"Apocalypse Again"
by Paul Thigpen, Ph.D.

Is our number up?

The millennial year 2000 looms ahead and, if history repeats itself, as the year draws closer we may see millennial fever heat up, with excited or frightened people looking for the grand finale of human history.

Apocalyptic thinking is in the air," according to Kenneth Ring, a University of Connecticut psychologist quoted in Omni magazine. "As we approach that subjective date, 2000, images stored in the collective unconscious begin to populate our dreams and visions." Perhaps the popular new prime time TV series Millennium, with its edge-of-your-seat doomsday theme, is a sign of things to come.

Or a sign of things past. The end of the world has been predicted by various Christian religious groups for a number of dates before: the years 200, 380, 838, 1000, 1260, 1533, 1844 and 1988, to name only a few. They usually built their predictions on details of the biblical books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation.

Central to their theories was the notion of the "millennium" (Rev. 20:1-7), a literal 1,000 year earthly reign of Christ, associated with His second coming and the conclusion of history, as symbolized in the Apocalypse (another name for the book of Revelation).

Countless "prophets" of the past have identified characters found in these texts with one or another of their contemporaries. For some, the "beast" or "Antichrist," leader of the satanic forces arrayed in the End Times against Christ's Church (Rev. 13:1-10), was a pagan Roman emperor; for others, Napoleon, Hitler, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, or even the pope. The role of Gog and Magog, nations that oppose God's people (Rev. 20:8), has been played variously by Muslim Turks, Viking raiders, British redcoats, the Third Reich, and Soviet Russians, among others.

Apocalyptic speculation has in fact been a near-constant feature of American Protestantism since colonial days. We can probably expect such speculation to become extreme apocalyptic fervor in some religious circles by the end of this decade. Like the "Millerites," a 19th-century Protestant movement so convinced the end would come in 1844 that many left their jobs and gave away their possessions (and suffered the consequences when the appointed day came and went with no apocalypse), some 20th-century believers may well risk a great deal for the sake of apocalyptic convictions.

Few speculators if any are naming the year 2000 as a specific deadline. Yet there seems to be among many conservative Protestants in America an unspoken assumption that the turn of the millennium has special significance on God's prophetic calendar, and that some who are now alive will see the Lord's return. Even the most moderate of preachers often refer to the present as "the last days" or "the end times." And new books continue to appear with predictions about a coming Armageddon (a cataclysmic battle between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil, mentioned in Revelation 16:16) or a new European Community, signaling the rise of the Antichrist.

Among some Catholics as well, apocalyptic anxieties have been fed by the increasing number of reported Marian apparitions, many of which hint that the End is near; some come right out and explicitly predict it. In particular, the "Third Secret" of the 1917 Fatima prophecy (approved by the Church) is rumored to predict a great war before the close of this century in which "fire and smoke will fall from heaven, and waters of the oceans will become vapors. Millions and millions of men will perish." The fact is, nobody except the Pope and Sr. Lucia (the one surviving Fatima visionary) know what is contained in the "Third Secret," and they're not talking.

New Age and Secular Armageddons

Interestingly, Catholic and Protestant End Times expectations are being paralleled in New Age and even secular circles as well. New Agers in particular have plenty of prophecies to draw on: The 16th century "prophet" Nostradamus predicted that the apocalypse would come around the year 2000. The famous psychic Edgar Cayce insisted years ago that the New Age would begin in 1998, right after a catastrophic shift in the earth's axis. World-renowned "prophetess" Jean Dixon claims the Antichrist will appear in this decade. New Age guru Elizabeth Clare Prophet, leader of the cultic group Church Universal and Triumphant, reported some years ago that the "Ascended Masters" had told her about an approaching Age of Aquarius and a 12 year "time of troubles" that will precede it. To escape the coming wrath, her group has reportedly prepared bomb shelters deep in rural Montana.

Add to these voices the claims of those who believe they're receiving warnings from extraterrestrials about coming global disasters, vague Hopi Indian prophecies that the world is now on the brink of destruction, and an ancient Mayan calendar stone that points to the year 2012 as the end of the age. Non-Christians can easily accumulate an apocalyptic smorgasbord of End Times prophecies without any reference to the Bible at all.

