Continuing with the theme of why it may be that (at least some of) those self-regard themselves as most strongly Mormon are most susceptible to the kinds of claims Chad and Lori have made:
The LDS church is not unique in the tension between order and personal revelatory guidance, but it may experience this tension particularly strongly.
The LDS church was built on claims of revelation, by Joseph Smith as the founding prophet, and by those who first accepted his claims. The idea was that the heavens had once again opened themselves and that new light and knowledge would be poured out to benefit the world through the LDS gospel. Even today, members are taught that they need to develop a personal assurance of LDS claims through the workings on God's spirit to each person. Latter-day Saints speak of "being receptive to the spirit" as one element of a maturing faith. Mormons expect God to help lead them through important life decisions.
Yet at the same time, the church, again from almost the beginning, realized that a community in which every member had personal access to God's revelation and inspiration could be quite chaotic. It quickly instituted ways (through priesthood offices, in particular), in which there would be order and a sense of authority/hierarchy as to whose revelatory ideas took precedence, and in which situations.
While most LDS members manage to function well within this tension, the promise of a more vibrant revelatory community, with more frequent and profound insight being revealed by God, beckons others. They yearn to return to the type of situation when new revelations were coming to Joseph Smith monthly or weekly, or where revelatory proclamations about the Second Coming and other visions from more ordinary members were taken more seriously.
While the church tries to insist that it still has the same access to God that Joseph Smith did, when the most important recent claims to revelation pertain to things like the age at which missionaries are eligible to be sent and the shortening of the meeting schedule from 3 to 2 hours, not all members are satisfied. Some want to believe that God is willing to tell us more, perhaps much more, if we're just willing to listen. For some of these people, MOO, while they still genuinely respect church leadership and sense of order in most ordinary cases, they are willing to go beyond the official word of the church in their own personal study and understanding. They do not feel that they are going against the church when they write a book about what the spirit has told them about the end of days, or if they join together with other likeminded individuals on the internet to discuss what their visions may mean. Though the institutional church discourages the thought that not all important revelatory truth will come through the leadership hierarchy, there is enough in LDS scriptures/history for some to justify the idea. (to be continued ...)