End of the world is business as usual for some
by Ron Ferguson
People forecasting the imminent end of the world used to walk through city streets wearing sandwich boards; today's doomsayers are more likely to be wearing lab coats and talking about climate change. Apocalyptic themes, which used to be the preserve of religious groups, now inform our secular culture. Mind you, predictions about the endtime are still flourishing back at the religious ranch, as was shown in The End of the World Cult, last week's chilling documentary on Channel 4.
Film-maker Ben Anthony was afforded entry to the Strong City commune in New Mexico where Michael Travesser, a 66-year-old former sailor previously known as Wayne Bent, modestly calls himself the Son of God. He has spent the past 20 years preparing his 56 devoted disciples for doomsday.
Anthony discovered sinister undertones. Teenage girls talked to him about desiring sex with their leader, and he discovered that the cult leader's sexual activity extended to his own daughter-in-law.
When Travesser announced that the world would end at midnight on October 31, 2007, his followers were exhilarated. Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed the wee problem with this prophecy. The messianic charlatan got it spectacularly wrong.
This prediction game has been going on for aeons. About two centuries after Christ, some zealots in Jerusalem were convinced the apocalyptic day was dawning. They climbed to the top of Masada - a place where Jewish martyrs had once committed suicide rather than submit to the enemy - and awaited the end. Well, it came. They all died of sunstroke. Apocalyptic tip No 1: if you're going to watch the fireworks on the top of a mountain in the Middle East in summer, put on some factor 50, at least.
Bishop Gregory of Tours, who was around in the sixth century, thought the end of the world would come between 799 and 806. With the approach of the first millennium, many people headed for the caves. They then had to come back home sheepishly and get on with the rest of their lives.
At the time of the Reformation, the Mayor of Munich was so concerned about rumours of the Second Coming that he had all his crates of booze buried in the ground. In 1532, a minister and amateur mathematician called Michael Stiefel predicted that the world would end on October 9, 1533, at 8am. Early that day, the local peasants assembled at his church to witness the summons to glory. After the deadline passed, they seized the preacher and dragged him off to the local magistrate, where he was sued for damages.
And one early-nineteenth-century religious fruitcake, Lady Hester Stanhope, always kept two Arab horses in her stable - one for herself and another for the messiah. Oh, stop it, Hester! (It would have made a great eschatological Gone with the Wind movie, starring Margaret Thatcher as the adoring aristocrat and Ronald Reagan, the galloping Gipper, as an aw-shucks messiah with spurs.) Most prophets have been careful to predict an endgame date well into the future, but others have been foolish enough to name a date within their own lifetime. This presents obvious credibility problems. The Jehovah's Witnesses have had several cracks at it, and can boast a 100% failure record. Each time they get it wrong, they shamelessly produce another date. Apocalyptic tip No 2: if you're going to set a time for the endgame, make it at least 200 years hence.
Those making prophecies tend to do so by multiplying obscure numbers from the Book of Revelation and adding them to the Cowdenbeath scores from 1939, or something like that. Interestingly enough, when Jesus was asked about the day and the hour, he said he didn't know. He simply asked that people live lives of accountable readiness.
Christian leaders shouldn't be too snooty, though. The truth is that Christianity itself is an apocalyptic cult which emerged out of Judaism. The early Christians believed that the end of the world would come in their lifetime. It was only when the skies stubbornly refused to open that the church hunkered down for the long haul. (A cult can be defined as any third-division religion which hasn't made it into the premier league worldwide. History is written by the winners.) What really matters is the way we relate to one another on this old earth. With our profligate using up of the fragile resources of the planet and our stockpiling of nuclear weapons - while righteously lecturing other nations about the evil of such practices - we humans are perfectly capable of triggering an apocalyptic meltdown without any divine assistance.
And what did Michael Travesser do when midnight on October 31 came and went? Before going back to such unPresbyterian relations with his relatives, the unabashed apocalyptic chancer provided another date - December 15, 2007. Oops, missed again.