Er...I got this.
LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London, the global insurance market, said on Thursday it will not quote for several risks proposed to them by the Watchtower Bible Tract Society(WTS).ISP
The 300 year old insurance market, facing its biggest ever single loss of 1.3 billion pounds ($1.87 billion) from the November 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre has apparently adopted a ‘safety first’ approach.A Lloyds representative said ‘We were prepared to quote for their buildings insurance but there were certain aspects of the deal we could not entertain.’ He added ’They wanted us to insure them against the financial consequences of making false prophecies. We were advised that this may not be viable in view of the past history. We would anticipate a heavy claims experience and we could expect claims from over 6 million adherents. Retrospective claims would be very expensive. We could reconsider if they could prove the prophecies came from God..or at least made some sense.’
It is fair to say the troubled cult has had a poor history in prophecy making. It has made many predictions about the time of the end. It even built a house for the resurrected ‘prophets of old’ to live in, only to be disappointed when the prophecy failed. A Watchtower spokesman was not dismayed ’Although it is true that Lloyds were not able to complete the deal we are confident that we can place the business elsewhere in the market. We were drawn to Lloyds because of their ability to deal with the non-standard risks.’ Asked if this would affect the WTS’s ability to prophecy, the WTS representative responded,’We will continue to act as God’s Prophet with or without insurance. We would prefer to have insurance though.’ The followers of the sect would not be worried by the insurance position. ‘Although we are not insured against making false proclamations we fully expect the brotherhood to follow what we say.’
A WTS insider who wanted to remain nameless said, ‘ Yeah the witnesses will carry on, but many are reluctant to sell businesses or sacrifice education prospects like they have in the past. But I wouldn’t believe anything they said. They have not got a single prophecy right ever. The problem is not that they don’t know anything about Bible prophecy..its that they don’t know they don’t know anything about Bible prophecy.’The WTS is now working with other insurers to see if it can get its prophecies insured. There are a number of schemes being proposed. One would involve some limited cover such as limiting the number of incorrect prophetic utterances per year and thereafter the WTS would be fully responsible. Another involved making the WTS responsible for the first $500 of each claim but that was refused by the WTS who preferred to allow claimants a period off their preaching activity.