Neal Chase - Predictions

Predictions

Throughout the 1990s Chase made a total of 18 predictions, with Jensen's approval, which pertained to small-scale disasters that he claimed would lead step-by-step towards apocalypse, as well as dates for a nuclear attack on New York City by middle Eastern terrorists. Researchers from the University of Montana led by Robert Balch studied Jensen, and later Chase, extensively between 1980 and 1996, using them as a case study in cognitive dissonance. Their report claimed that Chase based these predictions on Biblical prophecies, evidence from Hopi prophecies, planetary conjunctions, dreams, numerological coincidences, Nostradamus, and psychics.

Balch was observing Chase and the BUPC when he made his first prediction that the bombing of New York City would be on Nov. 29, 1992. Nothing happened in New York until the World Trade Center was attacked three months later on 02/26/93. Chase later cited Daniel 7:12, which says, "their lives were prolonged for a season and a time". Claiming that a season is three months, he announced that "the predicted day of Nov. 29 plus the prophesied season of three months brought us to Feb. 26, 1993, the day the World Trade Center was bombed" (August 4, 1993).

Another of Chase's predictions didn't pass without incident, though not the nuclear attack by terrorist that was expected. On 11/01/93 Chase wrote, "March 23rd, 1994 the veils will be rent asunder with the fiery holocaust of New York's millions of inhabitants. Forty days later the Battle of Armageddon will begin...". The day after the predicted date, on March 24, 1994 a gasline exploded in Edison, NJ across the Hudson River from New York. Chase used the eyewitness accounts comparing the explosion to a nuclear blast to buttress the claim that the prediction came true.

Balch noted that Chase responded to the 18 disconfirmed prophecies with a number of "face-saving strategies", including drawing a distinction between prediction and prophecy, claiming miscalculation, reprieve, and tests of faith. Chase later proclaimed "We didn't make a mistake," and that they have "a 100 perecent track record!"