End of days: predictions and prophecies about the end of the world /
Sylvia Browne with Lindsay Harrison
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE - The End of Days: Why This Book Now?
CHAPTER TWO - Ancient Beliefs About Doomsday
CHAPTER THREE - Christians, Jews, and Catholics on the
End of Days
CHAPTER FOUR - Other Great Religions and the End of the
World
CHAPTER FIVE - The Prophets Speak on the End of Days
CHAPTER SIX - Doomsday Cults
CHAPTER SEVEN - The End of Days Through My Eyes
CHAPTER EIGHT - Humankind at the End of Days
About the Author
Also by Sylvia Browne
THE TWO MARYS
PSYCHIC CHILDREN
THE MYSTICAL LIFE OF JESUS
INSIGHT
PHENOMENON
PROPHECY
VISITS FROM THE AFTERLIFE
SYLVIA BROWNE’S BOOK OF DREAMS
PAST LIVES, FUTURE HEALINGS
BLESSINGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE
LIFE ON THE OTHER SIDE
THE OTHER SIDE AND BACK
ADVENTURES OF A PSYCHIC
SYLVIA BROWNE
with
LINDSAY HARRISON
DUTTON
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Browne, Sylvia.
End of days: predictions and prophecies about the end of the world /
Sylvia Browne with Lindsay Harrison.
p. cm.
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1. End of the world—Prophecies. I. Harrison, Lindsay. II. Title.
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From Sylvia & Lindsay
For Kristen, Misty, Crystal, and Willie
INTRODUCTION
I’m tired of being scared, and I know you are too. Not that
there isn’t a lot to be scared of in this world today, between the
nonstop headlines about wars and nuclear power plants and
terrorists and assassinations and civil unrest and economic
uncertainty and political doublespeak and insane weather and
an environment that’s becoming unhealthier by the day. But a
point comes when it’s too much to deal with, and thinking
about it accomplishes nothing more than sending you to bed
with a cold cloth on your head.
Then, just when you’re already on enough overload,
someone feels compelled to mention that according to the
Mayan calendar, the world is going to end in 2012 anyway, so
what difference does anything make, really? Or they heard, or
read somewhere, that the book of Revelation, or the book of
Daniel, or Nostradamus, or something, or someone says we’ll
all be dead in the next two years, or five, or ten, or whatever,
or that there are “obvious signs” that the end of the world is
right around the corner. And of course it reminded them of
some horrible movie they saw in which only a handful of
people are left alive on Earth because of a giant asteroid, and
these zombielike survivors are wandering around deserted
cities trying to kill each other over a crust of bread.
It’s almost enough to make you skip lying down on your
bed and to opt for hiding underneath it instead. Almost. But
before you do that, I can’t encourage you enough to ask a few
questions about these dire end-of-the-world predictions. Who
were the Mayans, for example, and how did they arrive at a
calendar that ends in 2012? What specifically do the books of
Revelation and Daniel say that “prove” this impending doom,
and what do we know about the circumstances in which they
were written in the first place? Who was Nostradamus, why is
he credited with any more expertise about the end of the world
than the rest of us, and is it true that his writing is so filled
with symbolism that it’s impossible to tell what he was talking
about anyway? What are these “obvious signs” that our time
on Earth is almost up—and just out of curiosity, have those
same obvious signs ever cropped up before in the history of
this planet and maybe been misinterpreted? As for this movie,
did it claim to be a documentary? Is there really a legitimate
reason to believe that an asteroid gigantic enough to destroy
our world is headed toward us, or might be headed toward us
any time soon?
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the answer to any or all
of these questions will be, “I have no idea.”
If you’ve seen my television or personal appearances and/or
read my books, you know how strongly I believe that
knowledge is power and that the first thing to do when you’re
afraid of something is to educate yourself about it as
thoroughly as possible. I would never say, “Don’t be
frightened about the end of the world,” because, as you’ll learn
throughout this book, we humans are almost genetically
predisposed to thinking about it and worrying about it. But I
will say, very enthusiastically, learn all you can, form your
own opinions, and maybe above all, find out if there’s a choice
to be made between ending this planet or saving it.
This book, then, is devoted to replacing fear with fact, to
proving that knowledge is power, and to offering the sincere
reassurance that, even if the world should end tomorrow (and
it won’t), God will still keep us safe for all eternity, just as He
promised when He created us.
Sylvia C. Browne
CHAPTER ONE
The End of Days:
Why This Book Now?
Please don’t leap to the conclusion that there’s something
urgently meaningful about the timing of this book. I promise
you have time to read it more than once before the end of life
on Earth.
Actually, there are several reasons this book was at the top
of my priority list. Many of them I’ll discuss as the book
progresses, in the context of the chapters themselves. But one
of the most important reasons is also one of the most obvious:
I’ve never been asked more often than I have been in the past
couple of years about when the end of days is coming. What
about the Second Coming of Christ? When should we start
looking for Him? Or is He here now? Is the Antichrist here
already, and if not, when will he show up and who will he be?
How literally should we take the biblical book of Revelation?
Is the Rapture really going to happen? Nostradamus made it
sound as if the Antichrist is among us right now, and the
Mayan calendar specifically says the world will end in 2012,
which is right around the corner. Is that true? If not, when will
it end, and how?
When a subject comes up repeatedly among my clients, I
naturally start wondering what’s causing the “coincidence.”
(You do know there’s no such thing, right?) And I have a
couple of theories. One is that maybe, in the wake of all the
millennium Y2K hysteria—and let’s face it, hysteria is not too
strong a word—there’s a general feeling of having dodged a
bullet, as if we somehow escaped an inevitability of total
destruction and we’re now living on borrowed time. Another
related theory is that apocalyptic books, articles, television
specials, and church sermons were wildly popular at the turn
of this century, and even though the (imaginary) end-of-theworld crisis has come and gone, the unease from all that
information has continued to simmer in people’s minds and is
finally boiling over. Still another is, as you’ll see in upcoming
chapters, I know that as this century progresses, the spirituality
on our planet is going to grow to unprecedented strength and
power, as we humans, at long last, start paying attention to the
spirit voices inside us, reminding us that, yes, it actually is
time to get our affairs in order. That spiritual growth is already
under way, causing more and more of my clients to think
beyond their day-today lives and search for answers to the
bigger questions of their own spirits’ futures and the futures of
every spirit currently residing on a planet that, according to
countless rumors, isn’t going to last forever.
Several of these clients were experiencing the same
understandable fear: they couldn’t get past the feeling that the
end of days must be approaching or it wouldn’t be on their
minds to begin with. For them, and for all of you who share
that fear, I’m here to offer concrete proof that we citizens of
the world in the year 2008 aren’t the first to feel sure that the
end is so obviously imminent. Some historically verifiable
examples:
In approximately 2800 BC an Assyrian tablet was etched
with the words, “Our earth is degenerate in these latter days.
There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end.”
The Bible quotes Jesus as saying to his apostles, in Matthew
16:28, “There be some standing here which shall not taste of
death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
And in Matthew 24:34, “This generation shall not pass till all
these things be fulfilled.” Both statements were taken by some
to mean that Jesus would return before the apostles died.
In around AD 90 the fourth pope, St. Clement I, predicted
that the end of the world was imminent.
In the second century a Christian sect called the Montanists
believed that Christ would return during their lifetime and that
the New Jerusalem would “come down out of heaven from
God.” And one Roman leader was so certain that the end of
the world was only two days away that he and his followers
disposed of their houses and all other belongings in
preparation.
In AD 365 a bishop named Hilary of Poitiers made the
public declaration that the world would be ending during that
year.
Sometime between AD 375 and 400, a student of Hilary of
Poitiers, St. Martin of Tours, braced his followers for a definite
end of the world no later than AD 400. He also stated, “There
is no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born.”
The middle of the first millennium saw a number of
doomsday predictions, including that of Hippolytus of Rome,
the “antipope,” who temporarily defected from the Catholic
Church to protest its reformation, whose math convinced him
that the Second Coming would occur six thousand years after
Creation, or AD 500.
Sextus Julius Africanus, a Roman theologian, was sure that
the end of days was destined to occur in AD 800.
Christians annually celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation
on March 25, the day on which the Virgin Mary was visited by
an angel and told she would give birth to the Christ child. In
992, Good Friday, the acknowledgment of Christ’s
Crucifixion, coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, an
occasion that for centuries had been anticipated as the arrival
of the Antichrist, closely followed by the end of the world
according to the book of Revelation.
The year 1000 provided an opportunity for the first official
millennium hysteria. It was further fueled by the disinterment
of Charlemagne’s body, since, according to legend, an emperor
would someday rise from the grave to do battle with the
Antichrist.
Many authorities who had loudly proclaimed that the world
would definitely end in the year 1000 explained their obvious
miscalculation by “realizing” they should have added Jesus’s
life span to their prediction. As a result, the world would now
reliably end in 1033.
A priest named Gerard of Poehlde, on the other hand, was
sure that Christ’s thousand-year reign had actually begun with
Constantine’s rise to power. Therefore, Satan would escape his
bondage in 1147 and overtake the Church.
John of Toledo, a Spanish astrologer, became convinced that
a specific alignment of planets in 1186 was a sign that the
world would be destroyed by famine, earthquakes,
catastrophic storms, and volcanoes.
According to an Italian mystic and theologian named
Joachim of Fiore, the Antichrist was already incarnated on
Earth and would be defeated by King Richard I of England,
heralding the great rebirth of the world in 1205.
In 1260, Brother Arnold, a Dominican monk, predicted an
impending end of the world in which he would call upon Jesus
to judge Church leaders around the world, during which Jesus
would reveal the Pope to be the long-awaited Antichrist.
Pope Innocent III announced 1284 as the end of the world,
arriving at that date by adding 666 years, from the book of
Revelation, to the date when Islam was founded.
In 1300, a Franciscan alchemist named Jean de
Roquetaillade published such predictions as the arrival of the
Antichrist in 1366, to be followed no later than 1370 by a
millennial Sabbath, and Jerusalem becoming the center of the
world.
A society called the Apostolic Brethren, which believed that
they were the new Roman Church authority, were sure that in
1307 all Church clergy, including the Pope, would be killed in
a great war that would lead to the Age of the Spirit.
Czechoslovakian archdeacon Militz of Kromeriz insisted
that the Antichrist would reveal himself by 1367, ushering in
the end of the world.
In 1496, many Church leaders began anticipating the
Apocalypse based on the fact that it would soon be fifteen
hundred years after the birth of Christ.
Astrologers predicted a massive global flood that would
destroy the world in 1524.
Reformist Hans Hut made it his business to round up
144,000 elect saints to prepare for Jesus’s return in 1528.
A German visionary named Melchior Hoffman prophesied
the Second Coming of Christ in 1533 and the reestablishment
of Jerusalem in Strassburg, Germany. Following the lead of
the book of Revelation, he believed that 144,000 faithful
would be saved, but the rest of the world would perish in
flames.
Astrologer Richard Harvey foresaw the Second Coming of
Christ at noon on April 28, 1583.
According to Dominican monk, poet, and philosopher
Tomasso Campanella, the sun and Earth were destined to
collide in 1603.
In 1661, a group called the Fifth Monarchy Men decided
that by trying to overtake parliament they could prove to God
that faith was alive and well on Earth and it was time for Jesus
to return and claim his rightful millennial kingdom.
Christopher Columbus wrote The Book of Prophecies in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, including a
prediction that the end of the world would happen in 1658.
When the Russian Orthodox Church went through a
reformation, a group that called itself the Old Believers broke
from the Church and began its own ultraconservative,
ultratraditional faith. Included in that faith was a belief that the
world would end in 1669. Between 1669 and 1690 nearly
twenty thousand Old Believers burned themselves to death
rather than be faced with the Antichrist.
Seventeenth-century Baptist Benjamin Keach saw the end
of the world happening in 1689, as did French prophet Pierre
Jurieu.
Puritan minister and renowned witch hunter Cotton Mather
predicted the end of the world three separate times, the first
being 1697.
On October 13, 1736, many braced for a great global flood
predicted by William Whitson, a British theologian and
mathematician.
The renowned mystic Emanuel Swedenborg was told by
angels that the world would end in 1757.
Charles Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism along
with his brother John, was sure that doomsday would occur in
1794. John Wesley disagreed with his brother about the timing
of the world’s end and stated that it was actually in 1836 that
the “beast of Revelation” would rise from the sea and the new
age of peace would begin.
Presbyterian minister Christopher Love braced his followers
for a massive earthquake that would destroy the earth in 1805.
In 1814, a sixty-four-year-old prophet named Joanna
Southcott claimed to be pregnant with the baby Jesus and that
he would be born on December 25, 1814. It so happened that
instead of giving birth that day, she died, and an autopsy
revealed, to no one’s surprise, that she wasn’t pregnant after
all.
Margaret McDonald, a fifteen-year-old Christian prophet,
declared in 1830 that the Antichrist was Robert Owen, a
cofounder of socialism.
It was a widely held belief that the Crimean War of 1853-
56, during which Russia and France fought over which nation
would seize Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, was actually
the great battle of Armageddon prophesied in Revelation.
Sixteenth-century British prophetess Ursula Southeil, who
became famous and/or infamous as Mother Shipton, is quoted
as saying, “The world to an end shall come/in eighteen
hundred and eighty-one.” It’s since been theorized that the
majority of Mother Shipton’s prophecies were actually written
and attributed to her after she died, and that “her” 1881
prediction was the work of her publisher, Charles Hindley.
Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon Church, is quoted as
saying, “I prophesy in the name of the Lord God, and let it be
written—the Son of Man will not come in the clouds of
heaven till I am eighty-five years old.” Smith would have
turned eighty-five years old in 1890. As luck would have it,
he’d been dead for almost fifty years by then.
At the end of the nineteenth century, physicist William
Thomson, aka Lord Kelvin, asserted that there was only
enough oxygen in the atmosphere to last humankind for three
hundred years, and therefore the human race was destined to
be suffocated to death.
In anticipation of the November 13, 1900, doomsday they
predicted, more than one hundred members of a Russian cult
called the Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death killed
themselves on that date.
On December 17, 1919, according to seismologist and
meteorologist Albert Porta, a specific conjunction of six
planets would create a magnetic current so powerful that it
would cause the sun to explode and engulf the earth.
Herbert W. Armstrong, who founded the Worldwide Church
of God in the early 1930s, believed the Rapture would occur in
1936 and that only members of his church would be drawn
into Jesus’s arms in the sky to be saved. When 1936 came and
went with no Rapture, he shifted his prophecy to the year
1975.
Bible teacher Leonard Sale-Harrison toured North America
to lead a series of prophecy conferences during the 1930s,
assuring his audiences that the world would end in 1940 or
1941.
When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, there were
many Christians who believed that the final predicted event
leading to the Second Coming of Christ had been satisfied.
Astrologer Jeane Dixon predicted that this planet would be
destroyed on February 4, 1962, by the force from a planetary
alignment.
Moses David, founder of a religious group called the
Children of God, predicted that, probably in 1973, a comet
would hit the earth and eliminate all life in the United States.
He then revised that prediction to include a battle of
Armageddon in 1986 and the Second Coming of Christ in
1993.
In 1987, author and educator José Argüelles warned that
unless 144,000 people gathered in specific places throughout
the world on August 16-17 to honor the Harmonic
Convergence, Armageddon was inevitable.
NASA scientist Edgar C. Whisenant’s book entitled 88
Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988 sold more than
four million copies.
Fundamentalist author Reginald Dunlop predicted that since
September 23, 1994, was the last encoded date in the Great
Pyramid of Giza, the world was clearly not meant to survive
beyond that date.
The year 1999 was thought to be the definite end of the
world by, to name just a tiny handful, the Seventh-day
Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, linguist Charles Berlitz,
spiritual historian Father Charles Moore, retired electronics
engineer Gerald Vano, spiritualist Eileen Lakes, rocket
scientist Hideo Itokawa, “Messianic Rabbi” Michael Rood,
televangelist Jack Van Impe, former NASA consultant Richard
C. Hoagland, and former businessman, politician, and cult
leader Joseph Kibweteere.
Michael Travesser, born Wayne Bent, is a former sailor and
now the spiritual leader of a New Mexico sect called The Lord
Our Righteousness Church. Travesser claims to be the longawaited messiah and predicted that the world would end with
an apocalyptic event at midnight, October 31, 2007.
The Lord’s Witnesses, a British sect, after an intricate series
of calculations based on biblical prophecies, concluded that
the United Nations would take over the world in the lunar
month preceding April 24, 2001, which happens to be 666
Hebrew months following the founding of the United Nations.
Since that didn’t happen, it’s probably safe to assume that we
don’t need to worry about their second prediction—that after
the United Nations gains global control, Armageddon will
begin on March 21, 2008, killing three-quarters of the world’s
population.
We’ll be discussing many more end-of-days prophecies
throughout this book, and even then we won’t have scratched
the surface of the human search for just one reliable hint about
what’s to become of us. I’ll be weighing in with my own
predictions as well, not to add to the confusion but because I
do think there are aspects to the end of days that aren’t
addressed often enough, while other aspects get far more
attention and credibility than they deserve.
Three General End-of-the-World Categories
While it’s not true in each and every theory of the end of days
that we’re about to explore, it’s certainly true in general that
end-of-the-world theories and prophecies fall into one of three
categories: millennialism, apocalypticism, and messianism.
Millennialism, which is obviously a derivation of the Latin
word for one thousand years, revolves around a belief that the
earth will be subjected to a series of devastating catastrophes
after which the “saved” of humankind will spend eternity in
the bliss of paradise. At first glance it might appear that
millennialism means we should all fly into an end-of-days
panic at the turn of a millennium, as if there’s some implied
doom in any calendar date that has three zeroes in it. And
according to history, we weren’t the first global population to
fall into that mental and emotional trap.
In reality, though, as we’ll explore in depth in Chapter 3,
millennialism has its roots in the biblical book of Revelation,
the apostle John’s prophecy (or nightmare, or political essay)
on the end-time. In chapter 20 John writes:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his
hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he
seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and
Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him
into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should
deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were
ended … Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to
whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those
who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for
the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its
image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or
hands. They came to life again, and reigned with Christ a
thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life again
until the thousand years were ended … And when the thousand
years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will
come out to deceive the nations … to gather them for battle …
And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the
camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down
from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had
deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone
where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be
tormented day and night for ever and ever.
It’s not hard to read those verses and understand why the
cultural significance of a thousand-year period exists to this
day, whether or not those who believe in that significance and
are concerned about it have any awareness of the Bible at all.
Apocalypticism is a theory of the end of days that involves
God channeling His wrath toward the earth with a series of
cataclysmic events, then judging each human according to
their deeds on Earth and finally taking His rightful place again
as the Creator and Supreme Ruler of heaven and Earth.
Probably the deepest roots of apocalypticism are found in
the Old Testament book of Daniel, as illustrated in the
following excerpts:
I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of
heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts
came up out of the sea. The first was like a lion and had
eagle’s wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and
it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand upon two
feet like a man; and the mind of man was given to it. And
behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised
up on one side; it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth,
and it was told, “Arise, devour much flesh.” After this I looked
and lo, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its
back; and the beast had four heads; and dominion was given
to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth
beast, terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong; and it had
great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped
the residue with its feet …
A king of bold countenance, one who understands riddles,
shall arise. His power shall be great, and he shall cause
fearful destruction, and shall succeed in what he does, and
destroy mighty men and the people of the saints …
An anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing;
and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the
city and the sanctuary. Its ends shall come with a flood, and to
the end there shall be war; desolations are decreed … and
upon the wing of abominations shall come one who makes
desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator
…
And there shall be a time of trouble … and many of those
who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the
firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the
stars for ever and ever.
And then there’s messianism, which revolves around the
premise that at the end, a messiah (from the Hebrew word
meaning anointed), or savior, will appear on Earth to lead the
faithful and devout people of God from the suffering and
oppression they’ve endured into an eternity of divine, peaceful
joy. While the most obvious examples of messianism are
found in the Christian and Jewish faiths, we’ll discover that
there are other great religions as well that continue to look for
a messiah to arrive before the end-time and deliver them safely
into God’s arms.
Among the reasons I believe humankind has been
historically fascinated with the subject of the end of the world
is that, despite God’s promise over and over again that we’re
all genetically eternal, our conscious minds find the earthly
pattern of “beginning, middle, and end” much easier to grasp
than the concept of eternity. We hear the fact that on the Other
Side there is no such thing as time, that nothing exists but a
perpetual “now,” and we understandably find it impossible to
imagine, since on Earth we’re virtually obsessed with time.
We’re told by brilliant theologians and spiritual leaders that
this planet is not our real Home at all, that our blissful, sacred
Home is waiting patiently for us to leave our bodies and get
back there where we belong, but we can’t consciously
remember having lived anywhere else, so how can somewhere
else be “Home”?
All things considered, then, it can’t be too surprising that a
“beginning, middle, and end”-oriented society—consumed
with the notion of time-related questions like “when?” and
“how much longer? ” and clinging fiercely to Earth in the
mistaken belief that it’s the only Home we know—wants
answers, always has and always will.
Whether or not the following chapters provide answers or
simply raise more questions, at least we’ll know that just by
asking, we’re expressing curiosity about a subject as timeless
as humankind itself.
CHAPTER TWO
Ancient Beliefs About Doomsday
It’s an undeniable facet of human nature that we somehow feel
more secure if we know the end of a story, especially when it’s
our story. We don’t like loose threads. We don’t like
unanswered questions or unsolved mysteries or uncertainty.
We don’t like not knowing what’s waiting for us around the
corner and, if it might hurt us, what we can do to avoid it or
prepare for it. It’s the inherent belief of humankind that
“forewarned is forearmed.” And we’ve held that belief for as
long as humankind has existed on Earth.
Ancient civilizations were every bit as determined as we are
to piece together the puzzle of the end of our story on this
earth, and the story of this earth itself. They used the same
tools we use today to figure it out: some combination of their
religious beliefs, their bodies of experience, and the
information they had at hand. Their doomsday scenarios
ranged from the optimistic to the truly depressing—again, no
different from our current “sophisticated, educated” theories
except for the vocabularies and details. But when it’s all said
and done, they were as earnest as we are to come up with the
truth about what may be the first question ever asked on this
planet: “How does our story end?”
The Incas
The Inca empire of South America was once the largest
nations on Earth, sprawling two thousand five hundred miles
along the Andes mountain range. The origins of the Incan
civilization are cloaked in myth and mystery, preserved mostly
through the spoken word from one generation to the next when
their recorded history was destroyed, and their vast wealth
pirated, by Spanish conquistadors in 1532.
The earliest Inca were artisans, hunters, farmers, and
indisputably brilliant builders and engineers. Before the
invention of the wheel, they built fourteen thousand miles of
roads intended for nothing but foot travel, and there was such
integrity to the roads’ construction that some of them are still
intact today. Probably the most extraordinary monuments to
the architectural genius of this ancient society are the Incan
pyramids, temples, observatories, and other structures that
continue to fascinate visitors from all over the world—also
still intact, impeccably designed, and, in many cases,
incomplete, mute reminders of a civilization suddenly
decimated for the sake of power and greed.
The heart of Incan lives, language, and religion was their
sense of oneness with nature. Nature, they believed, was the
handiwork of the Sun God, of whom they considered
themselves to be direct descendants. With elaborate festivals
they thanked the Sun God for their harvests, they prayed to the
Sun God for bountiful crops, and they implored the Sun God
not to leave them, his children, during solstices when the earth
and the sun are farthest from each other. They believed in
reincarnation and, when the holiest of rituals were being held,
carried mummies of their ancestors to the ritual sites so they
could share their most reverent moments with those who
preceded them.
When the Incan civilization was destroyed by the Spanish
invasion in the 1500s, a small tribe of refugees known as the
Q’ero escaped to isolated villages in the high Andes. They live
there to this day, with their elders and shamans teaching their
ancient language, history, traditions, and prophecies to
generation after generation of heirs to the once vast and
brilliant Incan world.
In 1996, a Q’ero tribal leader, a revered shaman, and other
tribal elders honored the United States with a historic visit in
which they shared a wealth of information about the Inca,
including the prophecies of their ancestors. Among those
prophecies is an eloquent passage describing the Incan beliefs
about the end of the world:
The new caretakers of the Earth will come from the West, and
those that have made the greatest impact on Mother Earth now
have the moral responsibility to remake their relationship with
her, after remaking themselves.
The prophecy holds that North America will supply the
physical strength, or body; Europe will supply the mental
aspect, or head; and the heart will be supplied by South
America.
The prophecies are optimistic. They refer to the end of time
as we know it—the death of a way of thinking and a way of
being, the end of a way of relating to nature and to the earth.
In the coming years, the Incas expect us to emerge into a
golden age, a golden millennium of peace.
The prophecies also speak of tumultuous changes
happening in the earth, and in our psyche, redefining our
relationships and spirituality.
The next pachacuti, or great change, has already begun,
and it promises the emergence of a new human after this
period of turmoil.
As if to guide their listeners toward this prophesied golden
age, the Q’ero added the following in parting:
Follow your own footsteps.
Learn from the rivers,
the trees and the rocks.
Honor the Christ,
the Buddha,
your brothers and sisters.
Honor your Earth Mother and the Great Spirit.
Honor yourself and all of creation.
Look with the eyes of your soul and engage the essential.
The Maya
The Mayan civilization is thought to have been born in the
Yucatan Peninsula in about 2600 BC and thrived through
approximately AD 1300. They excelled brilliantly in
astronomy, hieroglyphic writing, science, mathematics, art,
farming, weaving, architecture, and creating highly technical,
intricate calendar systems, to name only a handful of their
gifts. Their society was formed around a hierarchy of class
distinctions, with kings and priests of clearly defined
territories as their ruling class and a vast peasant population as
the lowest class providing slave labor, and the Maya ultimately
spread throughout what is now Mexico, El Salvador, Belize,
Honduras, and Guatemala.
Almost as fascinating as the Mayan civilization itself is the
mysterious abruptness with which it vanished. It was as if a
complex, sophisticated society of fifteen million people simply
walked away from their lives one day and never came back,
leaving nothing but deserted cities and abandoned architectural
masterpieces in their wake. To this day there are no definitive
answers but many theories about what happened so suddenly
and with such finality. Some believe a series of droughts
forced the population into a choice between relocating or
starving to death. Some believe a revolt of the peasants/slaves
left a handful of nobility to work the land with no experience
or expertise, and as a result the society essentially imploded
from its inability to support itself. Some believe that the
overzealous agricultural pursuits of the Maya led to everything
from severely depleted soil to an ultimately destructive “slash
and burn” approach to clearing the rich Central American
forests for farmland, so that this civilization literally robbed
their land of its ability to sustain them. Some believe deadly
viruses destroyed the Maya, while others believe that
overpopulation was to blame. Again, the only thing about the
vanishing of the Maya that experts seem to agree on is that no
one knows with any certainty what really happened to those
fifteen million people around AD 1300. And, because the
Spanish conquistadors made it their practice to kill the Mayan
priests and nobility and to burn Mayan books and records
when they invaded Central and South America, it’s likely that
no one ever will.
What has survived after all these centuries is the fascinating
and very complicated Mayan calendar, which consisted of
cycles of 260 days, each day having one of twenty names
represented by its own symbol. The days of the Mayan
calendar were numbered one through thirteen, but since there
are twenty names, after a thirteen-day period was finished, the
next day was numbered “one” again. The calendar also kept
track of a solar year in which the months were named, and
following the eighteen months of their solar year, they
included a five-day month in which the days were thought to
be unlucky and, as a result, were not given names.
I won’t pretend to be able to decipher the intricacies of the
Mayan calendar. Instead, I’ll focus on an element of it that
everyone can decipher: it ends on December 21, 2012, which
has been a source of concern for those who are aware of it and
are determined to find specific “doomsday” predictions to be
fearful of. But the Mayan culture never intended to imply that
a cataclysmic end of the world would be happening on
12/21/12, or the winter solstice of 2012. Their prophecy is that
on that date the world will be making a transition from one age
into another, and it is humankind’s choice whether that
transition will involve violently dramatic changes or will
simply evolve with graceful, peaceful tranquility.
