Lesson 1: An Instruction Set on How to be a false Prophet (Thanks to Maria Divine Mercy)

Course Introduction:

Going into the doomsaying scam business can be quite lucrative

If you want to embark on a rewarding career as a false prophet of the Catholic religion, you have made a practical demon-inspired choice.  Not only is it very easy to get followers, it can be quite lucrative when you start selling printed and online materials and related paraphernalia to your victims. Just get it sold at Amazon and other online bookstores. Not many have the time to follow your messages every day and will gladly pay a few bucks for a compilation, or even prayer book you made without a nihil obstat or Imprimatur.  You can even get donations from rich patrons.  This can be an ongoing doomsaying business that can last for years until the next false prophet comes along.  By that time, you would have laughed all the way to the bank countless times to ensure you would live in utter luxury in your retirement.  

There are always doomsayers in every generation; many of them are quite successful. and some more successful than others, like Christina Gallagher, with her many mansions in Malahide and elsewhere. An authoritative reference and an excellent specimen on how to be a false prophet can be found at the Warning Second Coming Website of Maria Divine Mercy. But before you do, consider how easy it is if you keep the following instruction in mind:

This is a unique 10-part course on
Deception 101  for those seriously
considering launching a lucrative
business in false prophecy

Lesson 1: The Principles of Deception
Lesson 2: Basic Marketing: Know your market
Lesson 3: Be Anonymous
Lesson 4: No need for church authorities
Lesson 5: Say what your audience wants to hear

Lesson 1: Principles of deception

The golden rule of deception is to manage the perception of another person, or group of persons, so that there is not a hint of deception in the content of your message.

Living with one another creates an unwritten social contract or obligation to be truthful so that people largely trust each other in the conduct of daily routine work. In short, being truthful is often assumed, unless otherwise proven. In addition, as Vincent H. Gaddis writes in his “The Art of Honest Deception”, it is a psychological fact that the primary impulse of people is to believe. Doubting comes secondary and may not even come to the fore unless there is reason to doubt.

This unwritten rule and the natural predisposition of people to believe and trust effectively makes people susceptible, or gullible to untruths, illusions and downright lies.

Lying

Telling a lie to someone or an audience face-to-face is generally difficult because liars can betray their deception through nonverbal cues or body language that some people may easily spot. When lies are made in person, the receiver of the lies can sense a mixed signal that may readily point to an attempt at deception. For instance, you can suspect one when you talk to salesman who claims something too good about a product he is selling but could not maintain eye contact or looks elsewhere.

According to the Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) developed and espoused in the late 90s by David B. Buller and Judee K. Burgoon, deliberate or intentional deception requires significant cognitive resources in order to contrive a deceptive message that distorts the truth. In contrast, a truthful message enjoys the element of spontaneity that leaves the message sender free from any real-time contrivance to distort the truth. 

This is why deception using the written word is so much more convenient. There are no non-verbal cues that can betray a lie. Deception is thus, best achieved in written format.  Non-fiction articles are often deceptive for altering facts to suit the author's agenda. And one widely used documentation open to deceptive manipulation are private revelations that have been written down by some alleged seer or prophet.  Unless these writings are verified by the competent Church authority, private revelations are generally not taken seriously by the Catholic church.

Variants and forms of deception

A wolf in sheep's clothing represents 
deception that has an implication 
going beyond the deceptive act itself 
into something that puts the receiver 
of the deception into harm's way,
 or even physical or spiritual death.

Disguising a lie with half truths

A variant of lying is presenting half truths. It may not be an outright lie but because its presentation leaves out other things essential to a total appreciation of the true picture but whose absence serves to support an agenda. The result is that people may be persuaded to do things they would not do if they knew everything.

Obscuring a lie with known truths

Another variant of an outright deliberate lie is to sugarcoat or obscure a lie with a preponderance of known truths. If people can be accustomed to recognizing common truths in your message, putting a lie or two becomes readily associated with the truth to make it acceptable which would not be possible if presented on its own. The economy of this form of lying is such that you only need to work on your lies. It costs nothing to mix the lies with truths since those truths do not come from any effort on your part any way.

