magazine ?
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Americanegro
3/27/2018 01:07:21 pm
A deeper but not better question is "Why does everyone agree on which day of the week is which?"
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Finn
3/28/2018 12:41:50 am
Tuesday was already taken for another holy day.
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Cesar
3/27/2018 03:41:44 pm
In the Bible locusts refer to invading armies:
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Americanegro
3/27/2018 04:31:05 pm
It's helpful to differentiate between the Catskills Bible and the Easter Bunny Bible.
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David Bradbury
3/27/2018 05:01:23 pm
Napoleon's invading army?
Americanegro
3/27/2018 06:40:03 pm
If it were in a text that pretended to be prophecy that would make sense.
Finn
3/28/2018 12:43:27 am
"what was the Plague of Frogs"
david
3/30/2018 06:37:01 am
Notably, the website for the organisation cited also promulgates Flat Earth theory!
Linda Revolting-Cow
3/28/2018 07:30:03 am
I can tell you truth behind this story..........I have secret contacts that tell me.... jesus was an alien...... blah blah.... high strangeness... blah blah..... Antarctica..... conspiracy.. blah. Antarctica... blah blah... secret whisleblower... blah...blah...
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Bob Jase
3/28/2018 12:41:16 pm
I know that Doss must be right because he's a Christian but why do so many other Christians disagree with him? They all claim that god told them what to do, you'd think they'd all agree.
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Not Stanton Friedman
3/30/2018 12:10:09 am
Why do you even blog about this? Why is your blog full of the fringe reports that less than 1% take seriously while the good UFO and alien reports are out there that you hide from?
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4/1/2018 02:56:30 pm
Then why do you bother reading his blog? Was telling him how "bad" his blog is an ego trip for you? What was the payoff of your post? Quite a lot of people follow Jason on a regular basis and find his stuff interesting. You? What do you do other than to post bitter rants like this on blogs you don't consider worth reading?
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Definitely Not Stanton Friedman
4/2/2018 08:50:31 pm
I usually avoid it but since his sometime obnoxious postings are referenced by other sites I decided to see for myself. My ego does feel better, he attacks the ludicrious in order to generalize the more established as being the same ilk. Maybe if he delved into the legit well-studied fringe theories, I might be more respectful. But for now I think this is dressed up skepticism that's more Howard Stern freak show...looking for oddballs to wind up and destroy from a keyboard Enjoy your pedestal 4/2/2018 09:42:52 pm
What pedestal? I don't go to people's blogs and make sweeping generalizations about them without knowing anything about them. Jason is a published author and well versed in a variety of subjects. Too bad you couldn't take more time than you needed to stroke your own ego and find out.
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Bill Morgan
4/1/2018 11:27:46 am
The entire Jesus story is a Myth. You offered no historical or archaeological proof that Jesus was a real person as written in the Gospels.
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Erica Ward
4/1/2018 07:29:13 pm
To paraphrase Vonnegut, if you can't understand how a perfectly useful religion can be based on nothing but lies, you simply don't understand religion
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Bill Morgan
4/3/2018 06:12:20 am
I believe the Christian Fundamentalists are just as dangerous as the Socialists. They just use a different belief system to take advantage of the ignorance of the people. 1/5/2019 11:14:17 am
World's Last Chance appears to be funding a multi-million dollar 500,000 watt shortwave radio station at WBCQ headquarters in northern Maine and reportedly will be broadcasting it's hundreds of programs 24/7 promoting it's flat earth beliefs, and other odd religious beliefs and prophecies.
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Jay
6/29/2019 07:05:37 pm
Won't be back... snark snark snark.
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Shortwave Radio Listener
5/17/2021 02:32:50 pm
Referring to Don Browne's comment above, WBCQ's new powerful shortwave transmitter has been on the air for about two years now, with all airtime leased to World's Last Chance. They are still broadcasting the claims outlined above, along with other beliefs such as using a lunar-solar calendar and the earth being flat. I live in the upper midwest USA, and WBCQ comes in loud and clear most evenings when they happen to be on air. This particular station tends to be the clearest out of all shortwave stations I can receive with my portable radio.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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