Every 5,125 years, the Maya say, one cycle on Earth ends
and another begins. There are five cycles, each of them with
characteristics roughly corresponding to our passage through a
twenty-four-hour day. The first of Earth’s cycles is comparable
to a galactic morning, when our solar system is just
approaching the central light of the universe. The second
cycle, midday, is our solar system’s closest proximity to the
universal central light. The galactic afternoon, or third cycle,
occurs as our solar system begins moving away from the
central light. The fourth cycle corresponds to the night, when
our solar system is at its farthest from the central light. And
the fifth cycle is that “darkest before the dawn” period, as our
solar system pulls away from being devoid of light and moves
toward its first cycle of morning again.
The prophecy of the Mayan calendar is that our solar system
was slowly ending its fifth cycle, its “darkest before the
dawn,” in 1987, moving toward the morning of the first cycle
that will officially arrive in 2012. And how we use the brief
years between now and then will determine whether the
impending birth of the “morning” is destructive or productive.
Negativity, violence, greed, cruelty, the lust for power, and the
systematic desecration of nature and its sacred inhabitants will
guarantee a catastrophic transition from the fifth cycle back to
the first, while a global nurturing of kindness, respect, unity,
charity, and a celebration of the sanctity of our natural planet
and all its living creatures can, by our choice, create a cyclical
transition into a truly golden age. So 2012, the Maya promise,
will mark a profound change among us on Earth. What kind of
change it will be is entirely up to us.
ATLANTIS
According to the Maya, the end of the Fourth World (cycle)
and the beginning of the Fifth occurred on August 12, 3113
BC, with the sinking of the great continent Atlantis.
Atlantis was first referred to in literature by the brilliant
Greek writer and philosopher Plato (428-348 BC). His
dialogues Timaeus and Critias include characters who refer to
Atlantis as a place “somewhere outside the Pillars of
Hercules” that was destroyed by a tsunami or an earthquake
about nine thousand years earlier. According to the dialogues,
Socrates had been talking about ideal societies, in response to
which both Timaeus and Critias tell Socrates a story that is
“not a fiction but a true story,” about a conflict between the
ancient Athenians and the Atlanteans.
Literally since Plato, the Atlanteans, their origins, and their
civilization have been the subject of exhaustive legend,
research, and exploration. A variety of sources are convinced
that they were extraterrestrials who came to Earth more than
fifty thousand years ago. They were of human shape, fair
skinned, and were giants, averaging from seven to ten feet tall.
Excavations have unearthed skeletons that confirm the
existence of a race that grew to and exceeded that height.
The life span of the Atlanteans was said to be about eight
hundred years, which might explain how they had time to
develop their astonishing technology, light-years beyond ours
even today.
They were able to achieve perfect control of the weather.
And because they were virtually addicted to stimulation, they
took particular delight in conjuring violent storms for their
amusement. They could also create geological “special
effects,” from volcanic fountains to geysers to mineral venting,
and, possibly most breathtaking of all, they invented
something called “threshold technology”—a device that
converted what we think of as the time-space continuum into a
source of energy.
One of the most common sources of energy on Atlantis,
though, was the crystal, which we know has the ability to both
transfer and amplify a beam of light directed at its facets. The
Atlanteans simply expanded on that premise, using crystal
energy not only for basic energy needs similar to ours but also
to enhance their crops, their own physical development, their
mental capacity, and their youthful appearance despite their
dramatically advanced ages.
Atlantis held a great fascination for the brilliant psychic and
prophet Edgar Cayce, whom we’ll discuss at length in a later
chapter. In one of his many detailed descriptions of life on
Atlantis, he referred to a Tuaoi Stone, or Firestone, a great
crystal that was housed in a building with a retractable roof so
that it could be “charged” by the sun, moon, stars, general
atmosphere, and Earth itself. It was able to transmit energy to
power all forms of craft on, above, and below the continent;
send audio and video transmissions over vast distances; and
wirelessly provide heat and light anywhere they were needed
throughout Atlantis.
According to Cayce and other scholars, the Great Crystal
that had so blessed the Atlanteans ultimately led to their
demise. As they became more obsessed with their own power,
and the power of this unprecedented energy source they’d
created, they began “tuning” the crystal to higher and higher
frequencies, until it literally caused mountains to implode,
volcanos to erupt, and the continent to fall in on itself and
submerge into the Atlantic Ocean.
While there won’t be unanimous agreement that Atlantis
existed until it rises again during this century—and it will—
there have certainly been indications that it wasn’t as
imaginary as skeptics prefer to believe.
A 1954 issue of Geologic Society of America Bulletin, for
example, reporting on the exploration of the summit of the
submerged Mid-Atlantic Ridge, reads:
The state of lithification of the limestone suggests that it may
have been lithified under subaerial (i.e., above water, on land
surface) conditions and that the sea mount (summit) may have
been an island within the past 12,000 years.
And then there was a series of satellite photographs shown
and described in the March 1996 issue of Discover magazine:
The Midatlantic Ridge snakes down the center of that ocean
off Greenland to the latitude of Cape Horn … Under South
Africa, the Southwest Indian Ridge shoots into the Indian
Ocean like a fizzling rocket, or perhaps like the trail of some
giant and cartoonish deep-sea mole.
But maybe the Maya gave the existence of Atlantis all the
confirmation it will ever need by considering its demise so
historically monumental that, in their most sacred beliefs, it
ended a world.
The Aztecs
Another powerful and now extinct civilization of warriors was
the Aztec empire, centered in the Valley of Mexico beginning
in approximately the twelfth century AD. Their early history
wasn’t committed to paper but was passed along from one
generation to the next through word of mouth, so there’s no
way of tracing their inception with any great accuracy. Legend
suggests that the Aztecs came from the island of Aztlan. But
there is speculation about whether or not Aztlan is a place that
actually existed; it is as shrouded in myth and mystery as
Camelot and, some would say, the lost continent of Atlantis.
And further speculation suggests that Aztlan was very real and
that it was located in Utah, or perhaps Colorado. If that were
proven to be true, it would mean that the Aztecs may have
arrived in the Valley of Mexico from what is now the western
United States, and the whole notion of undocumented
immigrants from south of the border might have to be
rethought— they might have a case that they’re descendants of
native Americans who are even more entitled to be here than
the rest of us. The Aztec Migration Scrolls describe Aztlan as
an island in a lake, inhabited by great flocks of herons, with
seven temples in the center of the island. Some say the seven
caves of Utah’s Antelope Island might confirm its identity as
the ancient Aztlan, while others are convinced Aztlan will
ultimately be found in or near Florida. But Jesus Jauregui of
the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico,
states without equivocation, “Aztlan is a mythical place, not a
historical one.” So the debate and occasional search
expeditions continue.
What’s not in doubt is that the Aztecs were led into the
Valley of Mexico in the fourteenth century by Tenoch, their
chieftain. He was subsequently ordered by the war god
Huitzilopochtli to take his uncivilized, barbaric people to the
refuge of a marshy island in Lake Texcoco, where they were to
build a city and honor Huitzilopochtli with human sacrifices, a
practice not uncommon among the Aztecs. Tenoch’s city was
built under these swampy, difficult conditions, and it was
called Tenochtitlan. From those harsh beginnings the Aztec
empire took root and thrived until around 1520, when the
Spanish conquistadors, led by Cortez, invaded and conquered
the Aztecs and virtually every other civilization in their path,
destroying every trace of the Aztecs in the process.
Like the Maya, the Aztecs developed a very complex
calendar system based on astronomy, designed not only to
mark their holidays and short periods of time but also to track
the cycles of humankind through our progress on Earth. They
embraced what they referred to as the Legend of the Five
Suns, each of which represented periods in their own history.
During the life of each sun, the earth thrives in peace,
prosperity, and new life. But when a sun dies, the world
descends into catastrophic turmoil, with the gods renewing the
earth through the process of first destroying it.
The first sun was called the Sun of Precious Stones, and it
was destroyed by jaguars at the command of Tezcatlipoca, the
god of night and god of the north. Because he was believed to
carry a magic mirror that emitted smoke and killed his
enemies, Tezcatlipoca was also called “god of smoking
mirror.”
The second sun was known as the Sun of Darkness, upon
whose death life was destroyed by a massive hurricane that
was summoned by Quetzalcoatl, the creator and god of the
sky.
The third sun, the Sun of Fire, and all life it nourished, was
exterminated by fire sent by Tezcatlipoca.
The fourth sun was the Sun of Water, at whose death a huge
flood destroyed the world. This flood came from Tlaloc, the
god of rain and fertility, whom the Aztecs so feared that they
sometimes drowned their children as sacrifices to him.
According to the Aztec calendar, we’re now in the Sun of
Movement, presided over by Tonatiuh, the Sun God and the
Rising Eagle, who will ultimately cause earthquakes so
cataclysmic that they will split the world in half.
Native Americans
It’s been said of the true Native Americans for thousands of
years, and it’s still true today: ask them to tell you their story,
and they’ll tell you about nature and their reverent relationship
with Mother Earth.
The origin of Native Americans is a subject of debate, and
there’s no real consensus among experts about where they
came from. Theories range from a prehistoric migration from
Asia via the Bering Strait to an escape from the destruction of
the lost continent Atlantis. But there’s no question that in
1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived by mistake on San
Salvador Island, the natives who greeted him, with their brown
skin and black hair, convinced him that he’d successfully
completed his journey to India. He referred to them as
“Indios,” Spanish for Indians, and the cultural name was born.
The many tribes of the Native American nations each have
their own histories, languages, rituals, and prophecies. But
they all revolve around their spiritual connection to the earth
and their belief that the survival of our planet is dependent on
humankind’s learning to treat all things in nature with nothing
short of reverence.
THE HOPI PROPHECIES
There’s a wonderful story that’s been circulating since 1959,
and was told in part in a 1963 publication called Book of the
Hopi. The story goes that in 1958 a minister named David
Young was driving through the stifling heat of the desert when
he saw a Native American elder beside the road. The Reverend
Young stopped to offer the elder a ride, and the elder silently
accepted. The two rode along wordlessly for a few miles, until
the elder began to speak.
“I am White Feather,” he said, “a Hopi of the ancient Bear
Clan … I have followed the sacred paths of my people, who
inhabit the forests and many lakes in the east, the land of ice
and long nights in the north, and the places of holy altars of
stone built many years ago by my brothers’ fathers in the south
… I have heard the stories of the past, and the prophecies of
the future. Today, many of the prophecies have turned to
stories, and few are left. The past grows longer, and the future
grows shorter.”
The Reverend Young listened raptly as the extraordinary
man continued:
My people await Pahana, the lost White Brother [whose return
to Earth marks the beginning of the Fifth World, according to
Hopi legend], as do all our brothers in the land. He will not be
like the white men we know now, who are cruel and greedy. We
were told of their coming long ago. But still we await Pahana
…
The Fourth World shall end soon, and the Fifth World will
begin. This the elders everywhere know. The Signs over many
years have been fulfilled, and so few are left.
This is the First Sign: we are told of the coming of the
white-skinned men, like Pahana, but not living like Pahana
men who took the land that was not theirs. And men who
struck their enemies with thunder.
This is the Second Sign: our lands will see the coming of
spinning wheels filled with voices. In his youth, my father saw
this prophecy come true with his eyes—the white men bringing
their families in wagons across the prairies.
This is the Third Sign: a strange beast like a buffalo, but
with great long horns, will overrun the land in large numbers.
These White Feather saw with his eyes—the coming of the
white men’s cattle.
This is the Fourth Sign: the land will be crossed by snakes
of iron.
This is the Fifth Sign: the land shall be crisscrossed by a
giant spider’s web.
This is the Sixth Sign: the land shall be crisscrossed with
rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun.
This is the Seventh Sign: you will hear of the sea turning
black, and many living things dying because of it.
This is the Eighth Sign: you will hear of many youth, who
wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal
nations to learn their ways and wisdom.
This is the Ninth and Last Sign: you will hear of a dwelling
place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a
great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this,
the ceremonies of my people will cease.
These are the Signs that great destruction is coming. The
world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle against
other people in other lands—with those who possessed the first
light of wisdom. There will be many columns of smoke and fire
such as White Feather has seen the white man make in the
deserts not far from here. Only those which come will cause
disease and a great dying.
Many of my people, understanding the prophecies, shall be
safe. Those who stay and live in the places of my people also
shall be safe. Then there will much to rebuild. And soon—very
soon afterward—Pahana will return. He shall bring with him
the dawn of the Fifth World. He shall plant the seeds of his
wisdom in their hearts. Even now the seeds are being planted.
These shall smooth the way to the emergence into the Fifth
World.
The Reverend Young and White Feather the elder never saw
each other again after they parted ways that day, but the
extraordinary experience and the prophecies that emerged
from it have become a part of the modern Hopi legends. And
according to most interpreters, the signs White Feather
prophesized are imagery of the following:
The First Sign: “thunder” is a reference to guns.
The Second Sign: an obvious reference to the arrival of
settlers in covered wagons.
The Third Sign: “strange beast like a buffalo but with great
long horns” is a reference to the proliferation of longhorn
cattle in the newly settled Southwest and West.
The Fourth Sign: “snakes of iron” is a reference to railroad
tracks.
The Fifth Sign: “a giant spider’s web” is a reference to
power lines.
The Sixth Sign: “rivers of stone” are concrete highways,
and “pictures in the sun” are very likely the mirages created by
the hot sun beating down on the pavement.
The Seventh Sign: “the sea turning black” is a reference to
the destructive rash of oil spills.
The Eighth Sign: “youth who wear their hair long” and
“join the tribal nations to learn their ways and wisdom” is a
reference to the hippie movement of the late 1960s and early
1970s, and the hippies’ interest in both Native American and
Indians and their cultures.
The Ninth Sign: “a dwelling place … above the earth that
shall fall with a great crash” is a reference to the 1979 disaster
of the space station Skylab plummeting to Earth.
THE NAVAJO END OF DAYS
The wonderful Navajo writer Ray Baldwin Louis beautifully
described his people’s prophecies and beliefs in a short story
called “When All Things Come to an End.” It reads, in part:
The birds will all settle to the ground; the badger will grow
horns, the wind will blow without ceasing; the people will
intermarry with other tribes as well as within clans; there will
be voices, but they will be too weak for many to hear; the
enemy will penetrate the stronghold of The People, the
Navajo. And this will be when all things come to an end, when
all generations come to meet.
But first, four major events will occur; a mule will give birth
of its own kind; a baby with white hair and with teeth will be
born speaking; there will be a famine and many will suffer;
lightning will whip across the sky from the east to the west.
These things will be signs that all things are coming to an end
…
Old men and women who foresaw the future taught their
children to hold on to their traditions and not forsake their
religion, for the day was coming when they would lose it if
they were not careful …
I heard [the medicine man’s] prophecy that his medicine
bag will no longer have strength as in the past, there will be
no regard for it, and it will be thrown away. The People will be
lost without its presence, and they will have no power against
the enemy.
According to interpretations of ancient Navajo chants, the
“Time of the End” won’t bring the destruction of this planet.
Instead, when the Great Spirit returns to Earth, His arrival will
mean the dawn of a new day. He will breathe new life into the
spirit of the people; all people on Earth will “melt into one”
and love each other; humankind will no longer be threatened
or affected by the world’s afflictions and perils; and a joyful
new religion will spread throughout the planet that is devoid of
all the prejudices and arbitrary laws of the previously existing
religions that have been passed along through the ages.
THE LAKOTA
Humankind’s imperative need to begin cherishing our planet
in order to avoid its destruction is beautifully expressed in an
excerpt from a Lakota prophecy. It refers to the Star People,
whom many tribes believe to be their ancient extraterrestrial
ancestors, and to the Sacred Mother, their name for the earth:
The Star People that you call meteorites will come to this
earth in answer to the Mother’s call for help. You see, we are
all relations. So the Star People are beings, and they are the
planets, and the other bodies in the heavens as well.
The Sacred Mother is screaming for life and the meteorites
will hear her cries and answer her call for help. They will hit
the earth from the heavens with such force that many internal
things will happen as well as external. The earth will move as
a result of the impact. This will cause the sacred fire that is the
source of all life to the Mother to move through her body.
The rains will change their fall and the winds will alter their
course and what has existed for three hundred years will no
longer exist. And where there is summer, there will be fall. And
where there is fall, there will be winter. And where there is
winter, there will be spring.
The animals and plants will become confused. There will be
great plagues that you do not understand. Many of these
plagues are born from your scientists whose intentions have
gone awry. Your scientists have let these monsters loose upon
the land. These plagues will spread through your waters and
through your blood and through your food because you have
disrupted the natural chain through which your Mother
cleanses herself.
Only those who have learned to live on the land will find
sanctuary. Go to where the eagles fly, to where the wolf roams,
to where the bear lives. Here you will find life because they
will always go to where the water is pure and the air can be
breathed. Live where the trees, the lungs of this earth, purify
the air. There is a time coming, beyond the weather. The veil
between the physical and the spiritual world is thinning.
THE LOWER BRULE SIOUX TRIBE
Brave Buffalo of the Brule Sioux offers an eloquent prophecy
about the sanctity of nature and how we’re endangering
ourselves by compromising it, and about the eternal cycle of
life in this universe:
It is time for the Great Purification. We are at a point of no
return. The two-legged are about to bring destruction to life on
earth. It’s happened before, and it’s about to happen again.
The Sacred Hoop shows how all things go in a circle. The old
becomes new; the new becomes old. Everything repeats. White
people have no culture. Culture is having roots in the earth.
People without culture don’t exist very long because Nature is
God. Without a connection to Nature, the people drift, grow
negative, destroy themselves.
In the beginning we had one mind, and it was positive, a
thing of beauty, seeing beauty everywhere.
THE CHEROKEE PROPHECIES
The Cherokee are an intensely spiritual civilization who
believe that each morning humankind should give thanks to
the Creator, to Mother Earth, to Father Sky, to all their
relatives and to the four sacred directions: the East, guardian
of the nourishment and healing that grows from the earth; the
South, guardian of the wind, sky, and air; the West, guardian
of the life-giving element of water; and the North, guardian of
fire. To the Cherokee, all things are connected, all things have
a purpose, and all things contain the divine spark of life. They
believe that when we die, our souls may be selected to keep
living as ghosts in the earthly dimension, who can be seen
when needed. There is no death, in other words, just an eternal
cycle bestowed by our Creator, the Great Spirit.
The Cherokee deeply treasure the prophecies of their elders,
passed along from one generation to the next in their rich oral
tradition by the revered tribal elders. Among those prophecies:
• A black ribbon would be built across the land, and a bug
would begin to move across the ribbon—a sign that
very soon the earth would shake so violently that the
bug would be thrown into the air and begin to fly. (The
black ribbon is thought to be the first roadways, and
the bug moving across it is thought to be the first
automobile, mass-produced for the first time in 1908.
Soon after, the violent shaking of the earth, the First
World War, “threw the bug into the air,” i.e., initiated
the widespread usage of the airplane.)
• A cobweb would be built across the world through
which people would talk. (A few hundred years after
this prophecy, telephone lines reached into virtually
every corner of the globe.)
• A sign of life in the east would turn on its side and be
surrounded by death, and one day the sun would rise in
the west, bringing a second violent shaking of the earth
even worse than the first. (The cross, a sign of life, was
turned on its side to form the Nazi swastika, the
symbol of the Japanese empire was the rising sun, and
the earth’s “violent shaking” in the Second World War
was indeed even worse than the first.)
• Gourds of ashes would fall from the sky, creating more
ash from all living things in their path and preventing
new growth for years to come. (The atom bomb fit that
description perfectly. )
• The eagle would someday fly in the night and land on
the moon. (In 1969 the safe arrival on the moon of the
Apollo 11 spacecraft was announced by astronaut Neil
Armstrong to the NASA control room with the simple
words, “The eagle has landed.”)
• A house would be built in the east that would welcome
all the peoples of the earth, and it would sparkle like
the sun reflecting off the desert mica. (The United
Nations, founded in 1945, moved its original
headquarters from San Francisco to a shimmering
golden glass monolith in New York City in 1952.)
• If we miss our opportunities after the first two shakings
of the earth to come together as a human family of
brothers and sisters—as we have—the earth will be
shaken for a third time, more violently than ever
before.
At the core of the Cherokee prophecies, though, is the belief
that their souls come from the stars in the form of Starseeds to
be born into the human race and bring light and knowledge,
and that those same souls return to the heavens to become stars
when they die. In fact, some Cherokee elders teach that all
their ancestors were travelers from the legendary star cluster
Pleiades, a cluster of stars that form the “eye” of the “bull”
formed by the Taurus constellation.
The six stars of the Pleiades that are visible to the naked eye
are said to be lost boys who, according to Cherokee myth,
were severely punished by their mothers for returning home
from playing later than their curfew allowed. The seven boys,
deciding their angry mothers must no longer love or want
them, ran away from home again, returning to the hills outside
the village where they always played. They began to dance in
a circle, for hours on end, chanting, “Spirits of our people, take
us into the sky so blue. Our mothers no longer want us, and we
wish to be with you.”
Back in the village, the boys’ mothers discovered their sons
were missing and quickly headed to the hills to retrieve them.
They arrived to see the boys dancing and chanting, and
suddenly one of the mothers cried out, “Look! They’re leaving
the ground! If we don’t hurry they’ll be gone forever!”
The boys were dancing above their mothers’ heads by the
time their frantic mothers reached them. Each mother jumped
in panic, trying to grab and hold onto her son, but only one
was successful, barely getting a grip on her boy’s foot. She
pulled him to the ground so hard that a hole formed where he
landed and the earth closed around him. She fell to her knees
beside him, weeping, and then looked up to see that the other
six boys were dancing into the clouds and disappearing into
the sky.
Legend says that every day for the rest of their lives the
seven mothers, who never smiled or laughed again or knew
another moment of joy, returned to the spot where they lost
their sons. Six mothers looked to the heavens for their sons,
while the seventh knelt to the ground, soaking the earth with
her tears.
And then one day six mothers saw that stars had formed in
the sky exactly where their sons had vanished. Those stars,
they say, are the Pleiades. The seventh mother looked to the
spot where the earth had swallowed up her son and gaped at
the tiny pine tree than had begun to grow.
To this day the Cherokee consider the pine to be one of their
most sacred trees, and it is their custom to look to the Pleiades
to pray.
The Pleiades star system is also prominent in one of the
most treasured and famous Cherokee prophecies, the Prophecy
of the Rattlesnake, a sign in the heavens that is evolving
toward the end of the Cherokee calendar in the year 2012.
Needless to say, it’s no coincidence that the Cherokee and
Mayan calendars end in the same year. It’s simply the result of
the northern migration of the Mayans and the Aztecs from
Central and South America to settle in the United States. But
the heart of the Prophecy of the Rattlesnake is rooted in the
wisdom and teachings of the ancient Cherokee elders.
Just as all cultures interpret the stars and their movement
into zodiac systems and prophecies, the Cherokee see a zodiac
of their own, ancient and cherished, the story of eternity, or
Time Untime, written across the face of the universe. The
universe itself is made of crystal, and four rawhide ropes hang
from it to suspend the great island known as Earth. While the
outline of the heavens retains its shape in the sky, there is
movement within the Cherokee zodiac that makes it seem
alive, breathing and transforming itself to foretell the fate of
Earth against the backdrop of the eternal cycle of life.
There are thirteen constellations in the Cherokee zodiac,
most of them designs of animals. And prominent among them
is the Constellation Rattlesnake, in which a prophecy is
written. The Rattlesnake has a head, and the tip of its tail is the
revered Pleiades system. Between the head and the tail is a
body that twists and slithers in a kind of sidewinding
movement. There are fifty-two scales on its mouth, the number
fifty-two being an essential part of the very sophisticated
Cherokee calendar. The outline of the Rattlesnake remains
stationary, but various forms and shapes that appear and
disappear on the snake itself are read as signs of the past,
present, and future of the universe.
From July 16 to 22, 1994, astronomers around the world
were mesmerized as more than twenty fragments of a comet
called Shoe-maker-Levy 9 collided with the planet Jupiter’s
southern hemisphere, a phenomenon predicted in the Cherokee
calendar. In their mythology, these comet fragments were
actually an attack on Jupiter by the fingers of a fearsome,
bloodthirsty witch named Spearfinger. Spearfinger was forty
feet tall, had skin made of stone that no weapon could
penetrate, and brandished a long, razor-sharp finger with
which she could stab her victims in the back, remove their
livers without leaving a single mark, and eat them in one gulp.
Whether it was a fragmented comet crashing into Jupiter or a
cruel assault by Spearfinger, this spectacle was considered to
be a sign for the Cherokee nation to wake up from its
complacency and become vigilant.
This collision with Jupiter was also prophesied to wake
Orion, the celestial hunter, who would resume his pursuit of
the maidens of the Pleiades, while Jupiter and Venus would do
battle against each other, signalling the time of the Cherokee
UKU’s, or high priests. In the years 2004 through 2012, a
phenomenon is foreseen in the heavens in which feathers will
appear on the head of the Rattlesnake. Its glowing eyes will
open. It will grow wings, hands, and arms, and its hands will
hold a bowl of blood. The seven rattles of its tail will resemble
the roots of a tree, “the Pleaides Tree of the Beginning.” This
will correspond to the transit of Venus, a very rare alignment
of Earth, Venus, and the sun in which it appears from Earth as
if Venus is crossing the face of the sun. A Venus transit
occurred on June 8, 2004, and astronomers predict it will
happen again on June 5-6, 2012.
And it’s in the year 2012 that the Cherokee calendar, like
the Mayan calendar, comes to an end.
To some ancient Indian civilizations of South America, “the
end” marks the coming of Quetzalcoatl, the God of Creation,
often depicted as a feathered Serpent much like the feathered
Rattlesnake the Cherokee watch for in the night sky as a sign
that the end is near.
To the Cherokee, “the end” in the year 2012 signifies that
all will be reborn.
THE SIOUX NATION AND THE WHITE
BUFFALO WOMAN
To the Sioux, there is no more sacred living thing than a white
buffalo. On the rare occasions when a white buffalo calf is
born—most recently in 1994, 1996, and 2005—Native
Americans from throughout the North American continent
make pilgrimages to pay homage to what they consider to be a
newborn sign of hope and healing and fulfilled prophecies.
“For us,” they’ve said, “this would be something like coming
to see Jesus lying in the manger.”
The legend of the White Buffalo Woman is a beautiful and
significant cornerstone of the Sioux heritage itself. Crow Dog,
a Sioux medicine man, described her importance by saying,
“Before she came, people didn’t know how to live. They knew
nothing. The Buffalo Woman put her sacred mind into their
minds.”
The story has passed from one Sioux generation to the next
through their elders and medicine men for countless hundreds
of years, expressing the deeply spiritual nature of a
traditionally warrior tribe and their prophecies for the earth
and all its people.
Legend has it that one summer, longer ago than anyone can
trace, the sacred council of the Sioux nation, called the OcetiShakowin, gathered to camp together out of concern for their
people. Despite a steady bright sun, there was no game for the
braves to hunt, and people throughout the land were starving.
Each day the council sent out scouts to search for game
animals, but none could be found.
Among the assembled council was Chief Standing Hollow
Horn, in his own camp circle with his tribe, the Without Bows,
or Itazipcho. One morning as dawn broke Standing Hollow
Horn dispatched two of his young braves to hunt. The Sioux
had no horses, so the two braves proceeded on foot, and after
finding nothing in the surrounding area, they decided to climb
a high hill nearby for a better view of the vast countryside.
As they scaled the green hill they noticed a figure moving
toward them from very far away. Because it seemed to be
floating rather than walking, they were sure a holy person was
approaching them. The closer it came the more clearly they
could see that the small form was a radiantly beautiful woman.
Her dark eyes seemed electrified with power. Her long black
hair cascaded freely down her back, with the exception of a
single strand tied gracefully back with buffalo fur. Circles of
red were painted onto her cheekbones, dramatically
contrasting with her transluscent brown skin. Her gleaming
white buckskin clothing was embroidered with sacred designs
in colors that were unearthly in their intensity. She carried a
large bundle in her hands.