Thirty years ago the specter of nuclear disaster seemed to give the dire warnings of Revelation a chilling extrabiblical confirmation. With the fall of the Soviet empire and a lengthy stretch of relative peace between the major nations of the world, that scenario seemed for awhile less threatening. But new and not unfounded fears have recently emerged about reports of the clandestine proliferation of nuclear weaponry among developing nations, a thriving international black market for nuclear devices and delivery systems, and, most sinister of all, the not far-fetched possibility that terrorists could perpetrate a nuclear strike in a major city. Nuclear power plant accidents, botched biological warfare experiments, outbreaks of deadly plagues in Africa and elsewhere, the "global warming" scare, and the rising alarm about the alleged expanding "ozone hole" could add up, some say, to a "do it yourself" man-caused apocalypse of flood, fire, frost, or pestilence that would require no avenging angels or heaven-sent horsemen to be completed (cf. Rev. 6 and 16).

Some disaster theorists insist that even without human assistance, the earth may take a turn for the worse. A few have predicted that earthquakes will reach a climax on May 5, 2000, when Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn become aligned with the earth and sun, thus inducing a huge gravitational stress upon the earth. Others expect a devastating shift in the earth's polar axis or a collision with a massive asteroid whose impact would be worse than any nuclear exchange. No wonder the California-based "Society for Secular Armageddonism" (sic) established a telephone "hotline of doom" for those who wanted more information about "the coming end of the world."

The "Zero Effect"

Certainly no one expects an asteroid to coordinate its schedule with the modern Western calendar for a well-timed appearance on New Year's Day 2000. So why the significance of that particular year? Historian Hillel Schwarz, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, has concluded that toward the end of any century, "there is always a sense of things falling apart."

Michael Barkun, history professor at Syracuse University and the author of a paper called Apocalypse Chic: Waiting for the Year 2000, concurred with that assessment. The paper observed that a time of "nervous anticipation" usually precedes years ending in zero, and the more zeros, the greater the anticipation. Barkun concludes that the year 2000 will thus be a "lightning rod for people's anxiety about the future."

Futurologists John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of Megatrends 2000, summed it up this way: "The year 2000 is like a giant magnet operating on humanity, reaching down into the '90s and intensifying the decade."

Within the Christian community, apocalyptic predictions over the centuries have probably fixed on as many non-zero years as they have zero years. Nevertheless, Barkun's observation seems to hold true here as well. The turn of a century means a turn of our attention to the future.

The Cosmic Week

With the beginning, not just of the century, but of an entire millennium, the historic precedent for the "zero effect" is bolstered by the notion of what's called the "cosmic week." This ancient teaching, coming down from the earliest Christian period and still alive today, may have had its roots in ancient Egyptian and Syrian astrology, but it is ostensibly based on the well-known words of St. Peter: "With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day" (2 Peter 3:8).

According to the cosmic week interpretation of history, the world will complete seven ages, each 1,000 years long, that correspond to the seven days of creation. The seventh age will be a cosmic "Sabbath" corresponding to the day God rested (Gen. 2:1-2), and this age is identified with the millennium described in Revelation 20. According to this scheme, the end of human history would come 6,000 years after the creation of Adam.

Modern scientific theories notwithstanding, some conservative Protestants still hold that God created Adam 6,000 years ago, called Abraham 4,000 years ago, sent Jesus 2,000 years ago, and is getting ready to wind it all up with the Second Coming any time now. This ancient notion of the cosmic week continues to contribute to apocalyptic expectations.

A number of Church Fathers, most notably St. Hippolytus (A.D. 170-236) and St. Augustine (354-430), held to the cosmic week interpretation. But both of these believed that Christ had come in the middle of the sixth millennium, so they expected history to end somewhere around the year 500. On the other hand, St. Augustine noted that some writers with whom he was familiar had suggested Christ would return 1,000 years after His Ascension.

