This is a beginning about The End. For so long the popular culture, using the cold War as its backdrop, was fascinated by the notion of the post-Apocalyptic film (i.e., Mad Max) because nuclear weapons were a tangible force, the finality of their effects easy to understand. But the nuclear Sword of Damacles no longer looms over our heads. As a consequence America, in conjunction with the approaching Year 2000 (and its consequent Y2K threat), has experienced a boom in spirituality which shoves notions of a religious Apocalypse back into the forefront of the cultural psyche. (Let's quickly establish, too, that the "new" historical millenium begins at 12:01 a.m. on January 1st, 2001. This thrill of rounded numbers is the domain of Judeo-Christian calendars, and everybody who can't wait to sing that Prince song one more time before holing it up in the Cask of Amantillado.) As history's odometer prepares to roll over, watch groups are mindful of the frenzied activity of various fundamentalist cults and paramilitary groups. This past January Israeli officials deported members of Concerned Christians, a Denver-based cult, who had relocated to Jerusalem in preparation for some millennial mayhem.
Not that Americas should consider themselves strangers to apocalyptic tenets in organized religion: they have three acknowledged apocalyptic religions in the form of Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. And though the idea of apocalypse as Armageddon has been replaced by a Day of Advent, the "warning signs" are familiar, and the outcome always the same for "God's chosen people". These denominations are rarely included in the tossed salad of funda-militarists, steeling themselves away for what they see (and hope) is an approaching Tribulation, when either Jesus Christ walks the earth again, or the government uses the ensuing disorder to impose a UN-brokered martial law on the United States. (Sigh.) I mean, really. Let's cut to the chase on this one: the business of apocalyptic prediction (or "prophesy") is as old as religion itself. Indeed, it's older than what we understand to be "organized religion" as we know it. Making its debut around 200 BCE, apocalyptic literature became a regular fixture in the Jewish community, already familiar with their position as history's whipping post. Cryptic in its language, and steeped in numerological code, these writings were meant as a booster shot for the persecuted, struggling to survive the social upheavals that were a part of their everyday existence. (Derived from the Greek verb apokalyptein, "to reveal", the art and business of prophecy also takes its cue from the Greek Delphic oracles, versed in the age-old practice of answering any straightforward question with a enigmatic riddle. The oracles were, not surprisingly, women.) For the early Jewish tribes, and for Christians to come later, the "revelation" represented nothing less than the arrival of the Big Cheese to save His people. Announced by any number of planetary upheavals - famine, war, floods and corruption - the Apocalypse was a precursor to a new millenium of peace, harmony and 24-hour Hosannas. In the Old Testament apocalyptic passages can be found in the Books of Daniel and Isaiah. But those passages would pale next to the New Testament's Book of Revelations, replete with language and implications totally incongruous to the Books (particularly the Gospels) that came before it. Not that such literary irregularities prevented Revelations from becoming the indispensable One Book for propheteers in modern times.
If one can credit Judaism for introducing apocalyptic literature as a genre, we must also give kudos to Christianity for ushering in the genre's opportunistic relative: bogus apocalyptic literature. These texts, such as the Apocalypse of St. Paul and the Apocalypse of the Virgin, featured horrific visions of Hell aimed at reinforcing the flagging faith of Christians facing persecution at the hands of the Romans, always the civilized debater when it came to doctrinal disagreements. The surface message was that to abandon faith was to risk greater torture in the afterlife. The true message was that secular society figured out that when it came to religion, people were real suckers.
More than a millenium later, both the secular and the parochial sectors would still be up to no good, though the secular had found better celebrities. Born in Knaresborough, England in 1488, Mother Shipton's prophetic powers were already on display while Nostradamus was still playing in the verdant fields of Provence, France. Through the employment of riddles and verse (see: Oracles at Delphi), she is credited with predicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), the Great Fire of London (1666), and her own death, which is certainly more than modern prognosticators will own up to. Shipton is, however, a bit player next to the impeccable credentials of Michel De Nostradame. Versed in the Kaballah, alchemy and astronomy, Nostradamus went on to become a physician in 1529, bearing witness to the very real holocaust brought about by the Plague that not only ravaged his countrymen, but took the lives of his first wife and two daughters. Shortly thereafter Nostradamus began to receive troubling visions that he recorded in a plentitude of quatrains, also rich in cryptic reference. His "gift" won him favor at Court, and a host of critics out to prove him a charlatan. Nostradmaus' quatrains are thought to have prophesied such 20th century events as the rise of Hitler and the Kennedy assassinations. His vision of The End, though, was heavily associated with the threat of Soviet ICBM's raining down on New York City. But since the arms race laid the hammer down on the Russian economy, scholars and lunatics have had to reevaluate Russia's supporting role in the Nostradamus scenario. Fortunately for them, cryptic language affords that very luxury.