The two braves stared at her, transfixed. Then one of them,
overwhelmed by her beauty and wanting to possess her,
reached to touch her. But she was far too sacred to tolerate
being an object of earthly desire, and the young impulsive man
was suddenly consumed by a black fiery cloud and reduced to
nothing but a pile of incinerated bones.
The other scout remained silent, in pure respectful awe, as
the White Buffalo Woman turned her dark eyes to him and
said, “I bring your people a message from the Buffalo Nation,
along with sacred gifts for this difficult time. Return to your
camp and help prepare for my arrival. Your chief should
construct a medicine lodge, supported by twenty-four poles,
and make it holy to receive me.”
The young brave hurried back to Chief Standing Hollow
Horn and the others at the camp circle, breathlessly repeating
the instructions of the White Buffalo Woman. Excited, they
built the medicine lodge with twenty-four poles for support,
performed rituals to sanctify it, and then waited eagerly for the
most reverent arrival.
Four days later they saw the sun glinting off of the radiant
white dress of a small approaching form, and before long they
found themselves in the divine presence of the White Buffalo
Woman. They respectfully bowed their heads as Chief
Standing Hollow Horn stepped forward to greet her, his voice
hushed with awe. “Sister, ” he said, “we are honored that you
have come to help us.”
She motioned for them to follow her into the medicine
lodge and taught them to build a sacred altar of earth in the
center of the circle of twenty-four poles. At her direction they
smoothed the red earth of the altar, in which she traced a holy
emblem. She then stood before the chief and opened the
bundle she’d brought with her. She reached into it and
withdrew a sacred pipe, called a chanunpa, which she held out
to the gathered crowd. Its stem was in her right hand. Its bowl
was in her left. The chanunpa has been held in that exact way
by the Sioux people since that day.
The White Buffalo Woman filled the bowl of the pipe with
tobacco made of bark and walked around the medicine lodge
four times, representing the sacred circle that does not end,
like the path of the great sun. Next she lit the pipe with a dry
buffalo chip she ignited from the altar fire, creating the flame
that does not end, known as petaowihankeshini, which would
forever be passed on from one Sioux generation to the next.
Again she held the pipe toward the gathered crowd. “This
holy pipe,” she told them, “holds all of us together, the Sacred
Beneath and the Sacred Above. As your feet stand planted in
the earth and the stem of the pipe reaches toward the sky, you
become a living prayer, a bridge that joins the earth, the sky
and all living things, with two legs and four, with wings and
with no limbs at all, as well as the trees, the wildflowers and
the grasses that bend in the moving spirit of the wind. All are
related. All are one family, joined together in the form of this
pipe. The stone of its bowl is both the buffalo and the flesh
and blood of the red man. The buffalo stands on four legs,
honoring the four directions of the universe and the four ages
of man. He was created in the west to hold back the waters
when the Great Spirit made the world. Each year he loses a
hair. In each of the four ages he loses a leg. The Sacred Circle
will be done when the hair and legs of the buffalo are gone and
he can no longer stop the waters from covering the earth.”
She then presented the pipe to Chief Standing Hollow Horn
and said, “Respect this sacred pipe and it will see you safely to
the end of the road. I shall come back to see you once in every
generation.”
With that she left the camp in the same direction from
which she had come. The chief and his people watched in
reverence as she floated toward the setting sun. Suddenly,
some distance away, they saw her stop and roll over, turning
into a black buffalo. She rolled over a second time and became
a brown buffalo. Rolling over again, she changed to a red
buffalo. The fourth time, she rolled over and was transformed
into a beautiful white buffalo calf before she disappeared
beyond the horizon.
The moment she had vanished, great herds of buffalo
miraculously appeared, sacrificing themselves to the Sioux
hunters so that the people would be nourished and survive.
From that day forward, the buffalo, beloved kin of the Sioux
nation, provided all that was needed, from the meat to feed
them to the skins to clothe and house them to the bones from
which tools could be made.
Many Native American tribes embrace and revere a list of
Sacred Instructions given to them by the Great Spirit at the
time of Creation. It’s their belief that following these
instructions can perpetuate the Sacred Hoop, the Creator’s
intended cycle of life, that will end only if we allow it. This
list is so eloquently simple that I can’t help but think—shame
on any of us who can’t be bothered to follow these
instructions, no matter what our culture or religion, because
they’re so little to ask in exchange for the possibility of saving
our Earth:
• Take care of Mother Earth and the other colors of man.
• Respect Mother Earth and creation.
• Honor all life, and support that honor.
• Be grateful from the heart for all life. It is through life
that there is survival. Thank the Creator at all times for
all life.
• Love, and express that love.
• Be humble. Humility is the gift of wisdom and
understanding.
• Be kind with one’s self and with others.
• Share feelings and personal concerns and commitments.
• Be honest with one’s self and with others.
• Be responsible for these sacred instructions and share
them with other nations.
The Aborigines
The Aborigines of Australia are believed to have been on this
earth for more than eighteen thousand generations. They’ve
been nomadic hunters and gatherers since their ancient
beginnings, traveling and living in clans, orally passing along
their culture, traditions, and beliefs to their progeny. The
Aborigines revere nature. They revere their elders and their
ancestors. They’re deeply committed to maintaining a balance
between the practical and the spiritual aspects of their lives.
And they embrace a gorgeous mythology called the
“Dreamtime,” which lies at the heart of their faith.
The Dreamtime, woven through their lives in the most
sacred and the most mundane ways, is at its core that time of
creation when the Aborigines’ spirit ancestors moved through
bare, unsanctified land and gave it its physical form and its
sacred laws.
There was the Rainbow Serpent, who slithered across the
earth forming rivers and valleys with its massive body.
There was Bila, the Sun Woman, whose fire lit the world.
There were Kudna and Muda, two lizardlike creatures who
destroyed Bila. They were then so frightened by the darkness
they’d created by killing the Sun Woman that they began
hurling boomerangs into the sky in all directions, trying to
bring back the light. Kudna’s boomerang flew into the eastern
sky and a brilliant ball of fire appeared. The ball of fire slowly
crossed the sky and vanished again beyond the western
horizon, and day and night were born.
The countless spirits and stories of the Aborigines’
mythology form the exquisite foundation on which this ancient
civilization built its reverence for all of nature and their belief
that it is humankind’s privilege to live among and serve such
hallowed creations.
Dreamtime is a reality of the Aborigines’ past, present, and
future. It isn’t something that happened and was completed a
very long time ago. It’s a continuing consciousness and
responsibility, with tragic consequences if it’s ignored.
A prophecy from an Australian Aborigine tribal elder
named Guboo Ted Thomas, orally preserved until it was
finally committed to writing, reflects their profoundly simple
faith and their vision of the end of days.
I was in Dreamtime.
I see this great wave going.
I tell people about this wave.
It wasn’t a tidal wave.
This was a spiritual wave.
So, to me, I believe that the Dreamtime is going to be
that.
I believe the revival is going to start in Australia when
we’re Dreaming.
It’s the hummingbee that I’m talking about.
And love.
We’ve got to learn to love one another.
You see, that’s really what’s going to happen to the earth.
We’re going to have tidal waves.
We’re going to have earthquakes.
That’s coming because we don’t consider this land as our
Mother.
We’ve taken away the balance, and we’re not putting
back.
I look at the bush, and those trees are alive.
They’re not dead, they’re alive.
And they want you to cuddle them.
Norse Mythology
There are few more colorful and more intricate doomsday
visions than the Norse mythology of the end of the universe,
or Ragnarok, which means “doom of the gods.” Norse
mythology had its origins in the pre-Christian northern
Germanic, European, and Anglo-Saxon beliefs of Scandinavia.
And when it came to Ragnarok, the “doom” in “doomsday”
was an understatement.
First, the legend goes, Fimbulvetr arrives—a three-year
nonstop blast of the most brutal winter imaginable. During
Fimbulvetr, probably because of their relentless misery, people
begin feuding and fighting with each other and abandoning
any semblance of morality. It’s the first sign that the end is on
its way.
Next, a wolf arrives. The wolf’s name is Skoll, and upon his
arrival he devours the sun. His brother Hati promptly eats the
moon, and the whole world is plunged into darkness.
Three cocks crow, summoning the gods and the earth’s
giants and even waking the dead.
The earth begins rumbling with massive earthquakes,
toppling mountains and freeing a ship of the dead from the
bowels of hell, with Loki at its helm, his son Fenrir, another
wolf with a massive mouth, at his side.
The sea roils violently and Jormungand, a colossal,
venomous serpent, writhes enraged as he heads toward the
Norwegian battle-ground called Vigrid, where the final war on
Earth will be fought by the gathering combatants. Jormungand
poisons the sea, the land, and the sky with his venom and he
makes his way to Vigrid.
The tsunami waves of the sea liberate the ship Naglfar from
its moorings, and, commanded by the giant Hymir, the vessel
full of giants sails toward the battlefield.
From the south comes another army of giants, led by Surt
the fire giant, who carries a sword hotter than the sun that
scorches everything in his path as he and his legions march to
Vigrid.
Heimdall, the Viking god of light, sees the warriors
approaching from all directions and sounds his horn to
summon the gods. Odin, the supreme Norse deity; Thor, the
god of thunder; Odin’s sons; and the other heroic gods of the
heavens arrive on the battlefield in golden armor, riding
magnificent white steeds.
The assembly continues until all the gods, giants, and
demons have arrived for mortal combat on the massive,
doomed Norwegian expanse.
Odin and Fenrir instantly attack each other, a fight that
continues for a very long time.
Thor attacks Jormungand, the venomous serpent, and kills
him. But the serpent’s poison slowly and very surely kills
Thor.
Surt the fire giant finds the unarmed god of sun and rain,
Freyr, and quickly destroys him.
Tyr, the one-handed god of heroic glory, does battle with the
monstrous hound Garm, who guards the entrance to the
underworld. They both die in combat.
Loki and Heimdall, mortal enemies for as long as anyone
can remember, square off, and neither survives.
Finally the battle between Odin and Fenrir ends, with the
vicious wolf managing to seize and swallow Odin.
Enraged, Odin’s son Vidar kills Fenrir with his bare hands.
Surt, in a final insane explosion of violence, begins hurling
fire all around him until the entire world is burning and anyone
still living dies in the flames.
And all the land on Earth sinks into the sea.
But that’s not quite the end.
There’s a very special tree in heaven, the World Tree, or
Yggdrasil. This tree possesses the essence of every living
thing that ever was and ever will be on Earth. And while the
world was being destroyed, two people—Lif and Lifthrasir—
managed to survive by hiding in the welcoming branches of
Yggdrasil. A few of the gods survive as well, including Odin’s
brother and sons and Thor’s sons.
So that when a beautiful, cleansed new world rises from the
sea, and the sun and moon are reborn, Lif, Lifthrasir, and the
surviving gods are there to welcome it and happily take up
residence there. This new world, devoid of evil and thriving in
peaceful harmony, is gradually repopulated with Lif and
Lifthrasir’s descendants.
As for the inhabitants of the previous world, who either died
in Surt’s fire or drowned as countries and continents sank,
their souls never ceased to exist. They might be living among
the gods in Grimli, or in the splendor of Brimir, if they were
good people during their lifetimes. If they weren’t, they’ll be
exiled to Nastrond, a hideous nightmare of a dungeon, the
walls and roofs of which are made entirely of live, very
poisonous snakes.
I have to admit, I chuckled more than once about the
preposterous series of events the Norse came up with to
describe the end of the world. Then I remembered what I was
taught about the Apocalypse in Catholic school and wondered
if the Norse might have chuckled a little themselves at stories
about locusts wearing crowns, pouring out of a bottomless pit
to torture anyone who didn’t have the sign of God on their
forehead. Suddenly I didn’t feel I had as much room to laugh
about giant tsunami-causing snakes, and wolves that could eat
the sun, and I realized we humans always have been and
always will be just trying to piece together the unknowable as
best we can.
CHAPTER THREE
Christians, Jews, and Catholics on the End of Days
World religions are among my passions. I studied them in
college, and I’ve studied them ever since. I’m sure the seeds of
this passion were planted during my childhood, when the
family influences of Christianity, Judaism, and Catholicism
blended to create my open-minded, loving curiosity about the
variety of ways in which humankind defines, reaches out to,
and worships our Creator. The differences between these three
beautiful faiths are every bit as fascinating as the similarities,
from their traditions to their interpretations of historic events
to their beliefs about how, or if, life on Earth will end.
Christianity
The word eschatology is defined in the Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary as “a branch of theology concerned with
the final events in the history of the world or of humankind; a
belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate
destiny of humankind; specifically, any of various Christian
doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of
the dead, or the Last Judgment. ” And several aspects of
Christian eschatology are still being debated by theologians
around the world, millennia after the Bible was written.
Both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible
are filled with prophecies about the end of days, so it might
seem logical that such a wealth of information would lead to
clarity. But a lot of the Bible’s apocalyptic verses and passages
were deliberately disguised in imagery and symbolism because
the atmosphere in which they were written wasn’t exactly
welcoming to “seers and soothsayers. ” There might also have
been some reluctance to be specific about the date and time of
the end of days because of Jesus’s words in Matthew 24:36:
But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of
heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
So there are almost as many interpretations of the apocalyptic
passages in the Bible as there are scholars who’ve studied
them.
For one of a hundred examples, it’s very common these
days to read and hear “experts” warning that, because of the
current wars, the frequency of natural disasters, and the
general (perceived) decline of morality and religion, the end of
days is obviously right around the corner. What else could all
these “unmistakable signs” possibly mean?
Saint Cyprian of Carthage felt exactly the same way, and
wrote about it, in approximately AD 250. Before him, in the
first century AD, Christians were sure the end of the world
would occur during their lifetime because the world had
become so self-destructive. It’s probably safe to say that at
least a few “experts” in every generation since before Christ
have managed to find and interpret enough unmistakable signs
of the impending end of days to attract an audience.
I should mention, I guess, that I’ve not just read, I’ve
studied all twenty-six versions of the Bible. Based on those
studies, I’ve put together a very simplistic list of what I’ll call
the “highlights” (for lack of a better term) of the biblical endof-days prophecies:
• All good Christians who’ve devoted their lives to the
Lord will be risen from the earth to be embraced in the
sky and saved for eternity by Jesus. This joyful reunion
with Christ among the clouds is called the Rapture.
• A powerful Antichrist will sign a seven-year covenant
of peace with Israel. This covenant launches God’s
punishment for all the evil on Earth, and the world is
afflicted with wars, plagues, natural disasters, and
other forms of great suffering. This period of terrible
chaos is called the Tribulation.
• The Antichrist, in total disregard of his own peace
treaty, gathers his militia and attacks Israel. He has an
image of himself sculpted in the temple and demands
that it be worshipped in his honor.
• The seven-year Tribulation ends with an attack on
Jerusalem by the Antichrist and his armies. In what the
Bible refers to as the battle of Armageddon, Jesus now
returns and destroys the Antichrist along with all his
soldiers and all his followers.
• Ultimately, the Antichrist is defeated forever, and Christ
makes way for the New Jerusalem and a world where
there is no more evil, no more suffering, and no more
death.
One of countless debates about that sequence of events, by
the way, is whether the Rapture takes place before, during, or
after the Tribulation. Please don’t interpret my list of
highlights as an effort to weigh in on that debate. In fact, in my
opinion, I think the biblical references to the Rapture were
meant to be taken symbolically, not literally. For example:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of
command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the
trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we
who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall
always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
Again, beautiful imagery, but as long as the outcome is the
same—that “we shall always be with the Lord”—I don’t know
that any of us will be disappointed if our trip Home doesn’t
actually involve being caught up in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air.
The biblical book of Revelation is most often associated
with the prophesied end of days. It’s filled with similar
imagery, much of which has become legendary but not clearly
understood, and none of which, I’m convinced, is meant to be
taken literally. A perfect example is the mythical Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
According to the sixth chapter of Revelation, at the end of
days, God will exact a series of judgments on humankind,
each series more devastating than the one before it. The first
series is the “seven seals,” and the first four of those seven
seals are the horsemen.
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals …
And I saw, and behold, a white horse: and its rider had a bow;
and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering
and to conquer …
When he opened the second seal … out came another horse,
bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the
earth, so that men should slay one another; and he was given
a great sword …
When he opened the third seal … I saw, and behold, a black
horse, and its rider had a balance in his hands; and I heard
what seemed to be a voice … saying, “A quart of wheat for a
denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not
harm oil and wine!”
When he opened the fourth seal … I saw, and behold, a pale
horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed
him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to
kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the
wild beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:1-8)
The most common translation: the first of the four
horsemen, the white horse, brings the Antichrist. The second
incites devastating warfare. The third inflicts famine. And the
fourth kills with more warfare and famine, plagues, and
vicious animal attacks. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
all part of the prelude to the end of days, more dramatic
imagery but clearly not intended to be read literally.
The fifth of the seven seals, I should add, is the martyred
souls of Jesus’s followers; the sixth seal unleashes a massive,
devastating earthquake; and the seventh seal contains the
seven trumpets, which cause:
• fire and hail that destroys plant life
• “something like a great mountain, burning with fire”
(Revelation 8:8) crashing into the sea, destroying
marine life and ships at sail
• similar destruction of the earth’s lakes and rivers
• the darkening of the sun and the moon
• a plague of “demonic locusts”
• an equally demonic army
• the arrival of seven angels holding the seven bowls
containing the wrath of God
Again, this series of punishments from God leading to the
end of days is progressive. So the seven bowls of the seven
angels are the most dire of all:
Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven
angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the
wrath of God.”
So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth,
and foul and evil sores came upon the men who bore the mark
of the beast [Antichrist] and worshiped its image.
The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it
became like the blood of a dead man, and every living thing
died that was in the sea.
The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the
fountains of water, and they became blood.
The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was
allowed to scorch men with fire. Men were scorched by the
fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power
of these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.
The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast,
and its kingdom was in darkness …
The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river
Euphrates, and its water was dried up …
The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a great
voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is
done!” And there were flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals
of thunder, and a great earthquake such as had never been
since men were on the earth. (Revelation 16:1-17)
Again, in the end, following this terrifying series of events
(the Tribulation), and the battle of Armageddon that is the
ultimate, bloody war of good versus evil, and Satan being
bound and sealed in the bottomless pit for a thousand years,
there is, according to Revelation 21:1, “a new heaven and a
new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed
away, and the sea was no more.”
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE BOOK OF
REVELATION
Whatever your beliefs about the end of days, I hope that if
they’re primarily based on the biblical book of Revelation,
you’ll keep those potentially disturbing pages in accurate
historical context.
There’s not even unanimous agreement among scholars and
theologians about the actual author of the book of Revelation.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume it was written by the
apostle John, who’s most often given credit for it.
John was born in Galilee around AD 10 to 15, the son of
Zebedee and Salome. He and his brother, James, were
pursuing their father’s trade as fishermen when they became
disciples of Jesus. It was John who stayed with Jesus in the
Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of the Crucifixion, John
who stayed with the dying Christ when all the other disciples
had left, and John to whom Jesus entrusted the care of his
mother Mary after Jesus died.
It was also John who, along with the apostle Peter, was
convicted of “activities subversive to the authority of the
land”—specifically, the Roman emperor Nero and his
successor Domitian, who declared themselves “lord and god”
and persecuted anyone who refused to comply with that
declaration. Nero, in fact, was responsible for the first
documented case of governmentally supervised persecution of
Christians. John was sentenced to a four-year banishment to
Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea. It was in a cave in the
Patmos prison that John is said to have written the book of
Revelation.
So there was John, locked away in what was undoubtedly a
torturous dungeon. He was in the later years of his life. His
brother James and his friend Peter, both fellow disciples of
Christ, had been martyred. His existence must have been
bleak, cruel, and desolate from one day to the next. Assuming
he really did author the book of Revelation, how surprising
can it be that much of its imagery is every bit as bleak, cruel,
and desolate?
It’s worth adding that John’s temper was a widely known
facet of his generally passionate personality, and he was
enraged about the politics of the day. He’d seen a transition
from a tolerant atmosphere toward the fledgling religion of
Christianity to such violent intolerance that Christians who
refused to disavow their faith were routinely executed,
crucified, or fed to the lions for sport. So why would a man
imprisoned for heresy against a political regime that demanded
to be worshipped write a book meant to be taken literally,
exalting the ultimate power of God, that could only make his
life even more of a nightmare?
One of the analyses of Revelation I have the least patience
with is the exercise of reducing its symbolism to a word game.
For example, Revelation 13:2 reads, “And the beast I saw was
like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s and its mouth was like
a lion’s mouth.” I’ve heard more than one theologian point out
the “obvious” reference to Russia because of the phrase “its
feet were like a bear’s.” Now, admittedly, Revelation wasn’t
added to the Bible until three hundred years after the fact, but
even then I doubt that anyone was starting the preliminary
plans for a country called Russia, let alone deciding that its
symbol would be a bear. Why John would be making even a
subtle reference to Russia for the benefit of readers in the first
century AD I can’t begin to imagine.
Let’s also remember that none of the original manuscripts of
the New Testament, including Revelation, still exist. And no
written manuscript of Revelation from the first century still
exists. Much of what we know of the New Testament comes
from Greek manuscripts dating from the second to the eighth
centuries, translated again and again, including writings from
early theologians recording from memory what they’d read or
been told about the actual text of the New Testament.
Revelation is one of several books that exists only in
fragments, heavily edited passages, and translations of
translations. I’m not sure how taking it literally is even a
consideration without John’s original manuscript to work with
—again, assuming John is its author to begin with.
As you read or reread the book of Revelation, I hope you’ll
keep all of that in mind, and consider a couple of other
theories as well:
Many biblical scholars consider it to be a fiery political
essay— understandable considering John’s circumstances and
his temperament.
Others theorize that it was a series of tortured dreams
committed to paper.
“The beast” referred to so often throughout the book of
Revelation, and associated with the number 666 that has come
to symbolize evil, is commonly thought to be Nero, whose
name, in the Hebrew form of numerology called gematria,
translated to the number 666.
The wonderful prophet and clairvoyant Edgar Cayce
interpreted Revelation to have nothing to do with outward
battles but instead to be an expression of the spiritual struggle
between good and evil that every one of us experiences.
In the end, I think the greatest danger in examining
Revelation too literally is the likelihood of missing its ultimate
message: that no matter how vicious and powerful the “beast”
or how deadly the battle, in the end the victory, glory, and joy
belong to God.
And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the
dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they
shall be His people, and God himself will be with them; he will
wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain and
more, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation
21:3-4)
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE BOOK OF
DANIEL
The book of Daniel is often referred to as the Old Testament
version of Revelation because of its apocalyptic prophecies.
And, like Revelation, it’s surrounded by its share of
controversy.
The young Daniel was captured by the Babylonian army
during its attack on Jerusalem in 605 BC. He spent the rest of
his life in Babylon, serving the royal court—primarily King
Nebuchadnezzar— throughout the seventy-two-year duration
of the Babylonian empire as a seer, prophet, and dream
interpreter.
Jesus spoke of Daniel to his disciples on the Mount of
Olives, written of in Matthew 24:15-16:
So when you see the abomination of desolation of which the
prophet Daniel spoke, standing in the holy place (let the
reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the
mountains.
The “abomination of desolation” to which Jesus referred
two hundred years after it occurred was a specific reference to
the Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes who, in 167 BC, erected
an altar to Zeus, the supreme ruler of the Greek gods, in the
Jewish temple in Jerusalem, then sacrificed a pig on the altar
in Zeus’s honor. Daniel 9:27 refers to that same event:
And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week;
and for half of the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering
to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one
who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the
desolator.
The general concensus among theologians is that the
“desolator” who will perform the abomination of turning a
sacred temple of God into a place of worship for himself will
be revealed as the Antichrist. The “covenant of one week” will
actually be a seven-year peace treaty with Israel, which the
Antichrist will break before it ends with his own form of the
abomination of desolation in a Jerusalem temple. It’s no
coincidence that that same broken seven-year covenant of
peace by the Antichrist is referred to in the book of Revelation
as one of the signs that the Second Coming of Christ is at hand
and the end of days is imminent.
In fact, there are many similarities between the imagery of
the Old Testament book of Daniel and the New Testament
book of Revelation, all of them referring to the same sequence
of apocalyptic events or, as Daniel put it, the “end of history”:
the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of humankind
according to the deeds they accomplished on Earth, and the
embrace into heaven or the banishment to hell of humankind
based on that judgment.
You’ll read in the chapter on prophets that Sir Isaac
Newton, brilliant mathematician and student of the Bible,
calculated a year for the end of days based on the information
alluded to in Daniel 12:6-13:
And I said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the
waters of the stream, “How long shall it be ’til the end of these
wonders?” The man … raised his right hand and his left hand
toward heaven; and I heard him swear by him who lives
forever that it would be for a time, two times, and half a time;
and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people
comes to an end all these things would be accomplished …
And from the time that the continual burnt offering is taken
away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there
shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he
who waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and
thirty-five days. But go your way ’til the end; and you shall
rest, and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of days.
There are those who believe that the book of Daniel was
written in the sixth century by Daniel himself. Others argue
that it was actually written many centuries later, by an
anonymous author or series of authors, and attributed to
Daniel to lend credibility to the work. The skeptics raise such
issues as:
• The text of the book of Daniel contains several Greek
words. The Greek occupation of Israel occurred in the
fourth century BC, while the book of Daniel is
generally thought to have been written in the sixth
century AD.
• The last chapter of Daniel states that after the final
judgment, humankind will ascend to heaven or descend
into hell. But at the time of Daniel’s life and writings,
the Jewish belief was that all the dead went directly to
Sheol. In Hebrew, Sheol is a grave or pit beneath the
earth where the dead would exist in a conscious eternal
limbo of hopeless, joyless separation from God. The
Greek concepts of heaven and hell weren’t introduced
into Israel until hundreds of years after Daniel’s life
and purported writing.
Whether the book of Daniel is a work of fiction written
under a pseudonym or the true work of a prophet
acknowledged by Christ on the Mount of Olives, its ultimate
message, identical to that of Revelation, is that in the end, evil
will be defeated and God will reign eternally over all who
worship Him.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE APOSTLE PAUL
An extraordinary example of Jesus’s ability to redirect a life is
the story of Saul, whose Latin name was Paul. In Acts 22:1-8
and Acts 26: 4-11 he shares his history:
I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up [in
Jerusalem ] at the feet of [the renowned teacher] Gamaliel,
educated according to the strictest party of our religion. I have
lived as a Pharisee, in the manner of the law of our fathers,
being zealous for God as you all are this day.
Accordingly, I was convinced I ought to do many things
opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth for which reason I
persecuted the Way [the original name for the body of the
followers of Jesus] to the death, binding and delivering to
prison both men and women, as the high priest and the whole
council of elders bear me witness. When they were put to
death, I cast my vote against them.
From the high priest and council of elders, I received letters
to the brethren, and I journeyed to Damascus to take those
who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be
punished. As I made my journey … a great light from heaven
suddenly shone about me. And I fell to the ground and heard a
voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And I
answered, “Who are you, Lord?” And he answered, “I am
Jesus of Nazareth.”
Saul was blinded by that light from heaven. For three days
he was without sight and abstained from food and drink. The
disciple Ananias was instructed where to find him and told to
lay hands on him to restore his sight, then inform him of his
mission: to “carry my name before the Gentiles [with whom it
was unlawful for Jews to associate—Acts 10:28] and kings
and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15). This divine assignment led
to Paul’s three missionary journeys and the establishment of
the churches to whom his letters in the New Testament are
addressed.
One of Paul’s primary messages involved the return of
Jesus, promised by the angels in Acts 1:11, which describes
the Ascension:
This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come
in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
And that event, Paul said, would herald the end of the
world.
Paul believed the end of days was imminent in the first
century, which is apparent throughout his letters but especially
in those written to the church in Thessalonica, and he urged
them to prepare:
When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty
angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do
now know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of
our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal
destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and
from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be
glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have
believed.
(1 Thessalonians 1:7-10)
Respect those who labor among you and are over you in the
Lord, esteem them very highly in love because of their work.