The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle or the law of the vital few in causative relationships states that roughly 80% of the results you want to achieve can come from just 20% of the causes or effort you spend. It applies to deceptive communication, so that your message containing just 20% lies or even less, can result in 80% or more of what you want to achieve. Allegorically, it is akin to saying that it only takes a drop of poison to make a wholesome milk fatal. The reality is such that what matters to deceivers is just the 20% getting across to the message receiver. The rest or the 80% act as "decoration" put in as a bait or trap.

AnonymityThis is the most pervasive form of concealment in the internet age. It is the easiest, cheapest and most effective method of protecting the true identity of the deceiver. When you're out to make mischief, it makes no sense to throw your name around.  Most bloggers and forum members and as posters in comment sections hide behind anonymity.  After all, in many cases, it's the content of the message that matters, not do made it.    Pseudonyms or false names and aliases can substitute for outright anonymity.  Apart from distinguishing an anonymous deceiver from the rest of the pack, you can use a name to brand your online and offline presence. Once your false name accumulated brand recognition or what in marketing is referred to as brand equity, your notoriety stays with the brand and your true identity remains unsullied, untouched and Scot-free.   It is important that among the first steps you need to do when marketing your deception is to protect your identity which will be discussed in Lesson 3.

Collaborative or cooperative deception

Another form of deception is to get as many people on your side to lie with you or support your lie. It can be difficult to demystify a lie if there are many people with different perspectives who can defend a lie from those perspectives.  That is why deception can be easily achieved with private revelations. If you have the right message that can ignite a loyal following, followers will defend your messages.  You only need to follow the histories of previous prophecies that have been condemned or are still awaiting church approval that may never come in our lifetime.  Each of these, like Garanbandal, Holy Love, Fr. Gobbi, Vasula Ryden, Two Hears, Two Patricks, among others have hundreds of thousands of devoted followers ready to defend the messages without question.  Even the Little Pebble continues to maintain a following despite its leader William Kamm getting convicted in 2005 for raping a 15-year old. Such is the power of private revelations.

Propaganda

This is a form of deceptive communication that can also be collaborative since there is common agenda (earn money through fraud, or win an election through promises) and purposive lying shared by many who stand to gain by it. Propaganda is meant to influence a certain attitude, direction or action towards achieving an agenda, concealed or otherwise. Generally used in politics, governance and the military, a propaganda such as those exemplified by Goebbels during Hitler’s Third Reich is often a mix of part truth and part falsehoods.

In contrast to an impartial or dispassionate presentation of facts that aims to achieve a rational action or decision, propaganda panders to prejudices in a subjective effort to elicit an emotional response. The desired result is often a change of attitude towards a particular target or subject to further a political, ideological, religious or commercial agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of ideological or commercial warfare.

False prophecy: The ultimate deception

Private revelations have about the same attraction as a fiction novel from Dan Brown, John Le Carrer or Tom Clancy.  And because it has the potential to disrupt religious routines and lead to questions that foment doubt and iconoclastic irreverance to doctrines, private revelations have become powerful communications vehicle if done right. The last one hundred years have seen more than 770 recorded private revelations of which no more than 40 or so have been approved by the church.  It has become a commodity and every generation has at least a dozen doomsayers competing to get your attention i what they claim to be direct messages from divine authority that many fall prey to. 

Going into the doomsaying scam business with private revelations as its product is not for the faint of heart. It will require you to harness all the forms of deception that effectively makes it more insidious, more cunning, and more deleterious than even the notorious but effective propaganda of Goebbels in the 1930s.  The messages from your contrived private revelations provide the product, and the more deceptive they are, the higher the income you can expect from you scam business.  

You need to understand that the content of false prophecy puts you in enmity with the established church order and will require essentially the powers of hell for you to remain in business. There are risks of being exposed for sure,  Anything you say will be an object of contention and even derision by devout Catholics who are well-informed about catechism, scripture or the magisterium. But not to worry, your target audience is not them as we shall see in the next lesson.