The Apocalypse was not, for Harry, a matter of faith or conjecture, but rather a certain, if somewhat imprecisely defined, event. It was, in his mind, somewhat like an earthquake or a surprise visit from one’s in-laws: something for which one could never be fully prepared, but which was destined to occur sooner or later. Harry knew with certainty that the Apocalypse would occur during his lifetime and that he would play some significant part in it.

Harry couldn’t be fully blamed for believing this bit of silliness because, after all, he had been informed of it by an angel. He couldn’t be entirely let off the hook either, though, because the angel in question was himself not only out of the loop, but transparently drunk and not a little deranged.

More on that later.

Harry’s belief that he was guided by the voices of angels that only he could hear was, surprisingly, one of the least unreasonable of his many absurd beliefs. For example, he also believed that God created photosynthesis before He created the sun and that all of the world’s animals had once taken a Mediterranean cruise together. Having convinced oneself of those unlikely propositions, accepting the notion that one is hearing the voices of angels is pretty much a cakewalk.[5]

Fortunately, most of these beliefs were so far removed from the day to day operations of a Christian media empire that Harry managed to become far more rich and successful, by any reasonable standard, than almost any of his (ostensibly more rational) critics. It seemed that at the end of the day what mattered wasn’t whether one believed, for example, that the Creator of the Universe had once stopped the Earth from revolving around the Sun in order to skew the odds in a skirmish between two bronze age tribes, but whether one had had the foresight to short-sell WorldCom in May of 2002. Materialists scoffed at Harry’s worldview while secretly coveting his portfolio.

Harry was always in the right place at the right time. He foresaw the Internet bubble, the housing bubble, the renewable fuels bubble – even the hydrogen bubble, which was virtually impossible to see even when one knew it was there. How much of Harry’s success was due to angelic guidance and how much was due to his own instincts or just dumb luck is impossible to say. What we do know is that through a series of shrewd acquisitions, well-timed expansions and tax loophole exploits so convoluted that they bordered on poetic, Harry Giddings built the most powerful Christian media empire on Earth. He owned radio stations, television stations, publishing companies, newspapers and recording studios, along with fourteen donut shops and a surprisingly large factory in Vietnam that made those little plastic things that they use to tie off loaves of bread.