Be at peace among yourselves … admonish the idle,
encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with
them all. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always
seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always,
pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances … Do not
quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test
everything; hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form
of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:12-19)
We hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. If anyone will not work, let him
not eat. Such persons we command and exort in the Lord Jesus
Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own
living. Brethren, do not be weary in well-doing. (2
Thessalonians 3:10-13)
And finally, Paul’s description of the end of days, and his
words of hope, found in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11:
But we would not have you be ignorant concerning those who
are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no
hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again,
even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who
have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of
the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming
of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of
command, with the archangels’ call, and with the sound of the
trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we
who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall
always be with the Lord.
But as to the times and the seasons, you have no need to
have anything written to you. For you yourselves know well
that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
When people say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden
destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a
woman with child, and there will be no escape. But you are not
in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you
are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the
night and of darkness … So since we belong to the day, let us
be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a
helmet the hope of salvation … Encourage one another and
build one another up just as you are doing.
Judaism
The Torah is the first five books of the Bible, the law books of
the Jewish faith. The Talmud is the collection of Jewish law
and tradition and describes how to apply the rules of the Torah
to a variety of circumstances.
According to the Talmud, the world as we know it will exist
for a total of six thousand years, counting from God’s creation
of the world. Based on the Jewish calendar, the year 2008 is
calculated to be the 5,765th year of the world’s existence, with
the end of days to occur in 2240.
The end of the world, called acharit hayamim in Judaism,
will be catastrophically violent and deadly. In fact, a wise man
of the Talmud has written, “Let the end of days come, but may
I not live to see them.” This time of great suffering, though,
will usher in an era of peace, holiness, and global spiritual
enlightenment.
Jewish tradition about the end of days anticipates:
• a return to Israel of Jewish exiles from around the
world;
• an attack of Israel by Gog, the king of Magog. While
there’s no definitive explanation of those terms, Gog is
described as the prince of a land north of Israel, or
“northern barbarians,” possibly Russia or China. The
battle between Israel and Magog, the true
Armageddon, will be so terrible that it will take seven
months to bury the dead;
• the revival of the dead, or Resurrection;
• the defeat of all of Israel’s enemies
• the building of the third Jewish temple in Jerusalem
• the coming of a messiah, or anointed one.
The messiah, a human being who will be the anointed king
of Israel, will obviously play an essential, divine role in the
events that will follow Armageddon and usher in the seventh
millennium of purity and the worldwide worship of the One
God. His return is taken so seriously and literally that special
preparation has been made for him in Jerusalem.
In one of the walls of the Old City is an entrance called the
Golden Gate, also known as the Gate of Mercy and the Gate of
Eternal Life. According to Jewish tradition, it’s through the
Golden Gate that the messiah will enter Jerusalem when he
returns. But in 1541 the reigning Ottoman sultan, Suleiman,
ordered the gate sealed, allegedly to block the messiah’s
entrance. The Golden Gate remains sealed today.
Among the Jewish prophecies about the messiah and his
handiwork:
• He will be descended from King David.
• He will come in human form, and will be an “observant
Jew.”
• Evil and tyranny will be vanquished due to his presence.
• His embrace will enfold all cultures and nations.
• He will dispel hunger, suffering, and death forever and
replace them with eternal joy.
• The ancient ruins of Israel will be restored.
• Jews will know the Torah without studying, and all the
world will know God.
• Barren land will become fruitful.
• Weapons of war will be destroyed.
The book of Isaiah holds many of the prophecies at the
center of the Jewish beliefs about the end of days, particularly
Isaiah 2:1-5:
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of
the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all
nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say,
“Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the
house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and
we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” And he shall judge
among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they
shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruninghooks: nations shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
The prophet Joel was also an important part of the Hebrew
scripture and its views on the end of times. Joel lived
approximately four centuries after Moses had led the Israelites
out of slavery in Egypt and sent them off to be settled in the
land that was then called Canaan.
The Israelites confronted many complex problems when
they arrived in Canaan. The country was occupied, and there
was no security, so there was never a question of if they would
be attacked, the only question was when. The Israelites
themselves were disorganized, with no experience at self-rule.
The climate was arid, water was scarce, and the soil was hard
and rocky, making the successful planting and growing of
edible crops virtually impossible.
During Joel’s time, between 835 and 800 BC, the southern
area of Canaan, called Judah, had been devastated by locusts,
which ate the sparse crops. The plague of locusts was followed
by a severe drought, prompting Joel to speak out to an
omnipotent God who was ultimately in charge and responsible
for all that happens.
The explanation Joel received for this disastrous succession
of hardships was that the nation was receiving divine judgment
for its sins. He symbolically described the locusts as a
marching human army and goes on to one of his prophecies in
Joel 1:13-14 and Joel 2:1-2:
Lament, O priests, wail, O ministers of the altar … Call a
solemn assembly … Gather the elders to the house of the Lord
your God and cry to the Lord; for unless they change their
ways, the enemy armies will devour the land as did the natural
elements. Awake, you drunkards, and weep!
Alas for the day of the Lord! For the day of the Lord is near,
and as destruction from the Almighty it comes … Let all the
inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is
coming … a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and
thick darkness.
Like most prophetic writings, Joel’s offer a word of hope:
“Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your
heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; and rend
your hearts, not your garments.” Return to the Lord, your
God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. (Joel 2:12-13)
Following Jesus’s days on Earth, after the feast of Pentecost
at which the spirit of Jesus was manifested, the disciple Peter
quoted from Joel 2:28-32 in Acts 2:17-21:
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour
out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy. And your young men shall see visions, and
your old men shall dream dreams … I will pour out my Spirit
and they shall prophesy, and I will show wonders in the
heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire,
and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and
the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the
great and manifest day. And it shall be that whoever calls on
the name of the Lord shall be saved.
According to Judaism, the coming of the messiah and the
divine worldwide era of peace, joy, and spiritual purity will by
definition be preceded by unspeakable suffering. It’s
understandable, then, that many Jewish leaders have suggested
that the Godless, obscene persecution of the Jews during the
Holocaust might be historically perceived as the early dawn of
the messiah’s impending arrival.
Catholicism
While Catholics see no value in trying to predict the date or
year of the end of days, take it from a woman who was raised
in a Catholic school and once had her heart set on becoming a
nun, they most definitely believe in the end-time and its
biblically designated sequence of events:
1. The Resurrection of the Dead
The Catholic Church believes in not only a resurrection of the
spirit but a resurrection of the body as well, as specified in the
Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the
dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic [universal]
church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
2. The Universal Judgment
Following the resurrection of all earthly flesh, Christ will sit
upon the throne of judgment and, one by one, each of us will
be given the justice our works in the world deserve.
For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of
his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has
done. (Matthew 16:27)
3. The World’s Destruction
At the command of Jesus Christ, the world will be destroyed,
not by man’s handiwork or by geological destruction or a
cosmic collision but by purely supernatural means.
4. The Victory and Reign of the Church
Christ and every one of his faithful believers live and reign
together forever, while all who pursue evil and give their
allegiance to the devil are damned for all eternity.
The Catholic Church fully anticipates the second physical
manifestation of Christ, often called the Parousia, which is
Greek for presence, or coming. But it also emphasizes that it’s
not as if Jesus left the earth after His Resurrection and has
been absent ever since. His spirit is among us every minute of
every day of every year, as He promised when He appeared to
His disciples at Galilee after the death of his body:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and
lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew
28:18-20)
I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you. Yet a little
while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me;
because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that
I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
( John 14:18-20)
Three of the most famous and controversial prophecies
about the end of days had their origins in the Catholic Church.
And the voices who uttered them are as fascinating as the
prophecies themselves.
PADRE PIO
On June 16, 2002, Padre Pio, an Italian priest born in 1887,
was elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. He
was renowned for his piety, his charitable works, his suffering,
his occasional severity, and his divinely directed, controversial
supernatural powers, from healings to prophesying. Perhaps
most extraordinary and controversial of all was Padre Pio’s
bearing of the stigmata—wounds in his hands and feet that
corresponded with the wounds inflicted on Christ at his
Crucifixion.
The day after his birth, Padre Pio was baptized Francesco
Forgione, and he was raised by an intensely devout Catholic
family. He was ten years old when he was drawn to a young
Capuchin friar who was traveling through the area, who
inspired him to announce to his parents, “I want to be a friar
with a beard.” His ecstatic parents pursued their son’s passion
with a lot of traveling and a private tutor, and on January 22,
1903, at the age of fifteen, Francesco Forgione became Padre
Pio, selecting his name in honor of Saint Pius V.
Seven years later he became an ordained priest. One
morning shortly after his ordination, as legend has it, he was
deep in prayer when Jesus and the Holy Mother appeared to
him and bestowed on him the stigmata. He prayed that the
wounds disappear, saying, “I do want to suffer, even to die of
suffering, but all in secret.” The stigmata disappeared, but only
temporarily.
Padre Pio suffered from chronic poor health, and he was in
and out of the religious community for several years,
continuing his daily Mass and life of piety wherever he went
and eventually becoming the spiritual director of an
agricultural community called San Giovanni Rotondo on the
Italian Gargano Promontory. There he developed and followed
five rules for spiritual growth:
weekly confession
daily communion
spiritual reading
meditation
examination of conscience
And he created his motto: Pray, Hope and Don’t Worry.
It was during a period of heightened intensity of prayer
among all Christians in 1918 to end World War I that Padre
Pio’s stigmata returned. First came a vision during which
Christ came to him and pierced his side, leaving a visible
wound. Weeks later, Christ appeared again and left visible
wounds in his hands and feet, and this time the five wounds of
Jesus’s Crucifixion stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Word spread of Padre Pio’s stigmata and his recurring
visions of Christ, and he was examined by countless
physicians and questioned endlessly by both devotees and
detractors, within and outside the Catholic Church. For better
or worse, he became a phenomenon, and a source of such
celebrity that huge crowds began gathering in the small
community of San Giovanni Rotondo. The church was forced
to restrict the public’s access to him to prevent riots, and he
was ultimately ordered to cease all church-related
responsibilities and practices with the exception of private
Mass. The more famous he became, the more the accusations
against him escalated. To name just a few:
• insanity, largely due to his claims of visions
• deception, especially that he used acid to create and
maintain the stigmata
• immorality toward women, including allegations of
intercourse with women in the confessional
• “perverting the fragile lives and souls of boys,” as a
result of which he was forbidden to teach the male
youth at the monastery
• misappropriation of funds
Many of his accusers were high-ranking Catholics, and in
1933 Pope Pius XI began taking his own look at the ugly
controversy swirling around the celebrity priest. In a
declaration that almost single-handedly restored order and
dignity to the situation, he finally announced, “I have not been
badly disposed toward Padre Pio, but I have been badly
informed.” Padre Pio’s duties and privileges were restored and
expanded, and in 1939 Pope Pius XII even encouraged
visitations and pilgrimages by the priest’s throngs of devotees.
In 1940, Padre Pio initiated plans for a hospital in San
Giovanni Rotondo that would be called Home to Relieve
Suffering. It officially opened its doors in 1956 and to this day
is considered to be one of Europe’s most efficient hospitals.
Home to Relieve Suffering gave Padre Pio’s enemies yet
another opportunity to hurl accusations at him of
misappropriation of funds. But this time it was Pope Paul VI
who resoundingly declared a dismissal of all indictments
against him.
Padre Pio’s chronic ill health finally claimed his life on
September 23, 1968. More than one hundred thousand people
attended his funeral, and thirty-four years after his death he
was canonized by Pope John Paul II and the Roman Catholic
Church that so deeply treasured him and, on occasion, allowed
some of its archbishops and bishops to try to destroy him.
Incidentally or not, those who were with Padre Pio in the
hours immediately before and after his death claim that the
stigmata disappeared without a trace as he took his last breath.
Much of Padre Pio’s fame and infamy came from his gifts
of healing and prophecy. A handful of the countless healing
stories give a glimpse of his divine and sometimes unique
power:
A woman of very modest means traveled some distance to
bring her deaf child to Padre Pio, who instantly restored the
child’s hearing. In awe and gratitude, the woman removed a
gold chain, her only possession of value, from her little girl’s
neck and presented it to Padre Pio in the name of the Blessed
Virgin. The next morning, back in her own home, the woman
awoke to find the gold chain on her bed table.
A blind child who’d been born with no pupils was brought to
Padre Pio by her grandmother. During her time with Padre
Pio she began to see and identify objects for the first time in
her life. Ocular specialists who’d examined the child before
and after her healing had no explanation for how pupils had
managed to generate themselves in the little girl’s eyes.
A man with a desperately ill child, who’d been given no hope
by any number of doctors, took the child to Padre Pio. But as
he entered the monastery, Padre Pio chased him back out the
door again, yelling that because the man was a Communist
and therefore a nonbeliever, he had no business presenting
himself to “God’s tribunal.” Heartsick, the man was preparing
to return to Moscow with his child when he happened across a
local professor to whom he told his story. The professor
persuaded the man to go back to Padre Pio, confess his sins,
and renounce the Godless beliefs he’d been taught throughout
his life. He took the professor’s advice and went with his child
to the monastery again the next day. On seeing Padre Pio, he
immediately and very sincerely fell to his knees, weeping.
Padre Pio helped him to his feet, saying, “You have done the
right thing and your son will get well. Now, come to
confession.” The man did as he was told and experienced a
full spiritual awakening, while his child was completely
healed.
One of Padre Pio’s most famous prophecies was allegedly
delivered through him by Jesus Christ and describes the
coming Apocalypse. It reads, in part:
My Son, My love for man is very great, especially for those
who give themselves to Me … The time is near at hand in
which I shall visit my unfaithful people because they have not
heeded the time of My grace. My judgment shall come upon
them suddenly and when least expected—not one shall escape
My hands. But I shall protect the just. Watch the sun and moon
and the stars, when they appear unduly disturbed and restless,
know that the day is not far away.
Stay united in prayer and watching until the angel of
destruction has passed your doors. Pray that these days will
be shortened. My children, have confidence. I am in the midst
of you. My kingdom shall be glorified and My name shall be
blessed from the rising of the sun unto the setting. My kingdom
shall have no end.
Pray! Men are running toward the abyss of hell in great
rejoicing … Assist Me in the salvation of souls. The measure of
sin is filled! The day of revenge, with its terrifying happenings
is near! Nearer than you can imagine! And the world is
sleeping in false security! The Divine Judgment shall strike
them like a thunderbolt! These godless and wicked people
shall be destroyed without mercy …
Keep your windows well covered. Do not look out. Light a
blessed candle, which will suffice for many days. Pray the
rosary. Read spiritual books. Make acts of love which are so
pleasing to Us. Pray with outstretched arms, or prostrate on
the ground, in order that many souls may be saved …
Take care of the animals during these days. I am the Creator
and Preserver of all animals as well as man. I shall give you a
few signs beforehand, at which time you should place more
food before them. I will preserve the property of the elect,
including the animals, for they shall be in need of sustenance
afterwards as well …
A most dreadful punishment will bear witness to the times.
My angels, who are to be the executioners of this work, are
ready with their pointed swords! Hurricanes of fire will pour
forth from the clouds and spread over the entire earth! Storms,
bad weather, thunderbolts and earthquakes will cover the
earth for two days. An uninterrupted rain of fire will take
place! It will begin during a very cold night. All this is to
prove that God is the Master of Creation.
Those who hope in Me, and believe in My words, have
nothing to fear because I will not forsake them, nor those who
spread My message. No harm will come to those who are in
the state of grace and who seek My Mother’s protection. That
you may be prepared for these visitations … Talk to no one
outside the house. Kneel down before a crucifix, be sorry for
your sins, and beg My Mother’s protection. Those who
disregard this advice will be killed instantly. The wind will
carry with it poisonous gases which will be diffused over the
entire earth. Those who suffer and die innocently will be
martyrs and they will be with Me in My kingdom.
Satan will triumph! But in three nights, the earthquake and
fire will cease. On the following day the sun will shine again,
angels will descend from Heaven and will spread the spirit of
peace over the earth. A feeling of immeasurable gratitude will
take possession of those who survive this most terrible ordeal,
the impending punishment, with which God will visit the earth
since creation …
The weight of the Divine balance has reached the earth! The
wrath of My Father shall be poured out over the entire world!
I am again warning the world as I have so often done
heretofore. The sins of men have multiplied beyond measure.
The world is filled with iniquity …
I Myself shall come amidst thunder and lightning. The
wicked shall behold My Divine Heart. There shall be great
confusion because of this utter darkness in which the entire
earth shall be enveloped. And many, many shall die of fear and
despair. Those who shall fight for My cause shall receive
grace from My Divine Heart; and the cry: “WHO IS LIKE
UNTO GOD!” shall serve as a means of protection to many.
However, many shall burn in the open fields like withered
grass! The godless shall be annihilated, so that afterwards the
just shall be able to start afresh …
The darkness shall last a day and a night, followed by
another day and a night, and another day—but on the night
following, the stars will shine again, and on the next morning
the sun shall rise again, and it will be springtime! …
Hell will believe itself to be in possession of the entire earth,
but I shall reclaim it …
Pray! Pray! My dear Mother Mary and the saints and holy
angels shall be your intercessors. Implore their aid. Be
courageous soldiers of Christ! At the return of light, let
everyone give thanks to the Holy Trinity for their protection!
The devastation shall be very great. But I, your God, will have
purified the earth. I am with you, have confidence. Again and
again I have warned men, and often have I given them special
opportunities to return to the right path. But now, wickedness
has reached its climax, and the punishment can no longer be
delayed. Even though My heart does suffer and bleed, yet for
My name’s sake I must deal this blow.
Tell all men that the time has come in which these things
shall be fulfilled.
THE FATIMA PROPHECIES
On May 13, 1917, three children—Lucia, age eleven;
Francisco, age nine; and Jacinta, age seven—took the family
sheep to graze in the Cova da Iria, a hollow near the town of
Fatima, Portugal. The sheep were quietly grazing and the
children were playing when suddenly what appeared to be a
flash of lightning blazed from the cloudless sky. Confused and
frightened, the children began gathering the sheep to hurry
home when a second flash of lightning appeared, and a lady,
dressed in brilliant, radiant white, materialized above a small
tree.
“Don’t be afraid,” the lady assured the terrified children. “I
come from Heaven, to ask that you come here for six months
in succession, on the thirteenth day, at this same hour. At that
time I will tell you who I am and what I want.”
After a few more messages and instructions, the lady
seemed to vanish into a cloud of light.
The children raced home to tell their parents about their
amazing experience. Their mother punished them, first for
lying and then for refusing to admit the lie. Word of the
children’s preposterous story spread through the village of
Fatima, and they were subjected to relentless ridicule.
But each month, on the thirteenth day, the children
obediently made their way to the Cova da Iria, and the lady
never disappointed them. Slowly but surely, with each passing
month, larger and more curious crowds began following the
children to the site of the apparition, despite the fact that no
one except the children could see or hear the lady as she
shared important secrets with them. Finally, she promised a
miracle in October, the sixth month of her appearances to
them, that would make everyone believe.
On the 13th of October, 1917, a crowd of nearly seventy
thousand followed Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta through a
hard steady rain to the Cova da Iria. At the stroke of noon the
lady appeared and, as promised during her first appearance,
she revealed to the children who she was and what she wanted.
“I am the Lady of the Rosary,” she said, “and I would like a
chapel built on this site in my honor.”
She ascended again, opening her hands toward the sky. And
in the sky the children saw the Mysteries of the Rosary,
followed by Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus, who blessed the
crowd. Then came a vision that only Lucia saw, the sacred
sight of the Virgin Mary beside her resurrected Son.
In the meantime, the throngs nearby were transfixed by the
spectacle in the sky that was simultaneously playing out before
their eyes: the rain suddenly stopped, and the sun appeared.
Impossibly, the moment it broke through the clouds, the sun
began dancing, whirling, erupting in a rainbow of fire that
reflected prisms of color on the faces of the crowd. Then, with
no warning, in one swift, blinding thrust, the sun appeared to
be hurtling out of the sky toward the seventy thousand
witnesses, terrifying them and convincing many of them that
the end of the world had come. But in a matter of seconds, it
reversed its direction and returned to its proper, benign place
in the heavens. It was only when the crowds had begun to
recover from their panic and their confused awe that they
noticed how completely dry their clothing and the ground
around them were, despite the relentless rain they’d stood in
for hours.
As the Blessed Mother had requested, a shrine was built on
the site of the visions. Francisco and Jacinta tragically died in
an influenza plague that swept through Portugal within three
years of that miraculous October day in 1917. Lucia entered a
convent and continued receiving occasional visits from the
Virgin Mary who, in 1927, gave her permission to reveal two
of the three prophecies she’d given to the children. The third
prophecy, she said, was not to be made public before 1960.
In the first prophecy, shared with the children on July 13,
1917, Mary told the children that the war—World War I—
would end soon, as it did, the following year. She went on to
say that same day that “a night illuminated by an unknown
light” would precede a “worse war.” On January 25, 1938, a
stunning aurora borealis stretched across the northern sky with
such unprecedented brilliance that it was visible across
Europe. World War II began in 1939.
In her second prophecy the Lady of Fatima warned that
Russia would “spread her errors throughout the world,
promoting wars … Various nations will be annihilated. If
people attend to My request for the consecration of Russia to
My immaculate heart, Russia will be converted.” In 1984 Pope
John Paul II consecrated Russia, which many believe fulfilled
the prophecy and led to the subsequent collapse, or
conversion, of the Soviet Union.
As for the third prophecy, Lucia wrote it down and sealed it
in an envelope. She gave it to a Portuguese bishop with
instructions that it wasn’t to be opened and read until after
1960. That bishop in turn presented it to the Vatican.
When 1960 came, Pope John XXIII reportedly unsealed the
envelope but refused to reveal its contents, with the cryptic
explanation that “this prophecy does not relate to my time.”
His successor, Pope John Paul II, is said to have read the
prophecy as well. Rumor had it that it referred to a “bishop
clothed in white,” i.e., the Pope, who, as he makes his way
through throngs of the faithful, falls to the ground, seemingly
dead from a burst of gunfire.
On May 13, 1981, sixty-four years to the day after Our Lady
of Fatima’s first appearance to the three children in the Cova
da Iria, a Turkish gunman in St. Peter’s Square attempted to
assassinate Pope John Paul II. The Pope thanked the Mother
Herself for saving his life by “guiding the bullet’s path,” and
the potentially fatal bullet was given by the Pope to the bishop
of Leiria-Fatima, who had it set in the crown on the statue of
Our Lady of Fatima at her shrine.
On May 13, 2000, Pope John Paul II visited Sister Lucia dos
Santos, who by then was ninety-three years old and a
Carmelite nun. He also beatified her cousins, Francisco and
Jacinta, who are buried near the Virgin’s shrine. Never before
or since has the Roman Catholic Church beatified children
who weren’t martyrs.
And finally, on June 26, 2000, the Vatican released the
complete forty-page text of the third Fatima prophecy, which
had been committed to paper in Portuguese by Sister Lucia on
January 3, 1944, and eventually translated into English,
French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Polish.
The third prophecy from the Blessed Virgin of Fatima,
reads, in part:
At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel
with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out
flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire;
but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady
radiated towards him from her right hand. Pointing to the
earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice:
“Penance, Penance, Penance!”
And we saw in an immense light that is God: “something
similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in
front of it” a Bishop dressed in White “we had the impression
that it was the Holy Father.” Other bishops, priests, men and
women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of
which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork
tree with the bark. Before reaching there the Holy Father
passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with
halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the
souls of the corpses he met on his way. Having reached the top
of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he
was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows
at him, and in the same way there died one after another the
other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various
lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two
arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal
aspersorium [basin meant to hold holy water] in his hand, in
which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it
sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Roman Catholic Church’s
prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, interpreted the third prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima as
being perfectly summed up by the “triple cry, ‘Penance,
Penance, Penance!’ ” In its entirety, he says, he believes it to
be
a consoling vision, which seeks to open a history of blood and
tears to the healing power of God. Beneath the arms of the
cross angels gather up the blood of the martyrs, and with it
they give life to the souls making their way to God. Here, the
blood of Christ and the blood of the martyrs are considered as
one: the blood of the martyrs runs down from the arms of the
cross. The martyrs die in communion with the Passion of
Christ, and their death becomes one with his … Since God
himself took a human heart and has thus steered human
freedom toward what is good, the freedom to choose evil no
longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that
prevails is this:
In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have
overcome the world.
John 16:33
The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise.
MARIA ESPERANZA
Maria Esperanza was considered to be one of the world’s most
gifted contemporary mystics and seers. Born in Venezuela in
1928, she was five years old when she received a vision of
Saint Therese, “the little flower of Jesus,” who threw a rose to
her, a rose that materialized in the child’s hand. At the age of
fourteen, when she was plagued with pneumonia and heart
problems and not expected to live, Maria had the strength of
faith to pray to Jesus for either a happy death or a complete
healing, whichever was her Father’s will. The Blessed Mother
Mary instantly appeared to her, and at that moment Maria was
miraculously and completely healed.
In 1954, Maria traveled to a Venezuelan convent to pray for
guidance in the direction her life should take. It was there that
Saint Therese appeared to her again and tossed her a second
rose. This time when Maria reached for it, her hand was
pricked by a thorn. It was a minor injury, but it foreshadowed
the fact that Maria would bear the stigmata, the visible wounds
of Christ on the cross, every Good Friday for the rest of her
life.
Maria received the blessings of Pope Pius XII in Rome in
1954, and the Blessed Mother appeared to her again during her
stay with another message, which concluded:
You will be the mother of seven children: six roses and one
bud.
Maria was married in 1956 to a member of the Vatican’s
President of the Republic’s Guard, a marriage that produced
one son and six daughters.
In 1984 Maria Esperanza and almost five hundred witnesses
were given an appearance of the Blessed Mother Mary in a
place called Betania near Caracas, Venezuela. The witnesses
were interviewed by the Most Reverend Pio Bello Ricardo, a
bishop and psychologist, who, after discussions with the
Vatican, declared the visions authentic and declared Betania to
be “sacred ground.”
Before her death on August 7, 2004, Maria Esperanza
offered her prophecies on the Second Coming and the end of
days during an interview with Michael H. Brown, a writer and
biographer:
It will be very different than what people think. He [Jesus] is
going to come in silence. People will realize He is among us
little by little … In those days an innocent person whom He
loves a lot will die, an innocent person. This will shock the
world, will move the world. Many people will believe. He will
disappear for some days and appear again.
And when he disappears, people will go back again to the
mess, to the disordered things. He will bilocate, He will
multiply Himself, to assist everyone, in their homes, because
this will be a definite thing. He will come and knock on every
door. And then people will realize it is truly Him. He will let
Himself be seen for a little while and then will disappear until
God decrees what has to be done.
The same way He resurrected, that is how God is going to
appear to you, to me … as an apparition … He already is
among us but is not letting us see Him. With our brains, in this
physical reality, we can only see what God wants us to see, but
it only needs a little touch from God to open another little door
in our brains to see Jesus whenever He wants us to see Him …
When He comes in glory is the Final Judgment, it is the end
of this world. If He comes now, the ones who will receive Him
will be the Pope and all the faithful souls in the world, no one
else, because they are expecting Him and waiting for Him.
The years before such a manifestation there will be a
special light from Heaven. Many natural and political events
will take place as well, to purify and prepare.
CENTURIES OF CATHOLICS ON THE END OF
DAYS
Take it from a Catholic school graduate, the legacy of the endof-days prophecies is a rich, treasured tradition in the church.
Some of the prophecies were biblical in origin, while others
were said to be divinely channeled.
Saint Malachy, for example, born in 1094, was the first Irish
saint canonized by a pope, Clement III. He reportedly
possessed the God-given powers of levitation, healing,
clairvoyance, and prophecy. Probably his most famous vision
appeared to him during a trance when he saw the entire line of
popes from his day until the end of time. He wrote brief
descriptions of each of them and presented the writing to Pope
Innocent II. The manuscript wasn’t unearthed again until
1950, and it’s been a source of controversy ever since. The last
of the popes, according to Saint Malachy’s early twelfthcentury prophecy, will be:
• “The Flower of Flowers,” as Saint Malachy named him,
thought to be Paul VI (1963-78), whose coat of arms
bears three fleurs-de-lis.
