The natives would see airplanes come, land, and offload huge quantities of goodies, and depart into the sky. Then they stopped coming. To induce their return, the locals still construct wooden airplane models that you can find out in the boonies on Tanna. The religion has been dubbed the Cargo Cult by outsiders, and still has a good following. You might think it would have died out in recent years, but that s not the way things work.
Westerners generally view the Cargo Cults with haughty and amused disdain.
Stranger things have happened. Indeed, since the John Frum movement is based on events that unquestionably happened, they have no need to require belief in bizarre miracles, and events that run counter to the laws of nature. The only things I can find that give me pause are their beliefs that some magic will necessarily happen in the future. In other words everyone who gets into office plans on leaving it with from several million to several hundred million dollars. There s always some scandal going on in these countries.