introduction

Chapter 1: Unfulfilled Prophecies and Disappointed Messiahs
Chapter 2: Teachings and Prophecies from Space
Chapter 3: Spreading the Prophecy to the World
Chapter 4: The Order Comes: A Long Wait
Chapter 5: Four Days Before “Salvation”
Chapter 6: Unfulfilled Prophecies and More Inspiring Prophets
Chapter 7 When the prophecy ended
Chapter 8 Alone and Awake

Epilogue
About the Appendix Methodology

Chapter 1 Americas
Translator's Note
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“A confident person doesn’t change easily.
Tell him, 'I disagree with you.'
He will turn away.
Give him the facts and numerical evidence.
He will be suspicious of the source.
Try to refute him logically.
He won't get the point you're making."

“Because the investment behavior based on faith is so strong, there are more cases where they appear willing to do anything as long as it does not involve abandoning their faith.
It may even be less painful to tolerate some degree of dissonance than to admit you are wrong and give up your beliefs.
In such cases, it is impossible to resolve the dissonance by abandoning faith.
“One way to reduce the dissonance would be to simply deny that the prophecy has not come true, but the counter-evidence is too obvious to everyone, including those involved in the movement.”

'Very ordinary' people who fall into false beliefs

An ordinary housewife, a college student, an office worker, a doctor and his family… These are the people who believed in the Great Flood and completely destroyed their daily lives.
Let's look at what these people did.
When they receive a phone call, they believe the caller is an alien, when someone comes to their house, they believe that the visitor is also an alien, they look for messages directed at them in certain programs on television, and they make a "passport" by attaching a 3-cent stamp to a black piece of drawing paper and try to present it when boarding a flying saucer.
He memorizes the secret code he must give when boarding the flying saucer, “I left my hat at home,” and is even assigned a seat number on the flying saucer.
Also, since I couldn't have any metal on my body, I removed the zippers from my clothes, tied a rope around my waist instead of a belt, and took off my change and even my watch.
The sight of these people frantically trying to remove the small metal pieces from the shoelace holes is reminiscent of a black comedy.
Those who do such absurd things, which may seem ridiculous from a distance, are incredibly serious.
It is not because they are illiterate, uneducated, in need of refuge from some particular family conflict, or mentally ill.


Readers come to the conclusion that anyone can become like this when they see ordinary, unremarkable people fall into wrong beliefs, make those beliefs public, and continue to make irrational decisions and take actions.
Instead of retracting one's beliefs, one chooses to ignore the contradictory evidence and reinterpret it.
It's scary to think that this isn't the America of 60 years ago, but something that's happening in this very time, in this very land.


The authors unflinchingly show how, as the prophesied end times draw near, they increasingly systematize and rationalize their beliefs and engage in irreversible "investment behavior," and how their beliefs are only strengthened when the prophecy is proven completely wrong.
The reason refuted irrational beliefs persist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is ultimately because of the investment behaviors people make in those beliefs.
We also confirmed that the belief is strengthened when it is supported by one's own community or group.


Advantages and Limitations of Conducting Research Through Participant Observation

The vivid research results obtained through participant observation, which is not possible now (due to ethical issues surrounding conducting research without revealing the facts to the members of the research group), give readers a concrete sense of reality as if they were part of the group.
There remains a limitation that the researchers' attempts to secretly enter the group for participant observation may have unintended consequences, such as interpreting the visit as a "special visit" and using it as evidence to strengthen their beliefs.
As the authors feared, it seems clear that “our very presence there, and some of the actions we took, had the effect of supporting and aiding their convictions and investment behavior.”


Still, it is a welcome development that the vast amount of conversations that could not have been confirmed without the same members, actions that would never have been shown to outsiders, and episodes that could only have occurred within a group with the same beliefs have been made public.
The researchers' efforts also stand out, such as taking a seat in a hotel a little away from the house where they were gathered and transcribing the recordings, and when recording was not possible, taking notes as quickly as possible in an uncomfortable position in the bathroom to record the conversations with the members as they were.
Thanks to this, I was able to see such a realistic record even after so long.