• “Of the Half Moon,” thought to be John Paul I, who was
born in the diocese of Belluno, which translates to
“beautiful moon,” and was elected Pope during a halfmoon on August 26, 1978. He died a month later,
shortly after a lunar eclipse.
• “The Labor of the Sun,” which would correspond to
Pope John Paul II, whose papal reign lasted from 1978
until 2005. On the morning he was born in 1920 there
was an almost total eclipse of the sun over Europe,
obviously including Pope John Paul II’s native Poland.
As for the “labor” reference, he was the most widely
traveled Pope in the history of the church.
• “The Glory of the Olive,” who would be Pope Benedict
XVI, the 265th Pope, elected in 2005. The Order of
Saint Benedict, also known as the Olivetans, declared
that the penultimate Pope would come from their ranks
and would “lead the Catholic Church in its fight
against evil.”
• “Peter the Roman.” According to Saint Malachy, the
final Pope will be Satan, in the form of a man named
Peter, who will inspire great worldwide loyalty and
adoration. He’ll be the long-anticipated last Antichrist,
who will “feed his flock amid many tribulations, after
which the seven-hilled city [Rome] will be destroyed
and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The
End.”
An Austrian monk named Johannes Friede (1204-57) wrote
the following prophecy that continues to be studied and
debated more than seven centuries later:
When the great time will come, in which mankind will face its
last, hard trial, it will be foreshadowed by striking changes in
nature. The alternation between cold and heat will become
more intensive, storms will have more catastrophic effects,
earthquakes will destroy great regions, and the seas will
overflow many lowlands. Not all of it will be the result of
natural causes, but mankind will penetrate into the bowels of
the earth and will reach into the clouds, gambling with its own
existence. Before the powers of destruction will succeed in
their design, the universe will be thrown into disorder, and the
age of iron will plunge into nothingness. When nights will be
filled with more intensive cold and days with heat, a new life
will begin in nature. The heat means radiation from the earth,
the cold the waning light of the sun. Only a few years more
and you will become aware that sunlight has grown
perceptibly weaker. When even your artificial light will cease
to give service, the great event in the heavens will be near.
Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) was a Dominican
missionary whose following was once said to number more
than ten thousand. He lived an austere, disciplined life of selfsacrifice, ministering to countless children, healing countless
troubled souls and plague-infested bodies, and was ultimately
canonized by Pope Calixtus III. According to his prophecy:
In the days of peace that are to come after the desolation of
revolutions and wars, before the end of the world the
Christians will become so lax in their religion that they will
refuse to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, saying, “It is
an unnecessary Sacrament.”
Pope Pius X (1835-1914) first declined the papal
nomination because he felt unworthy of the honor. It speaks
volumes about how wrong he was that he was ultimately
canonized in 1951 by Pius XII.
One day in 1909, during an audience for an order of
Franciscans, Pius seemed to go into a trance. After several
moments, during which everyone around him watched in silent
alarm, the Pope opened his eyes, stood, and called out, “What
I have seen is terrifying! Will I be the one, or will it be a
successor? What is certain is that the Pope will leave Rome
and, in leaving the Vatican, he will have to pass over the dead
bodies of his priests!” He then asked that everyone in the room
keep the whole incident secret until after he died.
His vision seemed to clarify itself shortly before his death,
through a second vision, which he described:
I have seen one of my successors, of the same name, who was
fleeing over the bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in
some hiding place; but after a brief respite, he will die a cruel
death. Respect for God has disappeared from human hearts.
They wish to efface even God’s memory. This perversity is
nothing less than the beginning of the last days of the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
Other Great Religions and the End of the World
Please don’t let it enter your mind that the “other” in the title
of this chapter even remotely implies “less important.” As
most of you may already know, I was born into a
Catholic/Jewish/Lutheran /Episcopalian family, and I’ve
studied world religions throughout my life. All of them are
fascinating, all of them include aspects that are utterly
beautiful, and all of them, whether or not you agree with each
and every detail of their beliefs, warrant our awareness and
respect.
Islam
Muslims, as followers of the Islamic faith are called, believe
that in AD 570, God, or Allah, sent the last of His prophets to
Earth to deliver His message among humankind. That prophet
was Muhammad, who was born in Makkah (Mecca), in what
is now Saudi Arabia. Muslims consider Muhammad to have
been human, not a part of divinity, and they never refer to him
as Allah. Allah is the one God, our Creator, all-powerful, allknowing, all-merciful, supreme and sovereign, the only entity
in the universe worthy of worship.
Muhammad was orphaned at a very young age and raised
by his uncle, Abu Talib. Early in his life he was already being
recognized for his wisdom, honesty, generosity, and sincerity.
He was forty years old, on one of the meditative retreats he
often took to the cave of Hira, close to Mecca, when the angel
Gabriel appeared to him and delivered the first of what would
evolve into twenty-three years of revelations. And those
twenty-three years of revelations, given to Muhammad from
God through the angel Gabriel, became the Qur’an (Koran),
the Holy Book of the Islam faith.
Muhammad was sixty-three when he died. Within a hundred
years of his death, Islam had spread throughout Europe and
across Asia as far east as China. Muslims cherish Muhammad
as God’s final messenger and prophet. Again, though, their
worship is devoted strictly to Allah.
Nothing sums up the Islamic view of the Apocalypse more
gracefully than the Final Signs of Qiyaamah (Islam), one of
the most famous of the Islamic prophecies:
The Ground will cave in:
one in the east,
one in the west,
and one in Hejaz, Saudi Arabia.
Fog or smoke will cover the skies for forty days.
The nonbelievers will fall unconscious,
while Muslims will be ill [develop colds].
The skies will then clear up.
A night three nights long will follow the fog.
It will occur in the month of Zil-Hajj1 after Eidul-Ahja,2
and cause much restlessness among the people.
After the night of three nights,
the following morning the sun will rise in the west.
People’s repentance will not be accepted after this incident.
One day later, the Beast from the earth will miraculously
emerge from Mount Safaa in Makkah, causing a split in
the ground.
The Beast will be able to talk to people and
mark the faces of people,
making the believers’ faces glitter, and
the nonbelievers’ faces darken.
A breeze from the south causes sores in the armpits of
Muslims,
which they will die of as a result.
The Ka’aba3 will be destroyed by a non-Muslim African
group.
Kufr [Godlessness] will be rampant.
Haj [the pilgrimage to Makkah] will be discontinued.
The Qur’an will be lifted from the heart of the people,
thirty years after the ruler Muquad’s death.
The fire will follow people to Syria, after which it will
stop. Some years after the first,
Qiyaamah [Islam] begins with the Soor [trumpet] being
blown.
The year is not known to any person.
Qiyaamah will come upon the worst of creation.
It’s very much worth adding that Muslims have enormous
respect for Jesus and never say his name without adding the
homage “Peace be upon him.” The Qur’an refers to the
immaculate birth of Christ, acknowledges His miracles, and
predicts his Second Coming. In fact, the Islam faith believes
that in the final days both Jesus and the prophet Imam Mahdi,
a descendant of Muhammad, will come to Earth to combine
forces of good against evil and usher in the Apocalypse.
Hinduism
Hinduism is the third largest religion in the world, with more
than 750 million followers. It is thought to have been born in
northern India between 4000 and 2200 BC. There’s some
disagreement about the origin of its beliefs, whether it was
brought by invading Indo-Europeans who practiced a religion
called Vedism or it grew from the already established Vedic
culture in India.
But there is no disagreement on the many unique aspects of
this ancient religion compared to the other great religions of
the world. Hinduism isn’t the result of any one messiah,
leader, or group of leaders. There are no prophets in its rich
history and no specific sequence of events that led to its
creation.
Instead, Hinduism seems to have evolved into reality, with
sacred texts—the Vedas and the Upanishads—that were
committed to paper between 800 and 400 BC. It worships one
supreme God, the principle of Brahman, a singular divine
entity who is both at one with the universe and transcends it at
the same time. Brahman exists as three separate aspects:
• Brahma the Creator, who perpetually creates new
realities;
• Vishnu, or Krishna, the Preserver, the protector of the
creations; when eternal order is threatened, Vishnu
travels to Earth to restore it;
• Shiva the Destroyer.
Hindus believe that everything becomes nothing, which
becomes everything again, in cycle after cycle. In other words,
Brahma creates the universe, Vishnu takes over as its
caretaker, and then Shiva destroys it so that Brahma can begin
the cycle again. A cycle is very, very long—current Hindu
wisdom suggests that the universe has approximately 427,000
years left before this cycle ends and a new one begins. These
cycles are thought of as ages, and there are four ages in
orthodox Hinduism, ranging from an age of absolute purity to
an age of absolute corruption. This fourth, corrupt age is the
Kali Age, or Iron Age, characterized by the spiritual decline of
civilization, violence, plagues, and a tragic desecration of
nature. The Kali Age immediately precedes complete
destruction, which then evolves into the purity of the Golden
Age, when the cycle begins again. According to Hinduism,
when evil and chaos in the world reach their peak of
intolerable obscenity, an avatar—incarnation of the Supreme
Being—appears on Earth and restores righteousness and purity
to humankind.
The Hindu Puranas, which are a written interlacing of
mythology and history, contain a list of prophecies involving
this cyclical concept that is as close as Hinduism comes to
other religions’ concept of the end of times:
• Apocalypse for the Hindu is the natural ending of the
world in the fourth age, the Kali Age, the age of
Darkness and Discord.
• It is one of a series of apocalypses, each of which marks
the end of one cycle and the beginning of another
creation. The central figure in these transitions is
Vishnu, the Preserver God, into whom the world is
absorbed before being born again.
• Vishnu has already saved humanity on a number of
occasions, symbolically appearing as a savior in many
different forms. It is said that He will appear again
soon, as Kalki, a white horse, destined to destroy the
present world and to elevate humanity to a higher
plane.
• All kings occupying the earth in the Kali Age will be
wanting in tranquility, strong in anger, taking pleasure
at all times in lying and dishonesty, inflicting death on
women, children, and cows, prone to take the paltry
possessions of others, with character that is mostly
vile, rising to power and soon falling.
• They will be short-lived, of little virtue, and greedy.
People will follow the customs of others and be
adulterated with them; peculiar, undisciplined
barbarians will be vigorously supported by rulers.
Because they go on living with perversion, they will be
ruined.
• Dharma [eternal order, righteousness] becomes very
weak in the Kali Age. People commit sin in mind,
speech, and actions.
• Quarrels, plague, fatal diseases, famines, drought, and
calamities appear. Testimonies and proofs have no
certainty. There is no criterion left when the Kali Age
settles down.
• People become poorer in vigor and luster.
• They are wicked, full of anger, sinful, false, and
avaricious.
• Bad ambitions, bad education, bad dealings, and bad
earnings excite fear.
• The whole batch becomes greedy and untruthful.
• Many sudras [Godless ones] will become kings, and
many heretics will be seen.
• There will arise various sects, sannyasins [elevated
ones, gurus] wearing clothes colored red.
• Many will profess to have supreme knowledge because,
thereby, they will easily earn their livelihood.
• In the Kali Age, there will be many false religionists.
• India will become desolated by repeated calamities,
short lives, and various diseases.
• Everyone will be miserable owing to the dominance of
vice and Tamoguna [apathy, inaction].
• Earth will be valued only for her mineral treasures.
• Money alone will confer nobility.
• Power will be the sole definition of virtue.
• Pleasure will be the only reason for marriage.
• Lust will be the only reason for womanhood.
• Falsehood will win out in disputes.
• Being dry of water will be the only definition of land.
• Praiseworthiness will be measured by accumulated
wealth.
• Propriety will be considered good conduct, and only
feebleness will be the reason for unemployment.
• Boldness and arrogance will be equivalent to
scholarship.
• Only those without wealth will show honesty.
• Just a bath will amount to purification, and charity will
be the only virtue.
• Abduction will be marriage.
• Simply to be well-dressed will signify propriety.
• Any hard-to-reach water will be deemed a pilgrimage
site.
• The pretense of greatness will be the proof of it, and
powerful men with many severe faults will rule over all
the classes on Earth.
• Oppressed by their excessively greedy rules, people will
hide in valleys between mountains, where they will
gather honey, vegetables, roots, fruits, birds, flowers,
and so forth.
• Suffering from cold, wind, heat, and rain, they will put
on clothes made of tree bark and leaves.
• And no one will live as long as twenty-three years.
• Thus, in the Kali Age humankind will be utterly
destroyed.
Is it me, or does a whole lot of this description of the Kali
Age sound awfully familar?
Buddhism
According to legend, twenty-five hundred years ago Queen
Maha Maya, wife of King Suddhodana of northern India, had
a dream one night. In this dream a beautiful white elephant
encircled her and entered her right side. Wise men interpreted
the dream as a sign that a magnificent son would be born to
the queen and king, a prince who, if he remained in the palace,
would become a great ruler. If he declined his royal lineage,
however, he would become a Buddha, or an Awakened One.
A son was born to the queen and king. They named him
Siddhartha, which meant “all wishes fulfilled.” High walls
were built around the exquisitely beautiful perfection of the
palace to prevent Prince Siddhartha from being exposed to
anything that might devastate his privileged isolation—it was
ordered that he should never be exposed to the seriously ill,
the very old, the dying, or most definitely not any wandering
holy men.
Prince Siddhartha lived in palatial luxury until he was
twenty-six, happily married to Princess Yasodhara for half of
those years. But he felt that something about his life was
missing and incomplete, and he became consumed with
curiosity about what the world was like beyond those high
palace walls. And so, with the help of his charioteer Channa,
he began a series of secret excursions beyond the walls into
the streets of northern Indian villages.
For the first time in his life Prince Siddhartha saw the sick,
the dying, the dead, and the starving, and he was shattered by
them. He was told about the belief that birth and death were
simply part of an eternal cycle that could only be stopped by
somehow escaping the trap of continual rebirth, and he
became consumed by the tragic inevitability of that cycle
when it included the profound deprivation and illness that
surrounded him in the poverty-stricken villages.
It was during what would become the prince’s final
excursion that Siddhartha’s life was transformed forever. He
came across what he first thought to be yet another beggar, a
small, barefoot, seemingly starving man with a shaved head,
draped in a yellow robe, and holding a bowl to receive any
kindness a stranger might be moved to extend. But when
Prince Siddhartha looked more closely, he saw that the man’s
face was almost radiant with peace and dignity. Deeply
moved, the prince commented to his charioteer about the
amazingly transcendent little man, and Channa explained that
the man was a monk, one of the quietly devout who found
great spiritual happiness in a life of simplicity, purity,
discipline, and meditation on his journey to be delivered from
suffering.
Irrevocably moved by this experience, Prince Siddhartha, in
a decision that would come to be known as the Great
Renunciation, left behind his beloved family, his heritage, and
his life of unlimited wealth and, at the age of twenty-nine,
began a solitary search for a way to end the constant cycle of
suffering and rebirth and then, somehow, be of real help to the
sad afflicted world around him.
After six brutal years of pain, self-mortification, punishing
discipline, and deprivation, Siddhartha came to the conclusion
that an exhausted, neglected, malnourished body was hardly a
welcoming environment for a healthy, enlightened mind and
spirit. He began to nourish himself, and to rebuild his strength
and vitality. His companions abandoned him, scornful of his
inability to maintain his disciplines of sacrifice, and he found
himself as alone as he’d been on the day he’d walked away
from the palace.
On his thirty-fifth birthday, Siddhartha was wandering in a
beautiful forest when a woman appeared and presented him
with a bowl of milk rice.
“Venerable sir,” she said, “whoever you may be, god or
human, please accept this offering. May you attain the good
which you seek.”
Later that day he met a groundskeeper who offered him a
cushion of fresh-cut grass beneath a magnificent spreading fig
tree, which came to be known as the Bodhi Tree, or Tree of
Enlightenment. As he rested beneath that tree he began
contemplating his life and his near-death through the futility of
his abusively extreme self-discipline.
In the shade of the Bodhi Tree he vowed, “Though my skin,
my nerves and my lifeblood go dry, I will not abandon this
seat until I have realized Supreme Enlightenment.” And he
remembered a similar moment from his childhood, when,
while resting beneath a tree, he discovered that by sitting
cross-legged, with his eyes closed and his mind focused on
nothing but breathing in and out, he could reach a state of
mental bliss. The peace of that simple, private exercise came
flooding back to him that day beneath the Bodhi Tree, and he
crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind of
everything but his silent, rhythmic breathing.
He sat still as a thousand doubts, fears, memories, cravings,
and temptations raged inside him, waging war with all the
good he was longing to accomplish. He sat still through a
violent storm that thundered all night through the forest. He
felt his resolve strengthen and his meditative serenity engulf
him. Finally he reached out with his right hand and touched
the ground, which quaked and trembled and roared at his
touch, asking Mother Earth for confirmation of the worth of
his lonely pilgrimage with the words, “I, Earth, bear you
witness!”
Throughout the night, as his deep meditation continued, he
came to know how darkness of the mind is born, and how it is
destroyed forever. He dispelled past, present, and future
spiritual ignorance, and his delusion was transformed into total
clarity. He gained complete understanding of “things as they
are,” and when dawn broke, Prince Siddhartha had become
Buddha Shakyamuni, the Enlightened One, whose ensuing
teachings and divine revelations gave birth to Buddhism, with
a current following that exceeds 665 million devotees.
The religion that Buddha’s life and enlightenment inspired
involves being as active, self-propelled, and personally
responsible as Buddha was in his quest for understanding
“things as they are.” Followers are taught that if depth,
meaning, and substance are missing from their lives, they’re
not to look to Buddha for answers, or to the people around
them. They’re to look to themselves and find their
transformation within their own souls.
Buddha predicted that someday another Buddha would be
born. Buddha Maitreya, who currently resides in the Tutshita,
or heaven, waiting to be born again for one final time on earth.
Before Buddha Maitreya’s arrival, Buddha Shakyamuni’s
teachings would vanish, all memory of him would disappear,
and even his sacred relics would be destroyed by fire. Only
then would Buddha Maitreya appear, to renew Buddhism in
the world and light the path to Nirvana, or the extinguishing of
ignorance, hatred, and earthly suffering. Buddhist prophecies
describe him:
He will have a heavenly voice which reaches far; his skin will
have a golden hue; a great splendor will radiate from his
body; his chest will be broad, limbs well developed, and his
eyes will be like lotus petals. His body is eighty cubits high,
and twenty cubits broad … Under Maitreya’s guidance,
hundreds of thousands of living beings shall enter upon a
religious life.
The time preceding Maitreya, according to the scriptures,
would be recognizable by its hedonism, its sexual depravity,
its general social chaos, and its widespread lack of physical
health. And only a force as powerful as Buddha Maitreya will
be able to shift the world into its next inevitable cycle.
Buddhists, in other words, don’t believe in an end of times.
Instead, they agree with a universal cycle of creation,
destruction, and then creation again, ushered in by a new
Enlightened One who will bring peace and well-being, or
Nirvana, to humankind right here on Earth.
The Baha’i Faith
In 1844 an Iranian merchant named Sayyid Ali Muhammad
Shiraz, said to be a descendant of the prophet Muhammad,
founded a religious movement that evolved into what we now
know as the Baha’i Faith. Taking the title of the Bab, which
translates to “the gate,” he gathered eighteen disciples around
him, whom he called Letters of the Living, and sent them
throughout the lands to share his message.
The Bab gained thousands of followers in the next few
years, and attracted the attention of a few powerful detractors,
including the Iranian prime minister, who had him imprisoned
for fear that the Bab’s expanding power might interfere with
the prime minister’s religious influence over the shah. It was
during the Bab’s imprisonment in 1848 that he wrote The
Bayan, his most important book of teachings. In the meantime,
the Babis, as the Bab’s followers were called, were being
attacked by various local armies whose religious leaders found
them disruptive and threatening to their own beliefs.
Finally, in 1850, the prime minister and the shah decided
that the most effective way of stopping this divisive new
movement would be to eliminate its founder, the Bab himself.
He was brought to Tabriz in northern Iran and suspended in
front of a firing squad in a square where the public could
witness his execution.
On command, the squad of soldiers fired at the Bab. In what
the Baha’i regard as a great miracle of their faith, not a single
bullet struck the Bab, and he actually seemed to vanish into
thin air. He was discovered later, committing his final words to
writing, and was brought back to the public square. The first
firing squad refused to participate in another attempt at
executing the Bab, so a replacement firing squad was
summoned. They tragically succeeded, and the Bab was killed.
His body was spirited away by a few of his followers and
eventually interred in a shrine at Mount Carmel in the city of
Haifa.
One of the Bab’s primary missions on Earth was to prepare
humankind for the impending arrival of another great prophet
and teacher who would lead the world into a new era of global
peace. In 1863 a follower of the Bab named Mirza H’usayn
Ali Nuri, whose father was an Iranian nobleman, declared that
he himself was that prophet and teacher. He took the title
Baha’u’llah, which translates to “the glory of God,” and was
the leader to whom the Bab’s followers turned after the Bab’s
execution.
The Babis were still being tortured and killed when
Baha’u’llah took charge of the Bab’s faithful, and he was
arrested and severely beaten many times. It was while
imprisoned in an underground pit that he had a vision
considered in the Baha’i Faith to be equivalent to the Burning
Bush that transformed Moses and to the enlightenment of
Siddhartha beneath the Bodhi Tree that elevated him to the
great Buddha:
While engulfed in tribulations I heard a most wondrous, a
most sweet voice, calling above My head. Turning My face, I
beheld a Maiden—the embodiment of the remembrance of the
name of My Lord—suspended in the air before Me. So rejoiced
was she in her very soul that her countenance shone with the
ornament of the good-pleasure of God, and her cheeks glowed
with the brightness of the All-Merciful. Betwixt earth and
heaven she was raising a call which captivated the hearts and
minds of men. She was imparting to both My inward and outer
being tidings which rejoiced My soul, and the souls of God’s
honoured servants. Pointing with her finger unto My head, she
addressed all who are in heaven and all who are on earth,
saying: “By God! This is the Best-Beloved of the worlds, and
yet ye comprehend not. This is the Beauty of God amongst you,
and the power of His sovereignty within you, could ye but
understand. This is the Mystery of God and His Treasure, the
Cause of God and His glory unto all who are in the kingdoms
of Revelation and of creation, if ye be of them that perceive.”
—from God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi
Before he died in 1892, Baha’u’llah had created the Baha’i
Faith based on the teachings of the Bab. The Baha’is believe
in one God, the Supreme Being who sent such divine teachers
and prophets as Buddha, Abraham, Jesus, Moses, Krishna,
Zarathustra, and Muhammad—in addition to the Bab and
Baha’u’llah—to educate humankind on the religious
revelations that will guide “an ever-advancing civilization.”
They believe in unity, expressed in Baha’u’llah’s writings with
the statement that “the earth is but one country, and mankind
its citizens.” This global civilization must and will include
such principles as the total elimination of prejudice; a uniting
of the world’s great religions based on the fact that they share
one omnipotent Source; elimination of both extreme poverty
and extreme wealth; mandated worldwide education; a
cooperative harmony among the religious and scientific
communities; and the teaching that every person is responsible
for their own search for truth and wisdom.
The Baha’i belief about “sin” has nothing to do with an
external evil power or even necessarily with the concepts of
“right” and “wrong.” Instead, sin is anything that interferes
with spiritual progress, while right or good is anything that is
helpful and encouraging to spiritual progress. One of the
greatest hindrances to spiritual progress, they believe, is pride,
since it creates illusions of overimportance and superiority
over other people, neither of which perpetuates God’s intended
global unity. Salvation doesn’t involve God’s judgment but
instead is a journey toward nearness to God, who is the only
source of true, complete happiness. Nearness to God is the
Baha’i definition of “heaven,” which they don’t believe is an
actual physical place, and “hell” is the soul existing in distance
from Him through its own ill-conceived choices.
The general Baha’i belief about the end of the world is that
there will be no literal cataclysmic destruction of this planet
but that instead there will be a major global transformation to
the divine unity God intended when He created us. This
transformation began in the middle of the nineteenth century,
when the Prophetic Cycle evolved into the Cycle of
Fulfillment—the era in which the apocalyptic prophecies of
the world’s great religions would be fulfilled and God’s
kingdom would come to pass.
“One day the earth will be changed to a different earth, and
so will be the heavens,” the Baha’i scriptures read. “And the
earth shineth with the light of her Lord … Praise be to Allah,
Who hath fulfilled His promise unto us and hath made us
inherit the earth.” And from the tablets of Baha’u’llah, “The
day is approaching when we will have rolled up the world and
all that is therein, and spread out a new Order in its stead. The
day is approaching when [civilization’s] flame will devour the
cities, when the tongue of Grandeur will proclaim: ‘The
Kingdom is God’s, the Almighty, the All-Praised. ’ ”
The Baha’i Faith is one of the world’s most widespread
religions, with more than six million followers, or adherents,
worshipping from India to Iran to Vietnam to the United States
to the Baha’i headquarters in Haifa, Israel.
Jehovah’s Witnesses
TEOTWAWKI. An acronym for The End Of The World As
We Know It. The Watchtower Society, founded in the early
1870s by Charles Taze Russell, predicted a variety of dates for
TEOTWAWKI. Not once have their predictions been accurate,
so they’ve now begun stating simply that it will occur “in the
near future.”
Also known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Watchtower
Society believes that The End Of The World As We Know It—
which they actually prefer to call “the conclusion of a system
of things”—will be heralded by Jesus Christ reappearing to
claim his kingdom on Earth. Other biblical prophets, including
Abraham, Jacob, Elijah, and Isaac, will be resurrected to
participate in the glorious perfecting of humankind. God, in
the meantime, will wage the great war of Armageddon, a
global genocide in which billions of people will die. The only
survivors of God’s war will be adults who are in good standing
with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which by definition requires
obedience to the teachings of Pastor Charles Russell. Whether
or not children and adults who are mentally and
psychologically challenged survive the genocide will be God’s
decision on a case-by-case basis. Disenfranchised Jehovah’s
Witnesses, the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Buddhists,
Hindus, Muslims—in other words, all other religions—will be
eliminated and never experience the Rapture of ascending to
meet Jesus in the clouds.
Pastor Russell, as he was called by his followers, never
claimed to be the messiah and, for that matter, never claimed
to have founded a religion. Instead, he considered himself to
be utterly and wholly committed to God’s service and, because
of that, he was granted divine permission to fully understand
the Bible and to fulfill the Lord’s promise that the devoutly
obedient, restored to the perfection of mind, body, and
character, will spend eternity in paradise.
Pastor Russell’s intensive studies and interpretations of the
Bible, combined with his studies of such spiritually historic
wonders as the Great Pyramid, resulted in a variety of
predictions about the date of Armageddon, or TEOTWAWKI.
At the core of his calculations was Daniel 4:13-16:
I saw in the visions of my head on my bed, and, behold, a
watcher and a holy one came down from the sky. He cried
aloud, and said thus, “Hew down the tree, and cut off its
branches, shake off its leaves, and scatter its fruit: let the
animals get away from under it, and the fowls from its
branches. Nevertheless leave the stump of its roots in the
earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass
of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of the sky: and let
his portion be with the animals in the grass of the earth: let his
heart be changed from man’s, and let an animal’s heart be
given to him; and let seven times pass over him.”
Pastor Russell interpreted the word time in that passage to
be equal to 360 days. Seven “times” gave him a total of 2,520
days, which he translated to actually mean 2,520 years. Using
607 BCE as a start date and adding 2,520 years, Pastor Russell
arrived at the conclusion that TEOTWAWKI would happen in
October of 1914. The Watchtower Bible, written in the late
1800s, states, “The final end of the kingdoms of this world,
and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be
accomplished by the end of A.D. 1914.”
