- The end is at hand.
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- From "Brother David," a former
trailer park operator from upstate New York, to Monte Kim Miller, a Denver
cult leader who is convinced he is about to become the world's last prophet,
time will end next year in Jerusalem.
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- Brother David heads a small colony of
born-again Christians who have sold everything they owned and moved to
Jerusalem's Mount of Olives to await the apocalypse.
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- "By coming here, we are able to
secure, in the spiritual realm, front-row seats for what is about to happen,"
he says.
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- Mr. Miller, a messianic cult leader who
has convinced 75 Denver families to do exactly the same thing, set alarm
bells ringing this week when it was thought he planned to usher the new
millennium in with the mass suicide of his followers.
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- A six-foot, five-inch former marketing
director with Proctor & Gamble, Mr. Miller claims to channel the voice
of God.
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- Before he disappeared with his followers
last month, he prophesied Denver would be destroyed in a massive earthquake
on Oct. 10. But when the disaster didn't occur, police and former cult
members became worried when Mr. Miller and members of his Concerned Christians
cult had traveled to Israel to await the end of the world.
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- In the past, Mr. Miller had told his
disciples to be prepared to die and preached it was his destiny to die
on the streets of Jerusalem and be resurrected again, like Jesus Christ,
three days later.
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- On Monday, Yair Yitzhaki, Jerusalem's
police commander, announced Israeli police had tracked down 10 of Mr. Miller's
cult members and were monitoring their case.
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- "The matter of messianic activity
with the approach of the year 2000 is one we have been dealing with for
a very long time," Mr. Yitzhaki told a news conference, as he unveiled
1999 plans for a special police task force and a massive $12-million (US)
security operation to guard Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
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- As the new millennium approaches, there
is a definite quickening of the world's apocalyptic fervor, and Jerusalem
is Ground Zero.
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- For true believers, there are signs everywhere
that the end of the world may soon be at hand. Worldwide disasters -- floods,
wars, earthquakes -- are just what Matthew's Gospel told people to look
for. The Hale-Bopp comet, African famines, and Asia's economic meltdown
all are carefully examined for additional hints of the apocalypse.
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- Millennial fixations are slowly insinuating
themselves into our daily lives -- from fundamentalist Christian talk radio
shows that feature discussions on "end times" to a rash of reported
sightings of the Virgin Mary or New Age Web sites on the Internet that
have turned a dead Diana, Princess of Wales, into a spiritual guide .
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- A recent Associated Press survey in the
U.S. reached the amazing conclusion that up to 35% of adult American Christians
believe it is possible Armageddon will occur in their lifetime.
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- The emerging visions of the apocalypse
are being fed by a strange mixture of new technology and old predictions.
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- Cyberspace and the Internet have given
a sharper edge to old prophecies with the creation of thousands of millennial
Web sites ranging from a "Weekly Bible Prophecy Page" to "UFOs,
Aliens, and the Antichrist."
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- And there are new best-sellers, such
as preacher Pat Robertson's book The End of the Age and religious broadcaster
Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, which apply symbolism of the
Book of Revelation to current events.
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- The core of apocalyptic theory is Christian,
and it's centered on Jerusalem, where the Christian faith began, with the
Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Pentecost, and where it will reach a fiery
end with Jesus' return at the Second Coming on the Mount of Olives.
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- The city's Temple Mount is one of the
holiest and most contested sites in the world.
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- Today it houses the Muslim Al Aqsa mosque
and the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in the Islamic world,
where the prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended to heaven on a
winged horse. But for Jews, the site is equally important and marks the
spot where ancient Jerusalem's first two temples stood.
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- Prior to the last millennium, hundreds
of pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem despite great dangers and difficulty.
Now, with modern travel so much more convenient and comfortable, Israeli
authorities expect to be swamped by six million pilgrims during the second
half of next year.
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- Ehud Olmert, Jerusalem's mayor, has already
recommended the creation of a series of tent cities to accommodate visitors
who won't find a conventional hotel room.
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- Some guided tour companies are already
sending out ads asking prospective customers if they want to be in the
Holy Land when the Second Coming occurs.
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- The sudden influx of thousands of messianic
zealots into one of the world's most tense and troubled cities, however,
could easily create problems.
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- Apocalyptic visionaries are perhaps the
most dangerous politically, says historian Richard Landes, director of
the Centre for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
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- "Those in its grip live in a world
of paranoid dualism where good and evil prepare for their final battle
and there is no neutrality," he says. "They are impervious to
rational argument and they have none of the inhibitions that a future imposes
on most behavioral calculations."
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- Things will only get more intense the
closer we get to the end of the century, Mr. Landes says.
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- "Despite the consistent disappointment
of such beliefs, they surge up repeatedly, moving large numbers of people
to extraordinary deeds," he says.
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- "Indeed, the intensity of the movement
is almost a function of its brevity. The sooner the end, the more intense
the manifestations of its expectation."
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- http://www.nationalpost.com/news.asp?f=981125/2047850&s2=world&s3=todays
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