ABSTRACT
The student of religion has encountered an imponderable number of prophetic episodes, all of which will continue to stretch history to its seams as long as misfortune exists. Members of all societies who consider themselves troubled and oppressed have welcomed deliverance cults designed around such events as the Second Coming of Jesus, the Advent of the Jewish Messiah, or world destruction through a cataclysm. 1 Nevertheless, such a prophetic cult will often bear witness to prophetic disconfirmation, an objectively apparent falsification of a belief by the occurrence or lack of occurrence of some prophetic prediction. Does the disconfirmation in fact cause the belief to be abandoned?
