Well, what happened?

Yes, I’ve been in Blogosphere limbo for a while. Lots of Christmas concerts occupying my time (already! and more to come!), as well as the recent ecstatic thrill of my second colonoscopy—a subject I won’t go into deeply, since my gastroenterologist already has. But I did promise (or threaten) several weeks ago a more extended commentary on the particularly curious headline in the _Weekly Word News_ (obviously some time before 2000), in 2-inch-high letters: “Captured space alien’s grim prophecy: GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!” So far as I’m aware, Earth was not destroyed six years ago (a lot escapes my notice, but I don’t think that would have), and in spite of all the strenuous efforts of the lunatic christo-fascists to bring about Armageddon as soon as possible so they can all get raptured
_à la_ Tim LaHaye, it doesn’t seemed to have happened yet. (By the way, the word _rapture_ comes from the same root as _rape_; look it up. What do those who want it so much think of that? Raped by God? Well, it happened to that nice teenaged Jewish girl in the first century, didn’t it? Oh, but that was consensual—and immaculately clean—according to St Luke. . . . Sorry, I get carried away on these tangents.)

It would be easy simply to dismiss this as an unfortunate lapse in the usually impeccable journalistic integrity of _WWN_, but I am nagged by the uncomfortable question of why they ever published it in the first place. Of course, publishing the “prophecies” of Nostradamus is part of their stock in trade, but those of a space alien? Why couldn’t God tell us directly himself? Oh, some will say, he usually does use prophets to bring us bad news (never good news). Granted, but human prophets, not space aliens. And although _prophecy_ and _prediction_ are closely related (both coming from roots meaning “to speak before”), and Webster’s gives the second as a synonym for the first, I personally do not consider all predictions to be prophesies and bridle slightly at the confusion of the two. Prophecy is, strictly speaking, something of a sacred calling, and I doubt that space aliens qualify for it.

And why 2000? Because it’s the Millennium, of course! and all sorts of terrible things (like all the computers on earth crashing because they don’t know what year it is) are supposed to take place on these particular dates just because they end in three zeros. But only in one of several different calendars and chronologies. Most other religious traditions have their own calendars, dating from some event they consider as important as Christians consider the birth of Jesus, and the Jews (who are now in the year 5767) aren’t going around saying the world will end in their year 6000; nor are the Moslems (now in the year 1427 dating from the Hegira) saying it will end in their year 2000. Certainly the Jews (I don’t know about the Moslems) have their own rich and fascinating apocalyptic literature (particularly that of Daniel), but so far as I know, they don’t use it to predict a particular date for the end of the world. That seems to be a peculiarly Christian obsession—and only for certain sects of them. And obsession it certainly is, as amply shown by the appalling popularity of those hideous “Left Behind” atrocities.

Actually, it’s a much more complicated subject than I realized, and I’m beginning to regret I ever waded into it. Depending as I usually do on Wikipedia, I find that Millennialism is a specific form of Millennarianism, and neither has anything to do with the end of the world or with years ending in three zeros, and therefore nothing to do with the _WWN_ headline. This is why the millennialist wing-nuts can continue looking for the immanent Millennium even though it is now 2006, and why they expect the Earth to remain here as a place for all us “left behind” sinners to be forced to endure all the horrible torments which LaHaye’s readers get their jollies from. (Isn’t “left behind” a term for the buttock above the left leg?) But I doubt that any of this was known by all the people who in 1999 expected all kinds of shit to hit the fan the next year, and who thought it was predicted by biblical “prophecies” about which they either knew next to nothing or believed utter hogwash.

One thing I do know, however, is that all attempts to predict the end of the world or the Second Coming or Armageddon or any other event, in the year 2000 or some time next week or at any other specific date, are in direct defiance of the clear admonition of Jesus not to try to do so, and not to trust anyone who claims to do so. Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32: “About that day and hour, no one knows.” And somewhere else I don’t feel like looking up: “Beware of false prophets.” And yet whole sects, most notably the Seventh Day Adventists, have been founded on some fruit loop predicting when something big is going to happen, and thousands of witless sheep believing him. There are stories of such groups going up on mountaintops to wait for whatever they’re expecting at a quarter after three Friday afternoon or some such thing, and when it fails to happen, they sort of look at each other sheepishly (!!) and shrug, “Well – what do we do now that we’ve sold everything we owned?” It’s enough to make someone who’s perfectly enlightened like me shake his head in disgust.

And one more little soap-box sermon before I sign off: IT IS
*_N-O-T_ CHRISTMAS* YET!!! IT IS *ADVENT*!!! Do what the Grinch tells you and take down all your freakin’ decorations until the 25th, and then put them back up and keep them up until January 6th. F**king pagans!