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Some Colorado cultists were arrested in Israel
on charges of planning a massacre to hasten the return of Jesus. This may be a
taste of what's to come as magic-minded people count down to the millennium.
The Denver-based Concerned Christians are led by Monte Kim Miller, who
sometimes speaks in a booming voice as God. He prophesied that he will be
killed in Jerusalem
in December 1999, triggering the end of the world. (He also predicted that Denver would be destroyed
by an earthquake last October, but his ardent followers don't seem to notice
that it didn't happen.) Miller and his flock mysteriously vanished in November,
after selling their homes and cars. This raised fears of another cult suicide.
Later they were found in Israel,
preparing for doomsday, and a police probe brought their arrest.
Meanwhile, about 100 other American Christians have moved to the Mount of
Olives section of Jerusalem to await the end of
time, according to religion professor Brenda Brasher of Mount Union College
in Ohio. She
predicts that many Bible-prophecy adherents will do likewise, "dropping
out, severing all ties and heading to Israel". Absurdity is
sprouting from a rollover of numbers.
Intelligent people know there's nothing magical about the year 2000. It will be
just another trip around the sun, like billions before it. Nonetheless, the
Western calendar is about to turn over like a car's odometer, and superstitious
people see awesome portent in it. Their apprehensions are magnified by the
"Y2K problem", possible electronic chaos arising from the inability
of computers to recognize "00."
Evangelist Jerry Falwell is selling a $28 video declaring that "Y2K may be
God's instrument to shake this nation" and "start a revival that
spreads over the face of the Earth before the Rapture". The TV preacher
says he "wouldn't be a bit surprised" if Jesus returns in 2000.
Falwell says he will stock up on food as 2000 approaches -- and ammunition, to
shoot any hungry neighbors trying to enter his house. (Falwell's record for
accuracy isn't the best. He previously sold a video saying that President
Clinton plotted murders and sold narcotics.)
Evangelists Jack Van Impe, Ron Graff and Gary North also are spreading
apocalyptic visions of 2000. And evangelist Tim LaHaye has sold three million
copies of a four-volume novel about the impending end of time.
For several years, observers have been warning that mystical madness may soar
as 2000 nears. After David Koresh and his cultists died in their Waco compound in 1993, theologian John Roth of Claremont-McKenna College
in California
sadly conceded:
"Religion is as full of pathology as it is of health and life-giving resources....
Outbreaks like these only confirm people's deepest suspicion about religion;
that it's manipulative, exploitive of the naive, and a bad deal.... We're
approaching the end of the millennium, and it wouldn't be surprising to see
more instances of armed believers anticipating the end of the world."
Last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a major report on the kooky countdown:
"Apocalyptic images are everywhere," the paper said. "They are
depicted in churches across the country, where ministers preach passionately
about the end times, when a great Middle East
showdown leads to Armageddon and the return of Christ. They are in local
bookstores and libraries, where books about Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and New
Age beliefs are popular. On college campuses, they're in the curriculum. And
they're on TV, in 'Millennium' and 'X-files'...."
In addition to the calendar change, other events also can push supernaturalism
over the brink. Remember when the Hale-Bopp Comet caused Heaven's Gate cultists
to kill themselves, thinking they would magically travel to UFO behind the
comet? After the tragedy, Time noted: "When Halley's Comet
returned in 1910, an Oklahoma
religious sect, the Select Followers, had to be stopped by the police from
sacrificing a virgin."
And this isn't the first calendar craze. When the first millennium arrived ten
centuries ago, it was preceded by mass hysteria and bizarre behavior. Also,
remember when New Agers proclaimed that a "Harmonic Convergence" of
Mayan, Aztec and Hopi calendars would magically transform life in 1987? A tough
old lady in my Unitarian congregation called it the "Moronic
Convergence".
Nothing magical happened at the first millennium. Nor at the Harmonic
Convergence. And nothing will happen at the second millennium - except that
evangelists and kooks once again will demonstrate that part of humanity lives
in La-La Land.
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