- Monte Kim Miller isn't the only person
to attract a following with an apocalyptic vision that's primed and ticking
toward the new millennium.
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- He's just the first to get much attention.
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- Have a doomsday theory? Take a number.
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- Miller's Concerned Christians, a former
Denver group whose members vanished last year, is just one of dozens of
groups around the country whose central tenets revolve around an end-of-the-world
scenario.
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- They come in all denominations: Y2K computer
theorists who see society grinding to a halt, survivalists who plan to
ride it out on stockpiled guns and rations, UFO watchers who await the
arrival of benevolent aliens.
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- There's the House of Yahweh in Abilene,
Texas, where a former police officer who has taken the name Yisrayl Hawkins
has gathered 2,000 followers into a compound.
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- There are the Twelve Tribes of Israel
in New York, a separatist group that combines UFO beliefs with a message
that blacks, Hispanics and American Indians will survive the apocalypse.
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- And there's the Rev. Clyde Lott of Canton,
Miss., who is raising perfect red heifers whose ashes can be used in rituals
for a future temple in Jerusalem.
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- Not far behind these various groups are
a phalanx of scholars, authors and journalists intent on taking this once-in-a-millennium
opportunity to study the motives, methods and messages of these end-time
believers.
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- One author was surprised to learn that,
no matter how outlandish their beliefs, some doomsday theorists are fairly
ordinary.
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- "That was a big surprise to me,"
said Alex Heard, an editor at Wired magazine and author of a forthcoming
book, Apocalypse Pretty Soon.
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- "It's not like people are walking
around drooling with a cardboard sign that reads, 'The end is near."'
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- Heard described a UFO believer who spends
nights waving a flashlight at the sky. By day he's an emergency-room physician.
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- At the Center for Millennium Studies
at Boston University, a group of scholars and independent researchers have
been awaiting the emergence of groups such as Concerned Christians.
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- Center spokesman David Kessler said the
privately financed center had been fielding about five calls a day from
the news media until this month, when Israeli police arrested several Concerned
Christians in an alleged doomsday plot.
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- "Since then we've been deluged,"
Kessler said.
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- The center's logo features an infinity
symbol containing the images of a rooster and an owl.
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- The logo reflects what Kessler described
as the two basic positions people take when faced with prophecies of imminent
radical transformation.
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- The rooster crows, "Dawn is imminent."
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- The owl replies: "The night is young.
Go back to sleep."
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- The roosters will get the most attention
as the new millennium approaches.
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- Israeli officials have been concerned
about the influx of religious pilgrims flocking to Jerusalem for the new
millennium.
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- The prospect poses both problems and
opportunities. There is the potential for violent schemes, like the allegations
against Miller's followers. There's also the economic boon of increased
tourism. Israeli officials are bracing for 4 million visitors this year,
twice the usual figure.
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- Brenda E. Brasher, a professor of religion
at Mount Union College, in Alliance, Ohio, sees the potential for a remarkable
period of spiritual growth and communication among various faiths.
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- Brasher, who studies believers of millennial
end-of-time scenarios, said members of Concerned Christians have been in
Jerusalem since the spring. That's several months before most of them abandoned
their lives and jobs in Colorado.
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- Some of the arrivals have posed unique
difficulties. An Israeli psychiatrist has coined the term the Jerusalem
syndrome. This involves pilgrims who, on arrival, come to believe that
they are biblical characters such as Christ or Moses.
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- Against this backdrop, it seems hardly
surprising that the Israeli police would move so swiftly against the Concerned
Christians, New York author Peter Klebnikov said.
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- Klebnikov, who is working on a book about
American doomsday groups, to be titled The Cult Next Door, said he thinks
Israeli authorities were trying to set an example.
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