#2968: Douglas Hamp

Douglas Hamp has an MA in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a PhD from Louisiana Baptist University, and he is a frothingly insane fundie conspiracy theorist who attempts to defend a hyper-literalistic interpretation of the Bible (dragons, corners of the Earth, rolling out the firmament, God has hands and feet, and so on). Much of his writings – he has published a number of books – deal with various features of the End Times, in particular his Corrupting the Image series, which currently consists of:

 

-       Angels, Aliens, and the Antichrist Revealed, which concerns a Genesis prophecy that “the serpent will one day mix his seed with humanity as a counterfeit of the Messiah” and argues that this is currently happening. (You can sort of figure out the story – as well as Hamp’s state of mind – from that description and the title of the work.)

-       Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, which tells you all you need to know and more about Satanic angel–human hybrids and Satan ensuring “his unending reign upon the earth at the Tower of Babel”.

-       Singularity, Superhumans, and the Second Coming of Jesus, which … ok, here we’ll just quote the blurb: “When two prophets with superhuman powers arrive to warn of God’s coming judgment, the world largely rejects their message and treats them as hostile extra-terrestrials who must be stopped at any cost. Posing as an ancient alien, Satan’s hybrid-avatar, the Beast, kills them and urges humanity to take the mark of the Beast and evolve into gods to fight against the coming alien invasion led by Jesus.” We actually don’t think Hamp intended the book as a work of fiction but rather as a prophecy to be interpreted as literally as possible.

 

So Hamp sees the work at Satan more or less all over the place, including places where you would expect dingbat fundie conspiracy theorists to see it if you frequented conspiracy websites back in 2013, such as the freemasons: in his video The Antichrist, Freemasons and the Third Temple, he lays out the Satanic organization of that group based, in part, on the work of Stanley Monteith.

 

His website, meanwhile, offers a lot of impressively detailed (and utterly ridiculous) prophecies, mostly concerned with the always upcoming End Times. It also invites you to watch e.g. a “prophecy roundtable” (with him, one Scott Harwell, and guests) for “an entertaining chat about the end-times”. He currently also leads his own The Way Congregation in Colorado, which seems to be a cult. The weird praise his work receives e.g. on Amazon doesn’t exactly mitigate that suspicion. 

 

Diagnosis: The sort of colorful, deranged sideshow other incoherent endtimes preachers need in order to make them look borderline sane. Hamp seems to have no such concerns about appearing borderline sane, but has nevertheless managed, it seems, to gather a certain amount of followers.