by Joe Christian

Under pressure from apocalyptical expert Hal Lindsey, North Korea’s reclusive, rotund dictator Kim Jong-il has admitted through state-run media that he is “possibly the Anti-Christ.”

The shocking confession came after weeks of Lindsey hounding Kim Jong-il with letters and e-mails demanding that Jong-il “confess and share in the windfall of royalties from book sales.”

In the official state press release, Jong-il was quoted as saying, “I’ve never liked Zionists but I always respect and fear those who have divorced multiple times and still have a squeaky clean reputation. It’s a personal weakness of mine. I just can’t say no to such people. I’m such a schlub.”

Lindsey also has reportedly pressured other morally questionable rulers into conceding that they too are “possibly” the Anti-Christ.” However, Kim Jong-il was the first to release a public confession of his possible cooperation with Satan in a bid to take over the world.

Flushed with his success, Lindsey is now hoping that Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will also reciprocate and publicly admit to possible allegiance with the pitchfork-toting enemy of God.

When questioned as to why no American leaders were on his lists of possible Anti-Christs, Lindsey simply laughed derisively. “Our leaders are morally upright because they are American,” he said “Just think about it—the only mistake America has made since God providentially founded it more than 200 years ago is that it has failed to turn the Middle East into an oil-producing evangelical theocracy. And I blame the Democrats for that, not God.”

Once Putin, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad admit their blood-oaths with Beelzebub, Lindsey plans to release what he calls his most important work since The Late, Great Planet Earth. Lindsey, who said he will call the book The Anti-Christ Among Us, plans to make the case to readers that one of these leaders will become the Anti-Christ.

“After I was wrong with all of my previous predictions, including the most recent one where I swore that the former Soviet Union would be the Gog of Biblical prophecy, I started searching for a more accurate way to make prophecies,” Lindsey said. “As I write in the prologue of his new book, ’In the process, I discovered the beauty of statistics ... the more claims I made, the greater the chance that one of them would be right.’ It was a real revelation from God!”

Initially, Lindsey planned to include the names of more than 400 world leaders in his book as possible Anti-Christs but soon realized that such a massive undertaking would probably lead to his fourth messy divorce. In the end, he said, he settled on “the four most evil men I could think of.”

Lindsey also stated that he plans to use more ambiguous language in his future prophecies and statements.

“I was really getting burnt by words and phrases like ‘definitely,’ ‘without a shadow of doubt,’ ‘God revealed to me,’ and ‘till death do us part,’” Lindsey said. “So I have decided—following heavy prayer and expensive advice from my lawyers—never to utter such things again.”

In accordance with his new focus, Lindsey said he plans to change the name of this weekly television program from The Hal Lindsey Report to The Random and Totally Unconnected Thoughts of Hal Lindsey That Just Might Occasionally be True Show.

As for Kim Jong-il, the world’s worst-coiffed madman “vogued” gaily for reporters and declared, “I’m going to Disneyland—if I don’t nuke it first!”