Chuck Missler

Biography

Missler graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1956 before working for several years in the aerospace and computer industries. He joined the Ford Motor Company in 1963. Missler joined Western Digital as chairman and chief executive in June 1977, and became the largest shareholder of Western Digital. In a 1984 interview, Western Digital's then chairman, Roger Johnson, described the company under Missler as having a good reputation for technology with a terrible reputation for execution, and seriously undercapitalized.

In 1983 Missler became the chairman and chief executive of Helionetics, Inc., another technology company. He left Helionetics in 1984 "to pursue other opportunities in the high-technology field". In August 1985 Helionetics sued Missler, alleging a conflict of interest, claiming that after Missler and other Helionetics executives had decided not to purchase a small defense electronics maker, that same company was purchased by an investment corporation in which Missler held a controlling interest. The suit was settled when Missler's firm agreed to pay Helionetics $1.6 million.

In 1989 he headed up the Phoenix Group International, a former Colorado real estate company that entered the high-tech industry to sell personal computers to Russian schools. Phoenix filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990 when the deal did not develop as anticipated.

After teaching for many years at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, Missler moved to Coeur d'Alene in 1992 and founded Koinonia House. Through this organization, Missler distributes a monthly newsletter and Bible study tapes, hosts a radio show, and speaks at conferences. He has also been involved in efforts to use computers to decipher what he considers coded messages contained in the Bible.

Missler is a prominent speaker on the subject of bible prophecy. Missler has had numerous programs aired on the Christian television station GOD TV, namely the DVD versions of his biblical studies "Learn the Bible in 24 Hours", "The Book of Revelation", "The Book of Genesis", and "The Book of Daniel".

Missler has also written the foreword to Exo-Vaticana, a book that uses evidence to draw attention to the Vatican and its practices. The book loosely presents the possibility that the Vatican is communicating with extraterrestrial life.

Controversy

A Los Angeles Times article reported that Missler and co-author Hal Lindsey had plagiarized a portion of Miami University Professor Edwin Yamauchi's 1982 book Foes From the Northern Frontier in their own 1992 book The Magog Factor. After the plagiarism was acknowledged, book shipments to bookstores were discontinued and all of the authors' proceeds donated to a ministry.

Missler has also been accused of plagiarism of New Age writer Michael Talbot's 1992 book The Holographic Universe in his 1999 book Cosmic Codes: Messages from the Edge of Eternity. Missler has also acknowledged this plagiarism and has since publicly apologized. He said a correction would be inserted in all unsold copies and the book itself updated in subsequent printings. Missler has donated all of the author's proceeds from the book to a ministry. The letter is no longer available at the cited link.

Combining his experience with technology and his fascination with Bible prophesy, Missler was also outspoken in predicting that the "Year Two Thousand Bug" (a.k.a. "Y2K bug") would become key to the beginning of the apocalypse beginning on January 1, 2000. In 1998 he coauthored a book with John Ankerberg investigating whether America would survive the crises to be caused, he claimed, by embedded computer chips that would malfunction on what they would calculate as year zero. Hank Hanegraf of Christian Research Institute called the reasoning in Missler's video series "subtly deceptive" and "sophistry". He ran an ongoing website about what he predicted would be the Y2K disaster named http://www.y2knightmare.com/believer-radio-missler.html.

Books