For America the act of apocalyptic prediction, whether secular or religious in its trappings, has remained mostly out of the mainstream. William Miller, considered the father of the Adventist movement, committed his flock to the year 1843 as the time of the advent. So distraught were they in the aftermath that the day is still known as the Great Disappointment in Adventist history. This disappointment, however (along with intense media ridicule), did not discourage breakaway members (who went on to create the Jehovah's witnesses) from setting their own dates for Armageddon, once for 1914 and then 1975. Also around that time lurked the "Sleeping Prophet", Edgar Cayce, whose handiwork is still on display at the Association for Research & Enlightenment. But Cayce's predictions covered the gamut of the familiar (California falling into the sea) to the ludicrous (1968 was supposed to see the conversion of China to Christianity). Cayce was the prototype for a dime store seer type that populates the covers of magazine rack tabloids, and whose prophecies usually hover at the 20-25% success rate. Mind you, any and all Americans could achieve the same by going out on a limb to predict earthquakes in California, flooding in South America, and some sort of crisis for the British royalty. It doesn't require much digging to find the threads running through apocalyptic stories of all stripes, be it Christian, Muslim, Hopi Indian or Mayan. Most involve natural cataclysms, war and famine brought on by the rampant corruption at play amongst human beings. Most look forward to a Time of Purification in which a supreme being pops in to give the Earth one last shot at behaving and getting along, after which only "the elect" will either ascend to the penthouse or be left with sole stewardship of a revitalized terra firma. To their credit, none of the world's predominant religions (Judaism, Catholicism and Islam) will engage in the business of setting dates with Armageddon, even if they do expect a dramatic end to history. Jesus explained that it is "not for you to know the times or the seasons" of his coming. Why the cults and fundamentalists can't get that through their concrete skulls is anyone's guess.
With its current stranglehold on the "superpower" designation, America also finds itself as Public Enemy #1 in many of the scenarios currently in vogue. Whether you see America as the Whore of Babylon, astride the multinational beast with ten heads, or simply as an oppressive tool of foreign interests, it is our society's collective deficiencies that will incite divine retribution. In a country with a burgeoning religious population, work's hard on peace initiatives and providing humanitarian aid, there apparently remain enough bad apples in the basket to warrant the Stark Fist of Removal. There's just no winning with some people.
Most Americans can live with all that apocalypse jive. It is, after all, just talk. Dates routinely come and go without incident, and news cameras lurk close by to catch the bleary-eyed disillusionment of followers crawling out of the bunker. But for every follower who sees the deflated prophecy as "rubbish", at least five other followers are pulled right back in with assurances that God had stayed His hand in a show of mercy that He will retract at a make-up date to be named later. And so the cycle of apocalyptic prediction continues indefinitely so long as there's an audience willing to suspend its disbelief (like bad dinner theater), for whom villains are more plentiful than the rewards of remaining faithful.
All of which was blown to smithereens in 1994 when Peter De Jager published an article titled "Doomsday 2000" and sounded the first alarm on the Y2K issue. If you don't know what the Y2K problem is, that can only mean one of two things: either you're living some place where those problems will not affect you, or you deserve whatever you get for not paying attention to the news from time to time. De Jager's warning has not changed from its inception: "The computer code is broken; we have to fix it." In the years following that essay, though, he has seen his mission as shifting from one of alerting people to a problem to preventing people from devolving into a state of widespread panic. "We've finally broken the back of the Y2K problem," De Jager recently wrote: the "back" being the human instinct to deny the existence of a problem until it is too late.
The potential for global communication and financial disruption brought about by the Y2K issue has afforded a unique opportunity apocalyptic purveyors to up the ante. Be it Russia's Church of the Final Testament, Arkansas' Elohim City, or Japan's Sukyo Mahikari, the concern is that the turning of the Christian millenium (and the lure of all those zeroes) will produce a splash of cult loco-motion with ripples that will include anything from attacks on the government to mass suicides. Sadly, the greatest threat to our economy will be those duped into believing they need to make a run on their bank accounts come December 1999, precipitating the very financial crisis they assume will take place. The Federal Reserve has printed $50 million dollars in currency in anticipation of this potential disaster. So, please, if you must then start setting the money aside now. Anyone telling you to withdraw all of your money prior to the New Year is either ignorant or evil. The Y2K problem is as close to a crisis this country could experience since the Great Depression, in terms of how that crisis will directly alter the flow of everyday activity. That said, I don't anticipate the disruption to be that great. I expect problems, but I expect worse from humans than I do from machines. History will bear out that man hasn't gotten this far by learning from his mistakes. As for the cults and paramilitary groups eager to punch their tickets, or have them punched by the Feds, I can only describe it in these terms: thinning the herd.
Singer/starlet Jewel likes to opine about the comfort people find in cynicism. I find that to be a bit of a crock, personally. While one might point to militant Christian groups as being indicative of cynical America, there is a vast chasm separating cynics and those people whose paranoia springs from being bone-stick ignorant. Any group practicing a prejudicial doctrine derived from the tenets of religion has already missed the boat entirely, and engage in a corruption and selfishness that their gray matter cannot even fathom, or at least admit to.
The world's predilection is towards naïve idealism. Addressing these hopes, alive in an imperfect world, is what all religions attempt to do. Which is to say, they're hedging their bets in the face of a question that no living being can truthfully answer. If there was a modicum of cynicism at work in all beings, so many would not be so easily led propheteers who claim to be booking flights to the Glorious Hereafter; or, at least, telling you how to upgrade to First Class. They wouldn't lay down their lives for these self-enriching leaders, march willingly to their doom for these charlatans. If they were Cynics in the original sense they would believe in the importance of individual virtue, and strive for it in the context of the world they live in, not the one they hope to live in. They might embrace the world rather than retreat from it, or work to undermine it.
Similar requests should be made of Y2K cottage industry racketeers whose survival instincts are no different from those of paramilitary groups, except in the quality of the accommodations. A recent report featured two Y2K "experts": one was busy repairing to Taos, New Mexico, while the other was happy to stay put in his Manhattan brownstone. Is there a potential for rioting and looting if the lights go out at 12:01 a.m. on January 1st? Of course, but no more so than the rioting and looting that takes place after an NBA Championship. As the Manhattanite pointed out, better to stay put and be part of the order that civic-minded Americans will work to maintain, than tuck your tail between your legs and avoid your responsibilities as a human being. I have to agree. Wherever I am on New Years Eve I will be amongst friends and/or family. Whether the lights go out or not, I will feel safe in my world and safe with my God.
