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."
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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.
For 90 minutes -- while two boys played on the carpet with a calculator and a marked-up Book of Mormon -- the adults read aloud selected biblical verses, passages from Smith's biography and text pulled from an unidentified website.
After each reading, they discussed how these fragments all pointed to a singular end: nuclear destruction brought on by the Lord's wrath.
Freeborn sprawled in a stuffed chair, directing the discussion and sometimes correcting his acolytes. It was a congenial group, but not much given to small talk. As the night wound down, Freeborn returned to his core prophecy.
"I really believe we are out of time," he said. "I really do."
Freeborn conceded that he'd issued similar warnings many times before, and still the world kept spinning. Prophecy, he said, is not an exact science.
"I've been at it for 30 years, and I have always really believed it," he said. "Now, if we go on, that's great. Maybe we can get some more people to repent."