Obviously 1914 came and went without God exterminating
billions of people. Still believing in Pastor Russell’s prophecy
about its being a significant year, the Watchtower Society
simply redefined its importance. The End Of The World As
We Know It would undoubtedly be preceded by a series of
transitional events, rather than a mass genocide and the
reappearance of Jesus Christ on Earth happening with no
prelude at all, and what more likely prelude to the war of
Armageddon than 1914, the start of World War I? And with
Pastor Russell’s statement that those transitional events could
take a number of years to occur, the date of the ultimate
Armageddon was moved to 1915 and then 1918.
Pastor Russell passed away in 1916, and the newly
appointed president of the Watchtower Society, J. E.
Rutherford, decided to make a few adjustments in Pastor
Russell’s calculations and prophecies. The Jehovah’s
Witnesses had come to accept it as fact “beyond a doubt” that
Jesus Christ appeared on Earth in 1874. Working both
backward and forward from that date, with the help of the
Bible and other spiritually charged sources on earth,
Rutherford arrived at the conclusion that Pastor Russell’s
initial TEOTWAWKI date of 1914 could reliably be changed
to 1925. Not that he was ready to stake his reputation on it,
though—as New Year’s Day of 1925 approached, he wrote,
“The year 1925 is a date definitely and clearly marked in the
Scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914; but it would
be presumptuous on the part of any faithful follower of the
Lord to assume just what the Lord is going to do during that
year.”
It goes without saying that the Lord clearly decided not to
commit mass genocide in 1925 either. Undeterred, the
Jehovah’s Witnesses kept right on calculating their way to
such TEOTWAWKI years as 1932 and 1966, and then arriving
with some certainty on the fall of 1975. “Our chronology,”
they wrote in the Watchtower publication, “which is
reasonably accurate (but admittedly not infallible) , at best
only points to the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years of
man’s existence on earth.”
Obviously, 1975 wasn’t it either, which sent the Jehovah’s
Witnesses back to their calculations and resources. And in
Psalms 90:9- 10 they found a possible clue:
For all our days pass away under thy wrath, our years come to
an end like a sigh. The years of our life are threescore and ten,
or even by reason of strength fourscore.
Fourscore, they reasoned, translates to eighty years. And the
beginning of TEOTWAWKI was still believed to be 1914.
Eighty years from 1914, then, or 1994, was apparently the date
they’d been looking for when Armageddon would occur. The
church leaders were understandably reluctant to make any
dramatic announcements about the significance of 1994, and,
as we all know now, even we non-Jehovah’s Witnesses
survived that year as well.
To this day the devout membership of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, who number more than six million worldwide,
continues to believe that the end of the world is quickly
approaching and to behave accordingly: since they can only be
saved from extermination in God’s mass genocide by being
His perpetually active witnesses, they preach His word and the
impending TEOTWAWKI each and every day in His service.
The Mormons: The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints
In the book of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 35-36, Jesus says:
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not
pass away. But of that day and hour knowest no man, no, not
even the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
That biblical passage may be the reason why some
religions, including the Latter-day Saints, believe in the
inevitable Second Coming of Christ and the ensuing end of the
world but avoid predicting the exact date or year when it will
happen. In the case of the Latter-day Saints, also known as the
Mormons, they teach that we’re now living the last days of life
on this earth, and that our only way to prepare is to watch for
but not be afraid of the signs that Armageddon is at hand.
According to Mormon history, it was 1823 when an
eighteen-year-old Vermont boy named Joseph Smith was
visited by the angel Moroni, who told him about the existence
and location of a series of Golden Plates. The plates, written in
a form of hieroglyphics and translated by Smith with Moroni’s
help, became the Book of Mormon. In 1830, at the age of
twenty-five, Joseph Smith, with his published Book of
Mormon in hand, founded what would become the Mormon
Church and settled with his followers in Kirtland, Ohio, and
subsequently in Nauvoo, Illinois.
In June of 1844 Joseph Smith was killed, attacked by an
angry mob in Carthage, Illinois, who disapproved of his claim
of having contact with the dead. Brigham Young, a member of
Smith’s Council of Twelve Apostles, succeeded Joseph Smith
as the leader of the Mormon Church and, in 1846, led the
Mormons west from Illinois to a site in Utah that became Salt
Lake City.
The Latter-day Saints believe that their church leaders are
prophets, and that those prophets are given ongoing
information from God. Included in that information is the
concept that God gave the earth seven thousand years to
survive when He created it, and that we’re currently existing in
about its six thousandth year. Preceding the Second Coming of
Christ in the seven thousandth year, the earth will be plagued
by wars, earthquakes and other natural disasters, global
epidemics, and economic collapse.
The Mormon temple in Salt Lake City features two large
doors facing east, which are considered sacrosanct and are
never used. Mormons believe that when Jesus comes to Earth
again he will enter through those hallowed doors, initiating a
thousand years of peace called the Millennium. During the
Millennium the wicked will be destroyed, while the righteous,
led by Jesus, will live in peace on this earth. The righteous
who have died throughout the ages will be resurrected, or, in
the language of the Latter-day Saints, “caught up to meet
him.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17) In fact, by the end of the
Millennium, everyone including the wicked will be
resurrected. Only those who insist on denying the sanctity of
Christ will be denied their place in heaven. Instead, they’ll be
banished to a place called the Outer Darkness, which is the
ultimate destination of Satan.
According to the Latter-day Saints, among the specific signs
that will indicate the impending return of Jesus are the
darkening of the sun and moon, with resulting darkness
covering the earth; Israel gathering power; all nations
gathering to do battle against Jerusalem; two prophets being
killed and then resurrected in Jerusalem; and Babylon rising
and falling.
It’s worth adding that more than thirteen million Mormons
around the world are currently keeping an eye out for the signs
of the Second Coming, and there’s every reason to believe
they’ll be compassionate enough to warn the rest of us when
the time comes.
The Rastafarians
In the early 1900s a Jamaican Christian named Marcus Garvey
founded the African Orthodox Church to provide his
countrymen with an alternative to white churches. An activist
leader and nationalist, Garvey spoke with eloquent passion
about a movement called Back to Africa, or an exodus to the
“homeland” of Ethiopia, and the crowning of a king in Africa
who would be revealed as the black messiah.
In 1930, Leonard Howell, another Jamaican, initiated a
religious movement based on Marcus Garvey’s beliefs (to
Garvey’s great displeasure, by all accounts). This movement
held that Marcus Garvey was a full-fledged prophet and that
Haile Selassie, the newly crowned Ethiopian emperor, was the
black messiah, the king of kings and lord of lords, that Garvey
had prophesied. Selassie was formerly known as Ras Tafari
Markonnen, and those who worshipped him as the Second
Coming of Christ began calling themselves the Rastafari,
which colloquially evolved into the name Rastafarians.
The Rastas, as they’re also called, don’t actually consider
their belief system a religion. Instead, they consider it an
ideology, simply a way of life. There are no clergy, and there
are no actual churches. They typically worship in small
gatherings in the privacy of their homes, studying their Holy
Piby, an edited version of the Christian and Hebrew bibles.
The other book of intense importance to the Rastafarians is
called the Kebra Negast, which outlines the lineage that, in
their opinion, establishes Haile Selassie as a direct descendant
of King Solomon. They strongly believe in the Hebrew Ten
Commandments, the importance of simplicity and purity, the
potential corruption of materialism, and the simultaneous
worship and dread of Jah, their name for God.
Rastafarians are prohibited from interfering with the natural
growth and course of their hair—classic Rastafarian
dreadlocks are a natural progression rather than a cultured,
manufactured style. The orthodox diet is pure and free of
additives and preservatives, and they consume no tobacco or
alcohol or coffee, nor salt, seafood, and meat of any kind.
Their famous or infamous relationship with marijuana,
which they call ganja, is based on their belief that it aids them
in an enlightened knowledge of Jah’s true will. A typical
gathering of the faithful will invariably include the passing of
a ceremonial pipe, known to Rastafarians as the Chalice,
which is filled with the sacramental ganja. The most
comparable ritual in the Christian world is the sacrament of
Communion.
In 1966, Haile Selassie paid a visit to Jamaica to offer an
audience to his faithful believers. He died in 1980, although
it’s not an uncommon Rastafarian belief that his death never
really happened and instead he left this earth very much alive
and ascended to heaven. Both Selassie’s birthday and the date
of his arrival in Jamaica are celebrated as important holidays.
As for Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa
movement/prophecy, Emperor Selassie told his Jamaican
worshippers that they shouldn’t return to Africa until Jamaica
was liberated.
Rastafarians have created their own fascinating beliefs
about the Apocalypse. The end of days, in their view, began in
1930, when Haile Selassie was crowned Ethiopia’s emperor.
Very soon he’ll reveal himself as the true king of kings and
proclaim a day of judgment. The forces of good and evil will
collide, and Selassie, the incarnate God, will gather the
righteous and return with them to Zion, the promised land,
where they’ll live eternally in a paradise where there is no
oppression, no wickedness, and none of the earthly
materialistic corruption in present society, which they refer to
as Babylon.
The late great reggae musician Bob Marley is generally
credited with bringing the Rastafari movement to mainstream
culture following his conversion to it in 1967. You’re probably
more familiar with his music than you might think—the song
for the television commercial “Come to Jamaica” that begins
“One love, one heart” is a Bob Marley composition called
“One Love.” In it are lyrics that beautifully capsulize the
Rastafarian view of the end of days:
Let’s get together
to fight this Holy Armageddon,
so when the man comes
there will be no, no doom.
Zoroastrianism
It was around 8000 BC that a man named Zarathustra was
born in an area of the world we now know as Iran. His
followers are called Zoroastrians, and a legion of theological
scholars considers Zoroastrianism to be the predecessor and
core of contemporary world religions. With good reason, I
might add.
Zarathustra is credited with being the first prophet to
embrace and advocate the concept that there is one and only
one God, or monotheism. His name for this one God, this
Supreme Being, was Ahura Mazda, a combination of words
that translate to “Lord Creator” and “Supremely Wise.” He
also believed, several millennia before the birth of Jesus, that a
messiah was coming who would be born to a virgin.
Zarathustra believed that Ahura Mazda, or God, created
humankind with the freedom to choose throughout life
between good and evil, and with the obligation to face the
consequences of those choices. In other words, we humans are
the cause of the good and the evil in our lives. No more
blaming it on Ahura Mazda, and certainly no blaming it on an
evil being of some kind—Zarathustra didn’t believe in Satan,
or the devil.
He believed that our purpose in life is to participate in
renewing the world as it progresses toward perfection. Just as
the way to combat darkness is by spreading light, and the way
to fight evil is by spreading goodness, the way to fight hatred
is by spreading love and reflecting the essence of God that is
our birthright. Each of us possesses the divine within
ourselves, he preached, and it is our obligation to honor and
act on our own divinity by respecting the natural and moral
laws of the universe.
Asha is the fundamental law of the universe, the natural
course and pattern of heavens, the four seasons, the reliable
repetition of such phenomena as the tides, the setting of the
sun, and the rising of the moon. Everything in physical
creation is governed by that fundamental law, Ahura Mazda’s
divine plan and order. To denigrate that law is to denigrate
what Ahura Mazda created, which is to denigrate Ahura
Mazda Himself.
The Zoroastrian concept of the battle between opposite
forces on Earth isn’t limited to the classic good versus evil
conflict. The battle of opposites that disrupts the order of
Ahura Mazda’s creations, which is called druj—the ongoing
battle of asha versus druj, in other words—extends to lies
versus truth, chaos versus order, the destruction of the planet
versus creation, love versus hate, war versus peace, and so on.
Zarathustra taught that when we leave life on Earth, our
essence departs our body on the fourth day after death. If
we’ve made good, God-centered choices throughout our lives,
treating ourselves and others with love, compassion, and
thoughtfulness, our essence goes to the House of Songs, often
called the Realm of Light. If we’ve lived in opposition to the
natural and moral laws of the universe Ahura Mazda created,
our essence is destined for the Realm of Darkness and
Separation. Zarathustra didn’t believe the Realm of Light and
the Realm of Darkness and Separation are actual physical
places but instead that they’re eternal states of either oneness
with or separation from Ahura Mazda.
Zarathustra’s concept of the end of the world is thought to
be the first recorded doomsday prophecy in history, dated at
around 500 BC. The final days, according to Zoroastrian
scripture Zand-i Vohuman Yasht, would commence “at the end
of the tenth hundredth winter … The sun is more unseen …
The year, month and day are shorter … The earth is more
barren, and the crop will not yield the seed … Men become
more deceitful and more given to vile practices. They have no
gratitude.”
There will be a final great battle between good and evil.
Good will triumph, and Ahura Mazda will purify the earth
with molten metal and a divine, cleansing fire. (Zoroastrians
don’t consider fire itself to be sacred, but it’s intensely
important to their religion as a symbol of Ahura Mazda’s
power, in much the same way the crucifix is intensely
important to Christians.) Ahura Mazda will then begin His
judgment of every soul on earth. Consistent with Zarathustra’s
belief that Ahura Mazda is ultimately a compassionate deity
who created good but not evil, even those deemed to be evil,
or sinners, are not banished to an eternity of damnation but
instead face three days of punishment, after which they’re
forgiven and resurrected. All suffering on Earth will end, and
there will be perfection throughout the world once Ahura
Mazda’s great cleansing has taken place.
There are thought to be approximately three million
Zoroastrians currently practicing this beautiful faith
throughout the world.
Pentecostalism
In 1901, at a prayer meeting at the Bethel Bible College in
Topeka, Kansas, a woman named Agnes Ozman began
spontaneously speaking in tongues, or languages not known to
the speaker. The Reverend Charles Fox Parham, who was
leading the prayer meeting, interpreted that phenomenon as
biblical evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, based on
Acts 2:1-5:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in
one place, and suddenly a sound came from heaven like the
rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they
were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire,
distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
The Reverend Parham also cited Acts 2:38-39 as one of the
foundations of his beliefs:
And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your
sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the
promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far
off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
The Reverend Parham moved on from Topeka to undertake
a revival meeting ministry and continue his teaching. One of
his students in Houston, Texas, was an African American
named William J. Seymour, who was allowed to sit outside the
segregated room to listen to the Reverend Parham.
William Seymour relocated to Los Angeles and, on April
12, 1906, claimed that he’d been filled with and overwhelmed
by the Holy Ghost. A small group of followers who’d met Mr.
Seymour at the home of a gentleman named Edward Lee,
rented an abandoned church on Azusa Street and organized
themselves as the Apostolic Faith Church. The vast majority
of today’s traditional Pentecostal denominations credit
William Seymour and his Azusa Street Revival as the
birthplace of their church.
The Old Testament Pentecost originated after the Israelites’
exodus from Egypt, when it was also called the Feast of
Harvest. It was observed fifty days after the cutting of the first
grain offering after the Passover—hence the origin of the word
pentecost, which in Greek means to “fifty count.” The New
Testament Pentecost occurred fifty days after the Crucifixion
of Jesus Christ.
Some Pentecostals believe that speaking in tongues is the
sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit but isn’t a requisite of
salvation. Others emphasize the need to repent and be baptized
in Jesus’s name and then receive the Holy Spirit. All
Pentecostals believe, though, that salvation isn’t possible
without receiving the Holy Spirit.
The work of the Holy Spirit is an essential foundation of the
Pentecostal faith. It’s not an uncommon Christian belief that
the Holy Spirit is within everyone who’s been saved. But
Pentecostals, unlike most traditional Christian denominations,
also believe that the Holy Spirit is more deeply entrenched
within those who’ve experienced baptism, bringing them to a
closer relationship with God and empowering them for His
service. The Holy Spirit can also “sanctify,” which is an act of
grace in which the effects of past sins are neutralized and the
human tendency toward temptation is eliminated. According
to the Pentecostal faith, salvation is only available to those
who are genuinely repentant for their sins and worship Jesus
as their savior, and Pentecostals believe in the Bible as the
ultimate, divine, infallible authority.
Interpreting the Bible literally, the Pentecostal faith keeps a
vigilant watch for signs of the impending end of the world as
prophesied in the book of Revelation, and they feel that the
twenty-first century is filled with those signs. They cite, for
example, the international movement to give each citizen of
each country a national identification card that will hold all of
their personal data, and a technology called RFID (radio
frequency identification) in which a microchip containing
Social Security numbers, medical records, etc., would be
implanted under every citizen’s skin. These developments,
they believe, might easily be the pre-apocalyptic warnings
contained in Revelation 13:16-17:
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free
and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their
foreheads; and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had
the mark.
Other signs Pentecostals point to in today’s world that were
biblically prophesied as the nearing of the end of days include
Putin’s power in Russia, the growing tension between Syria
and Israel, international terrorism, Iran’s nuclear program, the
declining value of the U.S. dollar, the growth of China’s
economic and military power, and the conspicuous changes in
global weather.
In other words, as far as many Pentecostals are concerned,
we don’t need to worry that the end-times are coming—
they’re already here.
The Baptist Church
While some believe that the Baptist Church originated in
seventeenth-century England as a result of the PuritanSeparatist movement in the Church of England, many others
believe that it was, in essence, founded by Jesus and that it has
existed in perpetuity ever since. Their source for the perpetuity
belief is Jesus’s proclamation in Matthew 16:18:
And on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of
death shall not prevail against it.
But whatever its origins, there are general beliefs that form
the foundation of the Baptist Church and most of its
denominations, among which are that:
• the Bible was written by men with God’s inspiration and
that it reveals the principles that should guide all
human beliefs and conduct;
• there is only one true God, the Creator and Ruler of
heaven and earth; and that the trinity is created by God
the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost;
• humankind was created in perfection but fell from grace
voluntarily by committing the Original Sin in the
Garden of Eden;
• Jesus was born of Mary, who was a virgin;
• Jesus died for our sins, was resurrected, and is
enthroned beside His Father in heaven;
• the Bible makes salvation available to everyone if
they’ll be born again through genuine repentance and
faith, which are both sacred duties and inseparable
graces;
• Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a
believer and that it is a prerequisite to full membership
in the church;
• the Four Freedoms put into words by Baptist historian
Walter B. Shurden are to be honored: soul freedom
(meaning that the soul is capable of making its own
decisions regarding faith); church freedom (there
should be no outside interference in the practices of
local churches); Bible freedom (with the help of the
most reliable resources available, each individual is
entitled to their own interpretation of the Bible); and
religious freedom (each person is free to choose their
own religion, or their own lack of one).
In 1833, the Reverend John Newton Brown drew up a
document called the New Hampshire Confession of Faith,
based on which Baptists could organize a missionary society.
There have been some revisions during the 175 years since the
Confession of Faith was originally written, but it’s still widely
accepted, and it concludes with a clear, concise statement of
Baptist beliefs about the end of days:
We believe that the end of the world is approaching; that at the
last day Christ will descend from heaven, and raise the dead
from the grave to final retribution; that a solemn separation
will then take place; that the wicked will be adjudged to
endless punishment, and the righteous to endless joy; and that
this judgment will fix forever the final state of men in heaven
or hell, or principles of righteousness.
Jainism
The religion of Jainism, with a current worldwide membership
thought to exceed twelve million, originated in ancient India,
probably around the sixth century BC. Its roots are still being
traced to this day as India’s oldest writings continue to be
discovered and translated, but it’s a commonly held belief that
Jainism was one of the driving forces behind the inception of
Buddhism. Unlike Buddhism, though, it has no single founder,
and its doctrines, or truths, evolved and were revealed by a
series of “tirthankars,” or teachers. Possibly the last and most
devout of those teachers was Vardhamana Mahavira, born in
599 BC. He is sometimes credited with starting Jainism, but
historians find it far more likely that the religion had already
been in existence for centuries when Mahavira came along and
devoted his life to spreading the word.
Jains believe that all living beings, both human and
nonhuman, have eternal souls, and that all souls are equal.
They consider killing another human being, no matter what the
circumstance, to be an act of unspeakable horror, and they
require that every person who practices Jainism, from the
monks and the nuns to the general membership, be strictly
vegetarian.
Their emphasis on the concept of karma, on responsibility
and consequence for their actions, is intensely important to the
Jains’ faith. Karma may or may not manifest itself in the same
lifetime as the action that created it, but there’s no escaping it,
and sowing what we reap includes physical, verbal, and mental
acts.
Jainism teaches that energies, called tapas, are created by
the interaction of the living with the nonliving, and these
energies are the engine that drives the constant cycle of birth,
death, and rebirth. Jains call that cycle samsara. The ultimate
goal in Jainism is to lead a life of such exemplary discipline
that they can transcend samsara, and the unavoidable hardship
and sorrow of it, and live in the blissful perfection of moksha,
the Jains’ word for nirvana, or heaven.
There is a “three-jewel” path leading to moksha: right
belief, right knowledge, and right conduct. Included in those
jewels are five essential laws and abstinences:
• nonviolence, called ahimsa
• truthfulness, called satya
• chastity, called brahmacarya (total celibacy for the Jain
monks and nuns, total chastity outside one’s marriage
for the laity)
• abstinence from stealing, called asteya
• abstinence from greed/materialism, called aparigraha
Jainism essentially perceives time as a full circle, or two
connected half circles or cycles. Very basically, picture a clock.
The Utsarpinis, or Progressive Time Cycle, would correspond
to the hours between 6:00 and 12:00, when humankind
evolves from its worst to its best. The closer to 12:00 the cycle
progresses, the happier, healthier, stronger, more ethical, and
more spiritual we become. Then, from 12:00 back to 6:00, the
Avsarpinis, or Regressive Time Cycle, takes over, the
inevitable descent from our best to our worst. The whole circle
is divided into six Aras, or periods of unequal length.
According to Jainism, we’re currently in the fifth Ara of the
Avsarpini or Regressive phase, a gradual deterioration of
human values and spiritualism, with almost twenty millennia
to go before the Utsarpini /Progressive phase begins again.
With this cyclical approach to life, it makes complete sense
that the Jains believe the universe was uncreated and that it,
and the souls ( jivas) that dwell in it, last for eternity—until
and unless they make their way to the heaven of moksha. Their
view of the end of days, then, would be cause for celebration,
since it would involve nothing more and nothing less than the
liberation of the soul/jiva from the perpetual cycle of birth,
death, and rebirth, filled with pain and karmic repercussions,
and the ultimate achievement of Jainism: an eternity of bliss in
moksha.
An illustration of the interaction of the principles of Jainism
and its variation on each individual’s “end of days” is offered
in a refreshingly simple little story:
A man crafts a small wooden boat to take him from one side
of a great river to the other. (The man represents jiva, or the
soul, while the boat represents nonliving things, called ajiva.)
He’s under way in his journey when the boat begins to leak.
(The rushing in of water represents the deluge of karma on the
soul, or asrava, and the water’s accumulation in the boat is the
threatening bondage of karma, called bandha.) The man
promptly plugs the leak and begins bailing the water out of his
boat. (The plug represents putting a stop to the onrush of
karma, called samvara, and getting rid of the water is the
casting aside of karma, known as nirjara.)
Successful in his efforts, the man crosses the river and
safely reaches his destination, moksha, the freedom and bliss
of eternal salvation.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Prophets Speak on the End of Days
If there’s any one thing that postbiblical prophets have in
common beyond the obvious gift of prophecy, it’s the fact that
they have virtually nothing in common. There’s no such thing
as a typical prophet, no apparent group God singles out to be
recipients of this particular talent, except perhaps a willingness
to share their visions with the general public. This chapter,
which covers only a tiny cross section of significant
“doomsday prophets,” includes three Russians—a flamboyant
seer, a “mad monk,” and a physician; two British authors; a
genius mathematician and scientist; and a modest Kentucky
photographer. They all have established track records when it
comes to the accuracy of their prophecies, and I specifically
selected them because I happen to find them particularly
fascinating. But you’ll notice that even among this small,
select group, there’s no consensus on the when, how, or even if
of the end of days.
Edgar Cayce
There are few psychics/prophets/clairvoyants who have
fascinated me more, and whose body of work I’ve found more
compelling, than Edgar Cayce. His life began in 1877. He was
a Kentucky farm boy whose formal education ended with
grammar school. And by the time of his death in 1945, he’d
gained unsolicited worldwide renown as “The Sleeping
Prophet,” accomplishing healings, spiritual and metaphysical
dictations, and prophecies while in a deep, self-induced,
trancelike sleep, none of which he was able to recall when he
was awake.
His gifts of prophecy and clairvoyance appeared without
warning. Cayce was in his early twenties, making a modest
living as a photographer, when an illness caused him to lose
his voice. After a year of unsuccessful medical treatments, he
took a friend’s advice to be treated by a hypnotist.
At his first session with a local hypnotist, Cayce suggested
that, rather than the hypnotist going to the effort of inducing
sleep, it would be more efficient if he put himself to sleep,
which he’d discovered years earlier he was able to do with
ease. Once he was in a deep trance, Cayce astonished his
friend and the hypnotist by launching into a precise description
and diagnosis of the condition that had taken his voice away.
The grammar school graduate, who was as uninterested in
reading as he was in formal education, displayed the
anatomical expertise of a skilled physician as he spelled out a
list of complex physiological instructions for the hypnotist to
give him while he was under. The hypnotist did as he was told,
following Cayce’s script of suggestions about vocal cords
relaxing and arteries opening to restore oxygen and blood to
specific paralyzed muscles. And Cayce awoke from that
session with his voice fully restored.
Word spread quickly about Edgar Cayce’s gift for
diagnosing and curing illnesses while he “slept,” and he
immediately began receiving letters and personal visits from
clients throughout the country wanting his help with illnesses
of their own. His initial reaction was to decline their requests
—he was uneducated, he argued, and inadequate to be given
such awesome responsibility. And the fact that when he was
awake he had no memory of the expertise he demonstrated
when he was in a trance made it even more impossible to
believe that his cures were worth relying on. But the one thing
he couldn’t argue with was that he’d somehow managed to
cure himself, with a hypnotist’s help, when the medical
community had failed for more than a year. So finally he came
to the conclusion that if he indeed had been given this gift, and
if he could use it to be of help to suffering people, it would be
reprehensible of him not to at least try.
Cayce’s career of giving “physical” readings continued
throughout his life. His wife, Gertrude, would give him the
only information he allowed for each reading: the subject’s
name, address, and their exact location at the agreed-upon time
of the reading. Cayce would ease himself into a trance and
signal that he was ready to begin with the words, “Yes, we
have the body.” Gertrude would read questions to him from
the subject’s letter, and his secretary, Gladys Davis, would sit
nearby, recording the reading in shorthand.
One day in 1923, Edgar Cayce, who was still continuing his
photography career at that time, happened to meet a printer
named Arthur Lammers in the course of his work. Lammers
was mesmerized by the world of metaphysics and by Cayce’s
gift, and he asked for a reading unlike any Cayce had done
before: a reading in which, while Cayce was under, Lammers
would ask him questions about life, death, the afterlife, the
nature of the soul, the future, anything that occurred to him
along those spiritually oriented lines, to see what Cayce’s
“sleeping” mind would answer.
That was the inception of more than two thousand sessions
that came to be called “life readings,” in which Cayce
discussed the metaphysical aspects of his clients’ lives and of
life in general. The philosophies he offered with profound
expertise and depth were completely contrary to his
conservative Protestant upbringing, but finally, through these
readings, he arrived at an inescapable belief in reincarnation
and an awareness that his answers were coming not from him
but through him. He was sure he was being given information
from the subconscious minds of his subjects, and from the
Akashic Records—the collective, infinite memories and
histories of every thought, moment, word, and event in the
eternity of the universe.
In his lifetime Edgar Cayce accomplished more than
fourteen thousand readings, and transcripts of those readings
have provided the foundation of more than three hundred
books about his work. Inevitably, many of those readings
involved the future of humankind, of this planet, and of an
eventual Apocalypse.
Cayce predicted a series of natural disasters, wars,
economic catastrophes, and great civil unrest, all of which will
pave the way for the kingdom of God to rule the earth, with
sacred peace and enlightenment thriving throughout humanity.
Essential to the prophecies about cataclysmic events was
Cayce’s belief that these events could be avoided if humankind
would only change its ways. Prophecies, he believed, have the
potential to be enormously useful if people will respond to
them as warnings rather than messages of inevitable,
irreversible futility.