This latter reckoning, with the first advent of Christ initiating the sixth age, led to the natural expectation that 1,000 years later the second advent would herald the seventh age. Not surprisingly, a rise of anxiety and a flurry of apocalyptic activity took place in the years just prior to the year 1000, though scholars have debated just how hysterical the behavior became.

Legends insist that millennium madness was the order of the day: Reportedly, comets, earthquakes, and other more bizarre omens struck apocalyptic terror across Europe. Thousands sold their possessions and headed to Rome to await the End. Some have asserted that the entire nation of Iceland converted en masse to Catholicism on the stroke of midnight, January 1, 1000, in order to survive the impending Judgment Day.

Today, however, most historians agree that, although the cosmic week idea did indeed lead to widespread anxiety in Europe and elsewhere, the large-scale panic reported by some accounts is somewhat exaggerated. Even so, anxiety among Christians about the Second Coming has existed in varying degrees of intensity throughout the last 2,000 years, persisting up to modern times.

Could It Be Dangerous?

Speculation about how dangerous the millennial madness will get probably serves little purpose, except perhaps to contribute to growth of the phenomenon itself.

A big scare went through Fundamentalist and Pentecostal circles in early 1988, when former NASA engineer Edgar Whisenant released his widely distributed booklet 88 Reasons Why the End Will Come in 1988. The world would end that year, he predicted, on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. But Rosh Hashanah came and went without incident, so the Whisenant fiasco did little more than make headlines, scare some "sinners" into conversion, and tempt more than a few others to run up some pretty heavy credit card bills they thought they'd never have to pay.

In spite of spectacular flops like Whisenant and, more recently, the wild-eyed End Times predictions of Protestant radio preacher Harold Camping, many folks are quite prepared to accept whatever new prediction comes along. But Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals aren't alone in their obsession with the End. There are reports of some apocalyptic New Agers stockpiling guns and heading for the hills. Some observers of this trend say we may have reason to fear a more sinister possibility. Carl Raschke, director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Denver, was quoted in Psychology Today as seeing a potential danger in "the New Age talk about purification - the idea that people who aren't in touch with the cosmos and so get in the way of the coming New Age will have to be purified." To Raschke, that "sounds a bit like the anti-Semitic pogroms of the Middle Ages."

Similar concerns have been expressed by James Oberg, founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation into Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Oberg worries about apocalypse-mongers who "get a sense of intellectual and emotional power in being a member of a small group that knows the future." For these people, he said, the approach of the year 2000 will lead to "a synergistic climb toward panic," with potentially dangerous social results.

"These people will make bad and harmful decisions about their future lives - going off to join survivalist shelters, stopping the educational process, refusing medical care - because of these apocalyptic beliefs." If it's a small group of eccentrics, Oberg suggests the situation may be relatively harmless and simply laughable. But if a large proportion of the population follows suit, "then that's an entirely different ballgame."

How Hot Will It Get?

How hot will the millennial fever get? So much depends on social, political, and even natural conditions that it's hard to say for sure. Sociologists who specialize in studying apocalyptic movements suggest that a number of factors aside from theological orientation help determine when a particular religious idea crystallizes into concrete social and political activity.

Some researchers claim that, to join an apocalyptic group, people must have experienced a sharp sense of social or economic deprivation, with an accompanying desire to see the world made right, usually through some dramatic event. Others point to the need for security during periods of rapid social transition. Still others note that a charismatic leader (often regarded as a "prophet" by his followers) of some sort is necessary to catalyze the formation of a distinct group. And natural catastrophes or even just the fear of them can intensify or accelerate the whole process.

If we accept the validity of these factors, then we might venture a general prediction ourselves: If close to the end of this decade a war of wide proportions should erupt in the Middle East or Europe, or, say, a deadly virus such as Ebola should break out worldwide, or even if a series of major natural calamities should cluster together (e.g., earthquakes, cyclones, tidal waves), we could see considerable apocalyptic panic. But if things continue much as they are now, we can probably expect a number of limited and unrelated End Time movements to follow the way of the Millerites.

