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  Date / Time: 12/15/2008 7:03 AM UTC

  In Utah, the Parowan Prophet predicts disaster will prevent Obama from taking office
  

  In Utah, the Parowan Prophet predicts disaster will prevent Obama from taking office
  The Parowan Prophet
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  Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times
  Leland Freeborn and 12 other survivalists meet every Monday at his home. The group believes Leland is a prophet and they come to hear his predictions.
  'He will not be the next president,' Leland Freeborn warns those who will listen. He and his followers expect nuclear explosions this Christmas season.
  By PETER H. KING
  December 13, 2008
  Reporting from Parowan, Utah -- Our trip to the Parowan Prophet began with a letter to the St. George Spectrum. It was set among missives proposing that oil companies bail out Detroit automakers, that county inmates be forced to winter in tents, that lawyers be barred from public office. A rough crowd.
  
  This particular letter to the editor in the St. George, Utah, newspaper carried the headline " 'Prophet' shares grim forecast," and it was signed by one Leland Freeborn of Parowan, who wrote that he was known to many as the Parowan Prophet.
  
  
  
  * The Parowan Prophet
  Photos: The Parowan Prophet
  * Series: AN AMERICAN MOMENT
  Series: AN AMERICAN MOMENT
  
  After establishing his bona fides as an international talk radio guest and proprietor of a survivalist website that has "passed more than 100,000 hits," Freeborn wrote:
  
  "I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the 'riots' that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn't lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said."
  
  These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the "old, hard-line Soviet guard" to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.
  
  "Prepare now," Freeborn's letter concluded. "We are downwind from Las Vegas. I hope you can survive."
  
  
  
  It took an hour to reach the prophet, a high-country drive through stunning red-rock formations, the color of which matches the politics in this corner of southern Utah. A freeway billboard, depicting a nuclear mushroom cloud, provided directions to the prophet's two-story house.
  
  The frontyard seemed a staging ground for rapid flight -- two or three motor boats, a raft, a canoe, a recreational vehicle and an old sedan, parked with its engine running.
  
  The man who answered our unexpected knock wore a cowboy hat with a big feather stuck in the band, and a beard suggestive of St. Nick. We asked to see the prophet. He said we had the right guy.
  
  Freeborn hobbled out the door on crutches and eased into a wheelchair on the porch. As it turned out, he was heating the car not for rapid escape from a nuclear cloud, but to take a neighbor to the doctor.
  
  "I only have nine minutes," he said.
  
  It was enough time to sketch out his history -- a Mormon of substance, a father of 12, he had crashed his airplane in 1975 and fallen into a three-week coma, during which he went through "to the other side" and emerged a prophet.
  
  Freeborn, now 66, took "a plural wife," as he put it, and parted ways with the church. He forfeited his wealth, spreading word of his prophecies. He appears to live now mainly on sales of newsletters and survival information packets advertised on his website.
  
  Asked for examples of successful prophecies, he offered O.J. Simpson's murder acquittal and Al Gore's winning of the popular vote in 2000. But his core insight has been a repeated dream of seeing nuclear flashes to the west while shopping at a Wal-Mart during Christmas season.
  
  And this, he warned, appears to be the year.
  
  As Freeborn rose to leave, he said he would be hosting a weekly religious meeting that night. He urged us to come.
  
  "If you can write a story," Freeborn said, "you can save a lot of lives in L.A."
  
  
  
  There were about a dozen believers in the two front rooms, men and women of all ages, squeezed together on couches and dining room chairs.
  
  All of them had broken with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over polygamy and other departures from what they believe was the original vision of the church founder Joseph Smith. And all said they regarded Freeborn a prophet.
  
  The cluttered room was filled with Bibles and religious tracts, government maps depicting potential nuclear targets, and framed photographs of mushroom clouds.

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