Edgar Cayce’s visions for the future and for the Second
Coming include:
• Predicted in the late 1920s: A shift in the earth’s poles
around the year 2000, due to changes in the earth’s
surface. (NASA confirms that in 1998, as polar ice
caps melted, ocean currents began flowing toward the
equator, which contributed to a continuing change in
our planet’s magnetic field.)
• “If there are greater activities in Vesuvius or Pelee
(volcanoes) than the southern coast of California and
the areas between Salt Lake and the southern portions
of Nevada, we may expect, within the three months
following same, inundation by the earthquakes. But
these are to be more in the Southern than the Northern
hemisphere.”
• “Land will appear in the Atlantic (the lost continent of
Atlantis) and the Pacific (the lost continent of
Lemuria). And what is the coast line now of many a
land will be the bed of the ocean. Even many battle
fields of the present will be ocean, will be the seas, the
bays, the lands over which The New World Order will
carry on their trade as one with another. ”
• “The earth will be broken up in the western portion of
America.”
• “The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea.”
• “Portions of the now east coast of New York, or New
York City itself, will in the main disappear. There will
be another generation, though, here; while the southern
portions of Carolina, Georgia—these will disappear.”
• “Strifes will arise through the period. Watch for them
near the Davis Strait (between Greenland and Canada)
in the attempts there for the keeping of the life line to
land open. Watch for them in Libya and in Egypt, in
Ankara and in Syria, through the straits above those
areas above Australia, in the Indian Ocean and the
Persian Gulf.”
• “As has been promised through the prophets and the
sages, the time [of the day of the Lord] has been and is
being fulfilled in this day and generation. The Lord,
then, will come, ‘even as ye have seen Him go’ (Acts
1:11), when those who are His have made the way
clear, passable for Him to come. He shall come as ye
have seen Him go, in the body He occupied in Galilee.
The body He formed, that was crucified on the cross.
Read His promises in that ye have written of His
words, ‘He shall rule for a thousand years. Then shall
Satan be loosed again for a season.’ (Revelation 20:6-
7)”
• And in the wake of a whole procession of dramatic
changes in the earth, some of which we’ve mentioned
here, as we prepare for the Second Coming of Christ,
“A new order of conditions is to arise; there must be a
purging in high places as well as low; and there must
be the greater consideration of the individual, so that
each soul is being his brother’s keeper. Then certain
circumstances will arise in the political, the economic,
and a whole relationship to which a leveling will occur,
or a greater comprehension of the need for it … This
America of ours, hardly a new Atlantis, will have
another thousand years of peace, another Millennium
… And then the deeds, the prayers of the faithful, will
glorify the Father as peace and love will reign for those
who love the Lord.”
Sir Isaac Newton
The father of modern physics, the discoverer of the theory of
gravitation and the theory of optics and probably the greatest
mathematical mind in history, Isaac Newton was born on
Christmas Day, 1642, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England.
His father died three months before Isaac’s birth, and when
Isaac was three his mother left him with his grandmother
while she moved away to live with her new husband. She
returned eight years later, after which Isaac was sent away to
grammar school. While there, he lived with the local
apothecary in Grantham, where his fascination with chemicals,
and with science in general, took root.
At seventeen he came home to follow in his late father’s
footsteps as a farmer. He couldn’t have been more of a failure
at farming, so instead he made his way to Cambridge, where
his genius for mathematics and the sciences became apparent.
In fact, his mentor at Cambridge, Isaac Barrow, resigned the
prestigious Lucasian professorship so that Isaac Newton could
have it instead. (Currently, the Lucasian professorship is held
by Stephen Hawking.)
Sir Isaac Newton went on, very famously, to invent
everything from the reflecting telescope to calculus, and to
permanently change the world’s view of everything from
astronomy to physics to gravity to motion to mechanics to
optics. His book, the Principia Mathematica , is still
considered to be the world’s greatest scientific work, and it
was published only after his friend Edmond Halley happened
to learn that Newton had written part one and put it in a drawer
ten years earlier.
While he was busily applying his genius to virtually every
earthly academic pursuit, he also began applying it to
theology, chronology, and the Bible, for which he developed a
lifelong passion. He was convinced that Christianity had
strayed from the teachings of Jesus and that the Bible is to be
read as literal truth. And he became especially fascinated with
the end of days as depicted both in Revelation and in the book
of Daniel, commonly considered to be the Revelation of the
Old Testament. His only book about the Bible, published six
years after his death in 1727, was Observations Upon the
Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, in which
he said:
The prophecies of Daniel and John should not be understood
till the time of the end: but that some should prophesy out of it
in an afflicted and mournful state for a long time, and that but
darkly, so as to convert but few. But in the very end, the
Prophecy should be so far interpreted so as to convince many.
Then saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge
shall be increased … If the general preaching of the Gospel be
approaching, it is for us and our posterity that these words
mainly belong: In the time of the end the wise shall
understand, but none of the wicked shall understand. Blessed
is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this
Prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein.
In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton wrote several letters regarding
the Apocalypse; his mathematical conclusion about when the
end of times would come, based on calculations found in
unspecified passages in the book of Daniel; and his prediction
that the Second Coming of Christ would follow worldwide
epidemics and wars, and that it would preceded a thousandyear reign on Earth by the saints themselves. These letters,
carefully preserved and collected over these three centuries,
came into the possession of the Israel National Library in
1969.
And in February of 2003 Sir Isaac Newton’s official
calculation regarding the end of the world, scribbled on a scrap
of paper, was revealed to the public for the first time.
The year, according to Newton, will be 2060.
He added:
It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner …
This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be,
but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who
are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so
bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their
predictions fail.
So there you have it. 2060. The date of the end of time,
calculated from biblical information by the most brilliant
mathematician the world has ever known, to do with as you
will.
Madame Helena Blavatsky
Madame Helena Blavatsky was a fascinating woman—fearless
adventurer, ardent student of the paranormal, sought-after
clairvoyant of dubious authenticity, cofounder of the
Theosophical Society for the study of spiritualism and the
occult sciences, and author of a book, The Secret Doctrine,
that confirmed her skills as a very gifted prophet. Some of her
most outspoken critics dismissed her as a complete fraud,
while Albert Einstein kept a copy of The Secret Doctrine on
his desk.
She was born in Russia in 1831. Her father was a soldier,
and her mother was a successful novelist. A hint of her
peculiar relationship with the truth can be found in the fact that
throughout her life she claimed that her mother died when
Helena was an infant, even though she was actually twelve
years old at the time of her mother’s death.
Helena was seventeen when she escaped a loveless threemonth marriage to a Russian general named Nicephore
Blavatsky, who was more than twice her age. She spent the
next ten years traveling. The specifics of those ten years vary
from one account to the next and will never be reliably
unraveled. But Helena’s version included two years of study
with the lama in Tibet, where admittance was not easily
granted in the 1800s, particularly to women.
She finally returned to Russia and to her husband, on the
condition that she be required to spend only a minimal amount
of time with him. She began holding seances in her
grandfather’s home, quickly attracting a cross section of
Russian intellectuals who were becoming increasingly
intrigued by the paranormal, and by Madame Helena
Blavatsky.
Her appeal obviously wasn’t limited to her skills as a
clairvoyant, since over the next few years she was
romantically involved with an Estonian spiritualist and a
married opera singer while still living with her husband. She
gave birth to a son, Yuri, who was deformed at birth, and none
of her lovers claimed paternity. His death at the age of five
devastated her and, she once wrote, destroyed her belief in the
Russian Orthodox God. She held on to some of her faith,
though, as evidenced in a subsequent statement that “there
were moments when I believed deeply … that the blood of
Christ had redeemed me.”
Money and clients for her occult pursuits were diminishing,
so Helena decided to travel again, this time to Odessa, to
Egypt, and to Paris, where she heard about the spiritualist
movement that was gaining momentum in the United States.
Sure that this was the new beginning she’d been searching for,
she boarded a steamship for New York City, arriving in July of
1873 with little more than a dime to her name.
She struggled for more than a year, barely making ends
meet with occasional séances and her job at a sweatshop. But
then, in October of 1974, her life changed dramatically when
she traveled to a remote farm in Vermont for the sole purpose
of introducing herself to Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. Colonel
Olcott was writing a series of research articles on a pair of
brothers who were conducting séances at the farm, and Helena
decided he was someone she wanted and needed to meet.
She stayed at the farm for ten days, conducting séances with
the Eddy brothers and making a very positive impression on
Colonel Olcott. He wrote several articles about her and was
delighted when she offered to translate them for publication in
Russia. Thanks to those articles and word of mouth, Madame
Helena Blavatsky’s fame began to spread throughout and
beyond New York. Of far more significance, her relationship
with Colonel Olcott blossomed into the founding of the
Theosophical Society in 1875, an organization that emphasizes
cultural understanding between Eastern and Western
philosophies, religions, and sciences and that continues to
thrive today.
Adding more controversy to an already controversial life,
she began claiming the appearance of a parade of manifested
spirits during séances. An infamous photograph was taken of
Madame Blavatsky seated in front of three of these manifested
spirits, whom she called her Ascended Masters: her personal
master, El Myora; Saint Germain, draped in an ermine cloak;
and her teacher, Kuthumi, through whom she claimed to have
channeled much of her written work, including The Secret
Doctrine.
With or without the help of Ascended Master Kuthumi,
Helena Blavatsky wrote The Secret Doctrine in 1888, and
there’s no denying the accuracy of many of the prophecies
recorded in that book. For example:
Between 1888 and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the
Veil of Nature, and materialistic science will receive a death
blow.
“Materialistic science” referred to scientists’ view at the
time that the world was composed of nothing more than its
material, visible, and tangible elements. That shortsighted
view changed forever when, in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen
discovered X-rays, exposing a whole new universe of realities
beyond the naked eye, and, in 1896, when Antoine Becquerel
discovered radioactivity.
The Secret Doctrine also included facts about the realities of
energy that were contrary to the beliefs of the majority of
scientists in the 1800s but came about after Helena Blavatsky
committed them to paper in 1888. To name a few, she
announced that:
• atoms could be divided. Eleven years later, in 1897, Sir
J. J. Thomson discovered the electron.
• atoms are perpetually in motion. Twelve years later, in
1900, Max Planck’s work laid the foundation for the
quantum theory of physics.
• matter and energy can be converted. Seventeen years
later, in 1905, Albert Einstein unveiled the theory of
relativity.
Her prophecies inevitably extended to the earth and its
geographical and spiritual future. She believed strongly, for
example, that the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria
would reemerge, and added:
The elevated ridge in the Atlantic basin, 9000 feet in height,
which runs from a point near the British Islands, first slopes
towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to
proceed in a south-easterly line toward the African coast …
This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent … Could it be
traced further, it would establish the reality of a submarine
horseshoe junction with a former continent in the Indian
Ocean … An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the
occult and religious mysteries taught [there], after the
submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some
12,000 years ago.
In March of 1996, Discover magazine published satellite
photographs of the areas she described more than a century
earlier. Discover explained the photographs as follows:
The Midatlantic Ridge snakes down the center of that ocean
off Greenland to the latitude of Cape Horn … Under South
Africa, the Southwest Indian Ridge shoots into the Indian
Ocean like a fizzling rocket, or perhaps like the trail of some
giant and cartoonish deep-sea mole.
Years earlier, in 1954, the Geological Society of America
Bulletin reported on an exploration of the summit of this same
Mid-Atlantic Ridge:
The state of lithification of the limestone suggests that it may
have been lithified under subaerial [i.e., above water, on land
surface] conditions, and that the sea mount [summit] may
have been an island within the past 12,000 years.
Expanding her prophecies to other parts of the world,
Helena Blavatsky also wrote in The Secret Doctrine:
England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; France,
nearing such a point of her cycle, and Europe in general
threatened with, or rather, on the eve of a cataclysm. A world
destruction as happened to Atlantis will occur. Instead of
Atlantis, all of England and parts of the northwest European
coast will sink into the sea. In contrast, the sunken Azores
region, the Isle of Poseidonis will again be raised from the
sea. [The Isle of Poseidonis is thought to be an island
approximately the size of Ireland that is a remnant of Atlantis.]
As cataclysmic as some of Madame Blavatsky’s geological
predictions were, her prophecy for the ultimate nonphysical
future of our planet was optimistic:
We are at the close of the cycle of 5000 years of the present
Aryan Kali Yuga or dark age. This will be succeeded by an age
of light. Even now under our very eyes, the new Race or Races
are preparing to be formed, and that is in America that the
transformation will take place, and has already silently
commenced. This Race will be altered in mentality and will
move toward a more perfect spiritual existence.
H. G. Wells
A discussion about what lies ahead for us and our planet
would seem incomplete without acknowledging a prolific
author and social activist who came to be known as The Man
Who Invented Tomorrow.
Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England,
on September 21, 1866. His parents were hardworking bluecollar people, which purely by chance provided Wells with a
wealth of access to his childhood passion: books. His mother
was a house-keeper at an estate near the Wells home, and he
went with her at every opportunity to sneak into the mansion’s
vast library and read until his mother had finished her work.
Out of family necessity, the young Herbert George’s school
years were interrupted by a job as a draper’s apprentice. When
he returned to school he focused his studies on the sciences,
received his bachelor’s degree, and taught school until, in
1893, he began writing full time.
In the meantime, Wells was launching what can politely be
described as a colorful personal life. In 1891, the year after he
graduated from college, he married his cousin Isabel. To
support both his wife and his parents, he worked two jobs and
was rewarded with a case of tuberculosis. He then left Isabel
for one of his students, a young woman named Amy Catherine
Robbins, whom he married in 1895 and with whom he had the
only two legitimate children of the seven he ultimately
fathered.
Fortunately for the literary world, Wells also channeled his
passion into his first book, The Time Machine, the story of a
man returning from a trip to the year 802701. It’s a fascinating
combination of parody and dark science fiction. But the
technical principles and details of the time machine itself
exposed Wells’s unanticipated foresights into nonfiction
science and physics—The Time Machine, for example, alluded
to a time-space continuum years before Einstein published his
theory on that same subject.
As his literary success grew, with such science fiction
ground-breakers as The War of the Worlds and The Island of
Dr. Moreau, his reputation as a conflicted, outspoken, and
often radical social commentator grew as well. He championed
the lower classes and so passionately believed in a fair and
equal community of humankind that he joined a London
socialist organization called the Fabian Society. But he and its
leaders, particularly author George Bernard Shaw, quarreled
constantly, and Wells used his contentious relationship with
the Fabian Society as the basis for his novel The New
Machiavelli.
H. G. Wells was also a passionate believer that, no matter
how bleak it might seem because of man’s inhumanity to man,
the future was still very much worth fighting for. That basic
theme inspired a prolific array of nonfiction work, including
The Outline of History, which was the twentieth century’s
second-bestseller. His articulate insights led to his membership
on the Research Committee for the League of Nations;
meetings with Lenin, Stalin, and Franklin Roosevelt; and a
candidacy for the British Parliament.
By the time of his death on August 13, 1946, H. G. Wells
had written more than a hundred books, only about half of
them fictional, and he had predicted all of the following on
paper, years before each of them became a reality:
• the atomic bomb
• England’s entering the Second World War in 1940
• the London Blitz
• the military vehicle we know as the tank
• the military use of airplanes
• superhighways
• computers
• urban overcrowding
• uranium bombs
• VCRs
• television sets, on which news would be broadcast
H. G. Wells was subject to depression, darkness, and
pessimism. The epitaph he wrote for himself read, “God damn
you all, I told you so.” Which frankly makes his view of the
world’s potential for endless longevity all the more surprising
and touching: he genuinely believed that if humankind would
transcend its self-destructive behavior, he envisioned an
indestructible world of peace, cooperation, and freedom from
habitual hatreds, bigotry, and class-consciousness by the
middle of the twenty-first century. Whether or not this planet
survives, and we humans survive on it, in other words, is
completely our choice and our responsibility.
Grigori Rasputin
I said at the beginning of this chapter that there’s no such thing
as a typical prophet and that God endows the gift of prophecy
to a wide variety of people. Grigori Rasputin is a perfect
example of that wide variety.
He was born in 1872 in the small Siberian village of
Pokrovskoye. His parents, both peasants, were devoutly
religious, and Grigori’s father, Efim, read the Bible to his
family every night, a practice that influenced Rasputin
throughout his life.
He was prone to depression as a child, particularly when, at
the age of eight, he lost his older brother to pneumonia. By his
mid-teens he’d already gained a reputation as what we’d now
call a juvenile delinquent—he drank heavily, he was wildly
reckless, and he found the young girls of Pokrovskoye as
irresistible as they found him.
He also gained a childhood reputation as a psychic. The
story goes that one night he was lying in bed when he
overheard his father and a group of houseguests talking about
the theft of a horse and theorizing about possible suspects.
Grigori walked into the room, identified one of the men as the
horse thief, and went back to bed. The group chuckled at the
little boy’s accusation and went on with their evening. But
later, two of the guests followed the accused man home and
were shocked to find the stolen horse hidden in an outbuilding.
Rasputin’s marriage at nineteen did nothing to calm him
down or put an end to his drinking, and there’s a certain irony
in the fact that he was accused, but not convicted, of stealing
horses. He was sentenced to banishment from Pokrovskoye,
but he convinced the court to allow him an alternative to
banishment—he suggested he take his father’s place on a
pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery more than two
hundred miles away. The court agreed, and Rasputin gladly
accepted what he thought was a comparative slap on the wrist.
He was preparing to leave for the monastery when his wife
lost their first son. He had no choice but to proceed with his
journey, but it was a long sad lonely trek. Shortly after he
arrived at Verkhoturye, Rasputin had the honor of meeting a
devout, widely respected recluse named Makary, who told him
that the tragic death of his son was a divine message to return
to Pokrovskoye and devote his life to God.
Rasputin did exactly that, almost shocking the village with
his newfound piety. He stopped drinking, and he spent hours
and hours of every day in prayer. As luck would have it,
though, his pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery had also
exposed him to a relatively obscure Russian Orthodox sect,
called Skoptsy, with an approach to their faith that was more
compatible with Rasputin’s nature: they believed that sin was
an essential element in the connection between humankind and
God. Without sin there could be no confession. Without
confession there could be no forgiveness. And without
forgiveness there could be no God-given cleansing of the soul.
It made perfect, convenient sense to Rasputin, and he became
a Skoptsy monk, sinning his way through widespread travels
as an impressive, well-educated, well-spoken, and intensely
charismatic religious teacher.
Rasputin was so impressive, in fact, that in 1903, when he
made his first visit to St. Petersburg, he quickly began
attracting the upper-class residents. His exhaustive knowledge
of the scriptures, his facile talent as a storyteller, and his
darkly mysterious charisma combined with rumors of his
supernatural powers—which by now were said to include both
psychic abilities and the gift of healing— made him irresistible
to St. Petersburg society. It was on his return trip to the city in
1905 that he was invited to the home of Grand Duke Peter
Nikolaievich and Grand Duchess Militsa, who regarded him as
a devout man whom God had blessed with great unearthly
powers. Rasputin was given the perfect opportunity to confirm
their belief in him when they led him to their beloved dog,
who was very ill and had been given only a few months to
live. He knelt beside the dog and began to pray, and by all
accounts the dog slowly but surely regained its health. The dog
lived for years after Rasputin’s healing, and Rasputin’s
reputation as a truly gifted man of God was etched in stone.
The grand duke and duchess eagerly introduced Rasputin to
their friends Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Even
though he didn’t demonstrate any of his supernatural powers
in their first few meetings, Rasputin made a significant impact
on the tsar and tsarina—such a significant impact, in fact, that
the tsar began referring to Rasputin as “the holy man.” His
impact on the tsarina was undoubtedly amplified by the fact
that her previous advisor, Dr. Phillipe, had assured her when
he left that “Your Majesty will some day have another friend
like me who will speak to you of God.” Alexandra was quick
to assume that Rasputin was that friend she’d been looking for.
In 1905 Nicholas and Alexandra, after having been blessed
with four daughters, ecstatically welcomed a son and heir to
the throne, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaievich. His birth was
celebrated by all of Russia, while the tsar and tsarina kept the
heartbreaking secret they’d learned shortly after Alexei was
born: he was afflicted with hemophilia, which made him a
fragile sickly child who could never ascend to the Russian
throne if he were considered to be physically unfit.
Rasputin was summoned by Nicholas and Alexandra several
times during Alexei’s childhood, and he was undeniably
remarkable at easing Alexei’s discomfort. Possibly the most
renowned event in the relationship between Rasputin and this
frail little boy was recorded by his older sister, Olga:
The poor child lay in pain, dark patches under his eyes and his
little body all distorted, and the [injured] leg terribly swollen.
The doctors were just useless … more frightened than any of
us … [Alexandra] sent a message to Rasputin in St.
Petersburg. He reached the palace about midnight … Early in
the morning [Alexandra] called me to go Alexei’s room. I just
could not believe my eyes. The little boy was not just alive, but
well. He was sitting up in bed, the fever gone, the eyes clear
and bright, not a sign of any swelling in the leg. Later I
learned that Rasputin had not even touched the child but
merely stood at the foot of the bed and prayed.
Needless to say, that “miracle” secured Rasputin’s status
with the royal family. Nicholas and Alexandra embraced him
gratefully and wholeheartedly and, some would say, blindly.
Rasputin, celebrated as he was, had never abandoned his
devout belief that sin was the only true path to God. And now,
with his own bedroom in the palace, he practiced that belief
with the added bonuses of an expensive wardrobe and his
virtual pick of the local females, whom he “purified” on a very
regular basis. Even Nicholas and Alexandra’s daughters
weren’t off-limits in his eyes—while no one has ever
suggested that there was any actual sexual contact between
Rasputin and the tsarevnas, he was found in their rooms
frequently enough that their governess strongly suggested to
Alexandra that he be permanently barred from the girls’
bedroom. It speaks volumes about the extent of his influence
over Alexandra that, rather than heeding the governess’s
advice, she defended Rasputin’s right to move freely
throughout the palace without restrictions.
Predictably, Rasputin’s influence over Nicholas and
Alexandra was beginning to alarm an increasing number of
people, from the Russian Orthodox Church to the grand duke
and duchess who’d introduced Rasputin to the royal family.
The church conducted an investigation that resulted in
devastating evidence against him from countless women,
including the attempted rape of a nun. The tsar and tsarina
were confronted with a long list of Rasputin’s crimes, both
proven and alleged, and they tragically refused to listen.
Alexandra in particular took the position that the rising tide
against Rasputin was the result of nothing but cruel jealousy
and resentment “because we love him.”
World War I was raging, and in 1915 Nicholas traveled to
take command of the troops on the eastern front. Whether or
not this was Rasputin’s idea is a matter of debate, but there’s
no doubt about the effect of Nicholas’s decision: his absence
left Tsarina Alexandra as the sole ruler of Russia, which
essentially left Rasputin in a position of great power and
influence over her and, as a result, the entire country. Among
his first priorities was the removal of his detractors from
positions of significance within the government, replacing
them with his proven loyalists. To this day it’s a widely held
belief that Rasputin, and Alexandra’s almost slavish reliance
on his advice, was directly responsible for the loss of
confidence in the imperial government.
It was decided by a growing number of Rasputin’s enemies,
both outside and within the government, that he had to be
eliminated. He wasn’t about to step aside, nor was the tsarina
about to allow it. And so, on the night of December 16, 1916,
Rasputin was invited to the home of Prince Felix Yussupov for
the ostensible purpose of meeting Yussupov’s wife, Irina. The
evening proved to be an odd testament to Rasputin’s power.
He unwittingly ate his share of cakes laced with poison and
drank his share of alcohol laced with poison. To Yussupov’s
and his fellow conspirators’ irritation, neither had the slightest
affect on Rasputin, so Yussupov resorted to shooting him in
the back. Rasputin fell to the floor. Yussupov bent over him to
make sure he was dead, at which moment Rasputin leaped up
and attacked Yussupov.
Yussupov managed to escape Rasputin and shoot four more
bullets at him, one of those shots hitting Rasputin in the head.
For good measure, Yussupov then proceeded to beat Rasputin
with a club until there was no more movement or sound
coming from him. Yussupov and his fellow conspirators
wrapped Rasputin’s body in a curtain and threw it into the
Neva River—incredibly, the death was listed as a drowning,
since water in Rasputin’s lungs established that he was still
breathing when he was dropped into the dark river.
It was later discovered that in December of 1916 Rasputin
wrote a letter to Tsarina Alexandra predicting that he would be
murdered before the first of January, 1917. He then added:
If I am killed by common assassins then you have nothing to
fear. But if I am murdered by nobles, and if they shed my
blood, their hands will remain soiled. Brothers will kill
brothers and there will be no nobles in the country.
The remainder of the letter clarified Rasputin’s prophecy: if
he was murdered by the poor, the royal family would prosper.
But if he was killed at the hands of princes, the tsarina and her
entire family would be assassinated in less than two years.
A year and a half after the death of Rasputin at the hands of
princes, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were executed
by Bolshevik guards on July 16, 1918.
It is no surprise that the controversy surrounding the life of
Rasputin, who came to be known as the “mad monk,”
continues to this day. There are those who believe that despite
his fairly despicable personal behavior, he was a genuinely
gifted healer and psychic, a prophetic adviser to Tsarina
Alexandra who indisputably saved Alexei’s life. Others argue
just as passionately that Rasputin was a con artist and fraud
who used his charisma and talent for hypnosis to endear
himself to the most powerful family in Russia and create the
illusion of healing in a sick, highly suggestible young boy.
Wherever the truth lies, many of his prophecies have
survived since the middle of the First World War, including
this one involving his vision of the coming Apocalypse:
Mankind is going in the direction of the catastrophe. The
less able ones will be guiding the car. This will happen in
Russia, in France, in Italy and in other places. The humanity
will be squashed by the lunatics’ roar. The wisdom will be
chained. The ignorant and the prepotent will dictate the laws
to the wise and to the humble person. So, most of the humanity
will believe in the powerful ones and no more in God. The
punishment of God will arrive late, but it will be tremendous.
And it will arrive before our century ends. Then, finally the
wisdom will be free from the chains and the man will return
entirely to God, as the baby who goes to his mother. In this
way, mankind will arrive on the terrestrial paradise.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
He created the character of Sherlock Holmes, about whom he
wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories. He was a
successful physician who served in a medical unit in South
Africa. He was knighted by King Edward VII for an article he
wrote entitled “The War in South Africa: Its Cause and
Conduct,” in which he defended England’s handling of the
Boer War. He became a renowned writer and public speaker
on spiritualism and the afterlife. And he committed to paper in
1930 a list of prophecies that history showed to be remarkably
accurate.
His name was Arthur Conan Doyle, and he was born to
devoutly Catholic parents in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22,
1859. His early career as a physician led him to his wife,
Louise, whose brother Jack he treated for terminal cerebral
meningitis. Jack’s illness and death drew Arthur and Louise
into a deeply devoted, respectful marriage that resulted in the
birth of two children, at a time when Arthur was making the
transition from successful physician to brilliantly gifted author.
The first Sherlock Holmes story was published in 1887. In
1893, Louise was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Arthur moved
the family to the healthier climate of Hindshead, Surrey,
England, in 1897, and it was there that he met the love of his
life, a woman named Jean Leckie. For almost ten years, Arthur
Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie somehow managed to carry on
an affair that was both passionate and platonic, and Arthur
never violated his oath that Louise was never to know about
Jean and was never ever to be hurt.
Louise died in 1906, and for quite some time Arthur sank
into health problems and depression, struggling with the guilt
of a decade of secret keeping and withholding from a wife
who’d devoted her life to him. But the love between him and
Jean survived, and they were married in the fall of 1907.
In 1881, Arthur Conan Doyle happened to attend a lecture
on spiritualism—rather remarkable under the circumstances,
since his childhood Catholicism had dissipated into
agnosticism by then. Something clearly moved his soul at that
lecture, though, and didn’t let go. He began writing articles for
spiritualist publications. He attended séances. He volunteered
to be hypnotized at a lecture on mesmerism (the study of
animal magnetism, in vogue at that time). And finally, in 1893,
he joined the British Society for Psychical Research, an
organization that, among other things, investigated alleged
hauntings and similar paranormal phenomena.