An Unprecedented Opportunity

Meanwhile, what should we be doing as the year 2000 approaches? Actually, the coming millennial milestone offers Catholics who want to share their faith an unprecedented opportunity for evangelism. Though few Catholic leaders throughout history have engaged in apocalyptic speculation, the mainstream Catholic tradition has taken a rather calm, patient view of the "end times." In particular, the Church has tended to view the "millennium" described in Revelation 20 as a symbol of the present time - a time between Jesus' first and second comings when Christians must endure adversity and resist temptation, confident of God's victory and hopeful that they will one day reign with Him.

This is not to say, of course, that Catholics should expect the future to be uniformly bright. The Church's long history of suffering and struggle must chasten any naiveté we may have about inevitable human progress. The doctrine of original sin should be sufficient to remind us that a nuclear or chemical holocaust is always a possibility. At the same time, we recognize that the world will in fact come to an end one day with Christ's return, and that divine judgment will follow. These events could just as easily take place tomorrow as 1,000 years from now.

In other words, those predictions of the End, connected with many alleged Marian apparitions, might well be true. But we don't know, and we can't know, so we shouldn't worry.

Nevertheless, a genuinely Catholic attitude toward the future can prevent attempts to take literally every detail of the book of Revelation as points on an historical timeline for the world. We can decline to apply the veiled references of the Apocalypse to specific people, nations, or events in our own day. Instead, we can provide a gentle challenge to the pessimistic, fearmongering stance of many Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, New Agers, and secular doomsday prophets. We can offer an alternative to the sensationalist scenarios some have presented, with their claims that the Social Security number represents "666," that the Antichrist is building a supercomputer to control the world, or that America will have a final showdown with the Russians and Chinese in a mega-battle on the plains of Israel.

In response to Fundamentalists' lurid End Times charts and gleeful speculations on the connection of current events to biblical prophecies, Catholics should talk about how many times religious fringe groups have falsely predicted the end of the world. We should remind them how millennial expectations contributed to the heretical teachings and practices of aggressive non-Christian and quasi-Christian groups such as the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the ill-fated Branch Davidians. And we can show how the widespread Protestant principle of subjective biblical interpretation - the notion that Christians don't need an authoritative Church with its teaching magisterium to help them interpret the Bible accurately - has led many End Times groups into confusion, deception, apostasy, and sometimes even violence and suicide.

These historical precedents are especially important in light of claims by some Protestants that the "Whore of Babylon," described in Revelation 17:1-6, represents the Catholic Church. The truth, of course, is that all those predictions of the world's end have been false, and the schismatic groups that preached them, from the second-century Montanists onward, have disappeared or will. But the Catholic Church remains.

Many non-Catholics will become more sensitized to issues of faith and the meaning of life as apocalyptic rumors spur them to think about history's purpose and conclusion. Even New Agers, who typically deny Christian teaching regarding the reality of sin and absolute moral norms, may be pressed to reconsider their assumptions about the unlimited potential and perfectibility of the human race, especially if they fear a man-made Armageddon. Scientific theories about global catastrophe may impel many secularists and atheists to think again about the possibility of life after death. We Catholics should seize these "teachable moments" for sharing Christ and the Catholic Faith with these people.

To prepare yourself for such conversations, take a look at the resource list in this article. You'll find helpful studies of millennialism, both past and present, as well as works presenting the hopeful perspective on the future offered by Pope John Paul.

Keep Busy in the Garden

An old legend has it that once, when St. Francis of Assisi was weeding his garden, a visitor asked him, "What would you do if you knew that tomorrow the world would end?"

His reply was quick. "I would finish weeding my garden."

Those are the words of a man who was so confident he was serving God's purposes, he had no fear of the Apocalypse. If Jesus were to come back, St. Francis expected simply to hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

That kind of faith-filled attitude toward the end of the world had been nourished by the Catholic Church's confidence in God's sovereignty over history and His desire to have us share His victory. If we cultivate the same kind of attitude then we can be, as Francis was, busy gardening - weeding out the world's mistaken millennial notions and planting instead the seeds of faith, hope, charity, and a vibrant Catholic Faith.