By 1920, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of England’s and
America’s foremost writers and public speakers on the
subjects of spiritualism and the afterlife. It was a courageous
undertaking on his part, because he accurately assumed it
would compromise his lifetime of credibility. But his spiritual
convictions were so strong and so deep in him that he
willingly paid that price without equivocation or apologies
until the day he died of heart failure on July 7, 1930.
A man as open-minded, diverse, and spiritually available as
Arthur Conan Doyle was a perfect channel for prophecies.
Some of them came from his Spirit Guide Phineas, and some
of them were based on material he’d gleaned from mediums
throughout England and the United States. All of them were
contained in a letter he wrote shortly before his death, almost
an open letter to humankind out of heartfelt concern, intended
not to frighten but simply to encourage vigilance and
preparation.
In 1930, Arthur Conan Doyle predicted that:
• a period of natural convulsions will take place during
which a large portion of the human race will perish;
earthquakes of great severity and enormous tidal waves
would seem to be the agent.
• war will appear only in the early stages and will appear
to be a signal for the crisis to follow; the crisis will
come in an instant.
• the destruction and dislocation of civilized life will be
beyond belief.
• there will be a short period of chaos followed by some
reconstruction; the total period of upheavals will be
roughly three years.
• the chief centers of disturbance will be the Eastern
Mediterranean basin, where not less than five countries
will entirely disappear.
• in the Atlantic there will be a rise of land which will be
a cause of those waves which will bring about great
disasters upon the Americas, the Irish and Western
European shores, involving all of the low-lying British
coasts.
• further great upheavals would occur in the southern
Pacific and in the Japanese region.
• mankind can be saved by returning to its spiritual
values.
Nostradamus
Michel de Nostredame, aka Nostradamus, was born in St.
Remy de Provence, France, in 1503. More than five hundred
years later his prophecies are still being exhaustively studied,
debated, praised, and decried, and the man himself is the
subject of both great admiration as a prophet and equally great
disdain as a fraud.
I will never claim to be an expert on the subject of
Nostradamus, but I do know that in his early years he was a
brilliant physician and alchemist. He worked tirelessly to heal
countless victims of a plague that swept through France not
long after he received his degree in medicine from the
University of Montpellier, and the herbal medications he
created were so effective in curing the incurable that he was
accused of being a heretic—a deadly charge at the time. No
less than the Pope himself declared the charges unfounded
after hearing of Nostradamus’s undeniable success against the
plague. Nostradamus was known for his lifelong generosity
toward the poor.
Nostradamus spent four years writing his first book of
prophecies, called the Centuries, but was reluctant to publish it
for fear of the cruel religious persecution prevalent against
“seers and soothsayers” of that era. Finally, though, he felt too
strongly that his book might be of use to society to keep it
hidden, and he published it in 1555 at his own very real peril.
Last but not least, Nostradamus took no personal credit for his
prophecies but instead acknowledged God as their author and
as the One from whom he received his gift. As he wrote in the
preface of his first book of prophecies, which he dedicated to
his son:
Thy late arrival, my son, has made me bestow much time,
through nightly vigils, to leave you in writing a memorial to
refer to … that might serve for the common profit of mankind,
out of what the Divine Being has permitted me to learn from
the revolution of the stars.
So whether or not his prophecies were or are considered
accurate, it’s hard to imagine that a man of his kindness, faith,
humility, and selflessness would deliberately perpetrate a
fraud.
Tragically, the same plague Nostradamus fought against so
successfully killed his wife and two children, and he spent the
next several years as a traveling physician. It was during these
long, lonely years that he began actively studying and
experimenting with the occult, for which he held a lifelong
fascination. It was also on one of his routine journeys between
France and Italy that he had what is considered to be his first
prophetic experience.
He was on a narrow footpath in Italy when he came upon a
small group of Franciscan monks. Nostradamus was of Jewish
lineage, but his family had converted to Christianity, and he
was raised in the Catholic faith. So, like any respectful
Catholic, he began stepping aside to let the monks pass. But
suddenly he focused on one of them and, overcome with awe,
he fell to his knees and genuflected at the feet of Father Felice
Peretti, a swineherd before he entered the monastery.
When the astonished monk asked what on earth
Nostradamus was doing, he replied, “I must yield myself and
bow before his Holiness. ”
Nineteen years after the death of Nostradamus, that monk,
Father Peretti, became Pope Sixtus V.
When Nostradamus’s travels ended, he remarried, this time
to a wealthy widow with whom he had six children. They
settled in Salon, France, and it was there that he began his
prophetic writings.
His works had a very distinctive structure. He wrote in fourline verses, or quatrains. Then he organized the quatrains into
what he called Centuries—one hundred quatrains per Century,
although since he wrote a total of 942 quatrains in his lifetime,
there was one Century that contained only forty-two quatrains.
As for his style, it can only be described as obscure. It was
full of Greek and Latin and anagrams and odd, complicated
plays on words. One school of thought is that his writings
were deliberately vague so that they would be too hard to
interpret for anyone to claim he was inaccurate. The truth is
actually a distant relative of that theory: Nostradamus knew
that he faced possible persecution, including torture or death,
if he clearly revealed himself as a prophet. But if his works
were obscure and confusing enough, no one could make an
ironclad case against him for being a heretic seer in league
with the devil. So the fact that debates continue to this day
about the “real” interpretation of the Nostradamus quatrains is
a testament to his ability to protect himself and the integrity of
his prophecies.
It was one of Nostradamus’s less obscure quatrains that put
him in great favor with the French royal family and elevated
his status during his lifetime. The quatrain reads:
The young lion will overcome the older one
On the field of combat in single battle.
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.
A few short years after Nostradamus wrote those words,
France’s King Henry II was killed during a jousting
tournament when his opponent’s lance slipped through the
“golden” face mask of the king’s helmet, piercing his eye.
King Henry’s wife, Catherine d’ Medici, knew of
Nostradamus’s prophecy about her husband, and after his
death she regularly used Nostradamus as her personal
consultant.
The prophecies of Nostradamus have been translated,
dissected, analyzed, and interpreted by countless people in
countless books, articles, and films. I can’t possibly do them
justice here. But for the purpose of our discussion of the
Apocalypse, there are several quatrains that lend themselves
perfectly.
Nostradamus predicted that on the long road to the end of
days, the world would see a rise to power of three antichrists
who would terrorize and sadistically brutalize anyone who
offered them less than blind, slavish loyalty.
His description of the first of these antichrists reads:
An Emperor shall be born near Italy
Who shall cost the Empire dear.
They shall say, with what people he keeps company,
He shall be found less a Prince than a butcher.
From a simple soldier he will rise to the Empire
From the short robe he will attain the long.
Great swarms of bees shall arise.
And, in a separate quatrain:
The captive prince, conquered, is sent to Elba;
He will sail across the Gulf of Genoa to Marseilles.
By a great effort of the foreign forces he is overcome,
Though he escaped the fire, his bees yield blood by the
barrel.
The identity of Nostradamus’s first Antichrist seems
indisputable to his countless students and fans: Napoleon
Bonaparte, the emperor of France from 1799 to 1814, was
born in 1769 on the island of Corsica, fifty miles from the
coast of Italy. No one would disagree with the description of
him as a “butcher” throughout his reign. And, for good
measure, his imperial crest was the symbol of the beehive.
Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba but escaped for one
hundred days. After a defeat at Waterloo he relinquished all
power and was exiled to the tiny island of St. Helena.
The second Antichrist was described by Nostradamus as a
“great enemy of the human race” and a master manipulator:
Out of the deepest part of the west of Europe,
From poor people a young child shall be born,
Who with his tongue shall seduce many people.
His fame shall increase in the Eastern Kingdom.
He shall come to tyrannize the land.
He shall raise up a hatred that had long been dormant.
The child of Germany observes no law.
Cries, and tears, fire, blood and battle.
In a separate quatrain Nostradamus adds:
A captain of Germany shall come to yield himself by false
hope,
So that his revolt shall cause great bloodshed.
Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers
The greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister.
It’s no surprise that this is widely believed to be
Nostradamus’s prophecy of the rise of Adolf Hitler, who was
born in Austria in 1889 to a poor family. References like
“tyrannized” and “raised up a hatred” and “observed no law”
and “seducing many people with his tongue” are
understatements to describe the psychopathic, sadistic,
inhuman monster that “child of Germany” proved to be.
However, critics of Nostradamus’s works are quick to point
out that “Hister,” rather than being an uncanny reference to
Hitler that was just one letter off, happened to be the name of
the lower Danube River during Nostradamus’s time. This is
one of countless quatrains in which the debate over the “true
interpretation” isn’t likely to end.
As for the third Antichrist, Nostradamus was again both
very descriptive and subject to exhaustive debate:
Out of the country of Greater Arabia
Shall be born a strong master of Muhammad …
He will enter Europe wearing a blue turban.
He will be the terror of mankind …
From the sky will come the great King of Terror.
He will bring back to life the King of the Mongols;
Before and after war reigns.
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
Fire approaches the great new city.
By fire he will destroy their city,
A cold and cruel heart,
Blood will pour,
Mercy to none.
Before September 11, 2001, it was widely accepted that the
“great new city” was a reference to New York City, with the
words “the sky will burn at forty-five degrees” referring to
New York’s location near forty-five degrees latitude. After
September 11, 2001, the “obvious” reference in Nostradamus’s
prophecy was to the World Trade Center, consumed in flames,
burning so high in the air before the towers collapsed that the
flames were at a forty-five-degree angle to the horizon.
Which brings up an important point about Nostradamus and
virtually every other prophet in history: their prophecies have
to be put in the context of the times in which they were said or
written. For example, one of Nostradamus’s most widely
quoted quatrains in discussions about his doomsday
prophecies reads:
In the Year 1999 and seven months
The Great King of Terror will come from the sky.
He will bring back Ghengis Khan
Before and after War rules happily.
Obviously, Nostradamus scholars are still having a field day
interpreting who or what the “Great King of Terror” was,
especially those who believe it was an “obvious” reference to
a fourth Antichrist, or a precursor to the Antichrist, as John the
Baptist was to Jesus. To the skeptics who say, “You see? No
such thing happened in 1999,” the believers reply, “How do
you know he just hasn’t revealed himself yet?”
As for “the Year 1999 and seven months,” many
Nostradamus scholars point out that that date shouldn’t be
taken too literally. Nostradamus lived in an age when people
believed strongly in a correlation between world-altering
events and the turn of the millennia. (And let’s face it, after the
hysteria of the transition to the year 2000, we haven’t exactly
outgrown that belief ourselves.) So it’s possible that
Nostradamus saw a vague date in the distant future for that
particular prophecy and, because the prophecy involved an
event of great global enormity, he assumed that it would
happen in close proximity to the dawn of a new millennium.
There are a number of quatrains that are thought to be
Nostradamus’s prophecies leading to the end of the world. To
quote just a few:
After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches
The great cycle of the centuries is renewed.
It will rain blood, milk, famine, war and disease.
In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a tail of sparks.
The Sun in 20 degrees Taurus
There will be a great earthquake; the great theater full up
will be ruined.
Darkness and trouble in the air, on the sky and land,
When the infidel calls upon God and the Saints.
Saturn joined with Scorpio transiting toward Sagittarius,
At its highest ascendant,
Pest, famine, death through military hand,
The century as well as the Age approaches its renewal.
At a latitude of forty-eight degrees
At the end of Cancer there is a very great drought.
Fish in the sea, river and lake boiled hectic,
[Southern France] in distress from fire in the sky.
In the year when Saturn and Mars are equally fiery,
The air is very dry, a long comet.
From hidden fires a great place burns with heat,
Little rain, hot wind, wars and raids.
The great mountain, 4247 feet in circumference,
After peace, war, famine, and flooding
Will spread far, drowning great countries
Even antiquities and their mighty foundations.
You will see, sooner and later, great changes made,
Extreme horrors and vengeances,
For as the moon is thus led by its angel,
The heavens draw near to the reckoning.
And finally, the quatrain that may give comfort to anyone
who’s wondering if they should start putting their affairs in
order before the end of days arrives:
Twenty years the reign of the moon shall pass.
After seven thousand years another similar monarchie
shall tenure.
When the sun shall take hold of its remaining days,
Then my prophecy shall be finished.
Nostradamus calculated that human history began in 3203
BC. Add seven thousand years to that date and you arrive at
the conclusion that Nostradamus predicted this planet will
come to an end in the year AD 3797.
The last prophecy of Nostradamus is found in the following
quatrain:
On returning from an embassy, the King’s gift safely
stored
No more will I labour for I will have gone to God
By my close relatives, friends and blood brothers,
I shall be found dead, near my bed and the bench.
On the night before his death, Nostradamus, who’d just
returned from a trip to an embassy, called for a priest to give
him last rites. The priest commented that Nostradamus seemed
perfectly healthy to him. But Nostradamus assured him, “You
will not see me alive at sunrise.”
The next morning, on July 2, 1566, Nostradamus’s family
found him dead, lying between the bed and his bedside bench.
Contemporary Prophets Weigh In
In 1970, born-again fundamentalist Hal Lindsey published a
book called The Late Great Planet Earth. Among his
predictions in that book (all based on his interpretation of the
Bible, particularly the books of Daniel and Revelation) were
that Christ would physically return to Earth no later than 1988;
that the United States would not be a significant geopolitical
power by the time of the apocalyptic tribulations; and that
there would be a ten-member United States of Europe that
would evolve into a “Revived Roman Empire” ruled by the
Antichrist.
The timing of the book’s publication undoubtedly
contributed to its immediate success and fueled a renewed
belief in the imminent end of days. The world’s memory was
still fresh of the 1967 Six-Day War, the armed conflict
between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
In six days, Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip,
West Bank, and Golan Heights, which became collectively
known as the Occupied Territories. Just as sales of the Bible
skyrocketed after the terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001, the Six-Day War heightened
the urgency of that search for the truth about when this
planet’s story will end. But The Late Great Planet Earth is still
in print, has sold more than thirty-five million copies and has
been published in more than fifty-four languages, so it’s not as
if its popularity is just a passing whim.
Obviously the 1988 prediction was inaccurate, but Lindsey
continues to believe that the apostle John, credited with
writing the book of Revelation, was an actual “eyewitness to
events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” On a 1997
television appearance on Fox News, he said, “The prophet
[John] who wrote the book of the Revelation says, ‘I looked, I
saw and heard.’ A first-century man was propelled up to the
end of the twentieth century and he actually saw a war of
technical marvel … An intercontinental ballistic missile
warhead reentering the earth’s atmosphere; poison water,
radioactivity, every city on earth virtually destroyed.”
I’ve read the book of Revelation more times than I can
begin to count, and I reread it when I heard that declaration. I
know Revelation is rumored to be a series of “encoded
symbols,” but I can’t find even a hint of what Hal Lindsey was
referring to. Of course, to be fair, Lindsey’s position is that
only a “Christian guided by the Spirit of God” can accurately
interpret the symbols in Revelation, so apparently the
presumption is that those of us who have a whole different
take on Revelation are simply misguided.
And then there are the Left Behind books, written by Baptist
preachers Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. This series about the
Second Coming of Christ has sold over sixty-five million
copies, and the essential message is that the physical return of
Jesus is quickly approaching. Their view is that the earth’s
demise is quickly approaching too.
According to LaHaye, “We have more reason to believe that
ours may be the terminal generation than any generation since
Jesus founded His church two thousand years ago.”
The Left Behind series takes the position that what will
cause the end of civilization is a worldwide conspiracy of
secret societies and liberal groups whose purpose is to destroy
“every vestige of Christianity.” Coconspirators include the
ACLU, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the National
Organization for Women, major television networks,
magazines, and newspapers, the U.S. State Department, the
Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford
Foundation, the United Nations, Harvard, Yale, two thousand
other colleges and universities, and, last but not least, the “left
wing of the Democratic Party.” If these united organizations
and societies have their way, according to LaHaye and
Jenkins, they will “turn America into an amoral, humanist
country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state.”
Sadly, nothing in the Left Behind series suggests that there’s
any point in attending to the people and environment of our
planet, seemingly because a literal interpretation of the Bible
doesn’t propose any such altruism as the end of days
approaches.
Is it me, or does that seem completely contrary to what
Jesus had in mind?
There’s Arnold Murray of Arkansas’ Shepherd’s Chapel, who
predicted in the mid-1970s that the Antichrist would appear
before 1981 and that the war of Armageddon would start in
June of 1985;
And Pat Robertson, who saw the world ending in the autumn
of 1982;
And Moses David of a group called the Children of God, with
his prediction that the real battle of Armageddon would result
in a defeat of both Israel and the United States by Russia in
1986, after which a global Communist dictatorship would be
established and Christ would return to earth in 1993;
And Edgar C. Whisenant, who, in 1988, published a book
called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988;
And Baptist minister Peter Ruckman, whose analysis of the
Bible resulted in his certainty that the Rapture would happen
sometime around 1990.
The list goes on and on, and on and on, proving, if nothing
else, that the passionate pursuit of the “truth” about the end of
days is likely to continue until the end of days itself.
CHAPTER SIX
Doomsday Cults
Ican’t say it often enough throughout this book: preparing for
a disaster, including the eventual end of the world, is fine.
Probably even smart. Living your life cowering in terror over
it, and/or losing everything your soul truly knows about God
and His love for you, is tragic. It’s the difference between
building a bomb shelter for the worst eventuality and then
going on about your business, or building a bomb shelter and
hiding in it for the rest of your life. That’s not a life, not what
God has in mind for any of us. And yet, in a way, the isolation
and fear on which doomsday cults thrive are not unlike a life
of cowering in a bomb shelter braced for a cataclysm that’s
probably a century away. I can honestly say I would rather
face Armageddon any day than experience the nightmare of
the stories in this chapter, each one of which can be directly
traced to a clever narcissistic sociopath preying on society’s
innate fear of the end of the world and leading their victims to
a fate far, far worse than doomsday will ever be.
One of the most disquieting things about the populations of
doomsday cults is that they come from every walk of life,
every level of intelligence and financial status, every culture
and race and every faith. We don’t have the luxury of saying,
“That could never happen to me or my perfectly sane family
and friends.” The truth is, yes, it could, unless we educate
ourselves about these destructive cults, who joins them, and
who creates them. Knowledge really is power. And there’s
another aspect of doomsday cults that’s imperative to bear in
mind: compassion dictates that we never dismiss the victims of
cults as simply a bunch of insane weirdos who deserved what
happened to them. There’s no such thing as a life that doesn’t
matter, especially when in most cases the only thing these
victims did wrong was to run into a charismatic sociopath who
happened to say all the right things when they were at their
most vulnerable.
Countless books have been written about cults, and there are
many highly qualified experts on this subject. I would never
claim to be one of them. But I’ve done my share of study,
particularly about doomsday cults, and my share of working
with victims of these cults and their equally victimized and
devastated families and friends. So between a lot of reading
and a lot of personal experiences throughout my seventy-one
years, I’ve learned enough to make some informed
observations.
Doomsday cult members are often intensely devout
believers in God, Jesus, the Bible, and the concept of
Armageddon preceded by the arrival of a Christ-like messiah.
They tend to be inherently honest and well-intentioned,
making it much more difficult for them to imagine that the
charismatic, equally devout biblical expert who’s trying to
recruit them is actually a deceptive, manipulative sociopath
who uses God, Jesus, and the scriptures as nothing but props
and lures. They’re typically searching for a place where they
will feel they truly belong, where they get a sense of being an
active, important part of something that matters. In some cases
their lives have just gone through a major upheaval—maybe
the loss of a job, a failed marriage, or the death of a significant
other. In other cases, their lives have become mundane,
unfulfilling, and, in their opinion, meaningless. Every bit as
significantly, many of them have been taught to be blindly
obedient to their religion whether it makes sense to them or
not, while just as many who are more freethinking have found
some inconsistencies and/or leaps of logic in their church’s
philosophies. Almost unanimously, though, they believe
themselves to be sinners, too flawed to deserve redemption,
particularly when the end of the world comes and only the
truly worthy will be saved.
And then, if they’re truly unlucky, along comes someone
whose charisma, seeming self-assuredness, and outspoken
passion for God draw them like moths to a flame. This man
doesn’t just “talk the talk,” he “walks the walk,” with plans to
create a society separate from the cruel, self-centered, sinful,
uncaring, pointless, Godless world, a society where God is
actively worshipped, in word and deed, every day, not just on
Sundays. Everyone will be of equal importance in this new
society (except, of course, its leader), hard at work for the
common good, belonging, and absolving their past sins
through their new pious devotion to God’s will, translated
through this charismatically devout man who has made their
faith feel exhilarating again. That prophet they’ve been
yearning for? He is that prophet, and he’ll prove it. But he’s
not just a prophet. He’s the messiah their religion has been
promising, the one they’ve been watching for, whose very
appearance is a sign that the end is near and whose path is the
one way to salvation when Armageddon comes. To doubt him
or disobey him is to doubt or disobey God Himself, never a
good idea but a particularly bad idea on the threshold of
doomsday. As for families and loved ones who aren’t
enlightened enough to understand or believe, the only defense
against their hypocritical skepticism is complete separation.
After all, if those heretics were as committed to the recruits’
happiness and well-being as they claim, why were the recruits’
lives so empty, meaningless, and devoid of the true Light until
now?
In a life that has reached a point where it’s filled with
nothing but questions, in other words, what’s more potentially
appealing than a strong, God-centered voice saying, “I’ve got
the answers you’re looking for. Come with me.”
And the leaders, like most sociopaths, know how to attract
exactly the followers they’re after: the trusting rather than the
skeptical; the generous rather than the selfish; the grouporiented rather than the loner; the hardworking rather than the
lazy; and certainly those with an eagerness to believe in
something far bigger and greater and more sacred than
themselves rather than those who are satisfied with their lives
and their beliefs.
Once the aspiring cult leader has the attention of potential
recruits, he’ll usually fall into variations on a pattern of
behavior that would be almost laughably predictable if it
weren’t so destructive:
• He’ll claim that his personal theology is in unique
possession of the truth, unlike traditional religions that
are full of contradictions and hypocrisy.
• He’ll also make claims that can’t possibly be proven or
disproven—that he’s routinely receiving special orders
and insights from God; that he’s a reincarnated messiah
or prophet; that God has assigned this mission
specifically to him; and most certainly that he and he
alone can guide his most faithful followers safely into
God’s arms when the inevitable Apocalypse comes,
while the sinful nonbelievers on Earth perish.
• As a “test of devotion,” he’ll insist on either tithing
from the group or the “donation” of his followers’
earthly possessions and holdings. (And what more
efficient way to hold people in subtle captivity than to
strip them of their resources?)
• He’ll typically have a list of admirable, irresistible
group goals on hand that includes such humanitarian
pursuits as feeding the poor, volunteering in missions
and shelters, gathering clothing for the needy, etc. (It’s
likely not to occur to the group until later that all their
efforts are directed inward, not outward toward society
in general.)
• As quickly as possible he’ll gather his recruits into some
form of communal living situation, separate from their
families and loved ones, explaining that only by
committing their lives to God (and himself) twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week can they prove
their intention to be cleansed of the sins of society and
embrace the pure, divine enlightenment that will see
them through the end of the world. (And what better
way to control people’s minds than to isolate them
from everyone who can offer alternative points of
view?)
• Slowly but surely he’ll begin dictating every detail of
the lives of his followers once they’re assembled and
under his watchful eye. He’ll typically start with a
stupefying schedule of “Bible studies,” which are
really his own self-serving interpretations of carefully
selected passages, none of them subject to questions or
debate. (The control will gradually extend and expand,
under threat of God’s/the leader’s disapproval and/or
banishment, so that eventually the group will be too
intimidated to make even the simplest decisions on
their own.)
• An effective “us against them” mentality will be
reinforced with monotonous regularity, so that any
interference from such “outsiders” as families, friends,
law enforcement, the IRS, the ATF, or any other
governmental agency will be viewed as potentially
fatal persecution from the godless heathens who are
trying to destroy the messiah’s work on Earth. And
what more dire, terrifying threat for defecting from
“us” to “them” than the messiah’s promise of eternal
damnation when the end of times descends?
The good news is, there are some telltale signs of a
dangerous doomsday cult leader that make even the most
skilled, charismatic liars among them relatively conspicuous if
you listen closely, pay attention, and think:
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims to have a closer
relationship with God than you do is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims you need him or her
in order to communicate with God is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims that only he or she
knows the truth of what God has in store for you, for
your future, or for humankind is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims it is God’s will that
you cause harm to yourself or to any other living being
is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims to be infallible is a
liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims that all those who
criticize him or disagree with him are evil and doomed
to God’s eternal wrath is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who demands isolation from
those who have consistently loved, supported, and been
honest with you, and who jeopardizes your financial
security is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who insists that no one cares
about or understands you as much as they do is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who believes he or she is
exempt from the laws of God and society, and is
entitled to divine immunity from consequences, is a
liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” whose power is based on fear,
abuse, and threats is a liar.
• Any “prophet/messiah” who claims to be your sole
source of salvation when the Apocalypse happens is a
liar.
Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate was a doomsday cult founded by Marshall
Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who adopted a variety of
nicknames over the years, including The Two, Bo, Do (rhymes
with Bo), Peep, and Ti. Marshall and Bonnie declared
themselves extraterrestrials who traveled here from the
Kingdom of Heaven, a story they clearly preferred to the
documented fact that they met in a psychiatric hospital where
he was a patient and she was a nurse.
Heaven’s Gate actually evolved from a 1975 organization
called the Human Individual Metamorphosis, whose members
left their loved ones, careers, and earthly possessions behind to
gather in a desert in Colorado awaiting a UFO that never
came. The Human Individual Metamorphosis evolved into
Total Overcomers Anonymous, formed by Do after Bonnie’s
death from cancer in 1985 and united in Do’s apocalyptic
belief that the earth’s population was about to be “recycled.”
That group evolved into Heaven’s Gate when Do relocated
them to San Diego in the mid-1990s.
Do taught his followers that our souls are separate, superior
entities that temporarily take up residence in our bodies and
that our souls’ separation from our bodies is the final act of
metamorphosis. His soul, by the way, had once resided in the
human body we know as Jesus Christ after traveling here in a
spaceship two thousand years ago. The extraterrestrial beings
who travel throughout the universe in those spaceships are on
a mission to elevate humanity’s level of knowledge, which is
why Do referred to extraterrestrials as the “level above
human.”
The purpose of Heaven’s Gate’s members was to prepare
themselves to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, believing as they
did that they were separate from and superior to the evil forces
that control Earth. Once their preparation was complete, they
believed, they’d be transported to the kingdom by committing
suicide as a group, liberating their souls from their earthly
bodies. Their souls, after a brief period of sleep, would
ultimately be absorbed by a “level above human” who was
waiting for them on board a spaceship that, according to Do,
was hidden behind Comet Hale-Bopp that was passing close to
Earth in 1997.
Do was clearly warning the rest of us that the end of life on
our planet was imminent in a videotaped message in which he
said, “You can follow us, but you cannot stay here and follow
us. You would have to follow quickly by also leaving this
world before the conclusion of our leaving this atmosphere in
preparation for its recycling. ”
On March 22, 1997, shortly after that videotape was made,
thirty-nine members of Heaven’s Gate, including Do, lay
down on mattresses in their immaculate San Diego house and
killed themselves with a mixture of phenobarbital and vodka.
The eighteen men and twenty-one women ranged in age from
twenty-six to seventy-two. They were dressed in identical
black Mandarin-collared shirts, black pants, and Nike shoes.
The suicides took place in three shifts over a period of three
days—fifteen on the first day, fifteen on the second day, and
nine on the third—so that those left behind could cover the
bodies with purple shrouds bearing the words Heaven’s Gate.
All of the deceased were also found with their identification
in their pockets, as well as a five-dollar bill and three quarters.
An astute columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle
subsequently unearthed a quote from Mark Twain that seems
as if it must be more than just an unfortunate coincidence:
“The fare to get to heaven on the tail of a comet was $5.75.”
A suicide note from the group read, “By the time you read
this, we suspect that the human bodies we were wearing have
been found … We came from the Level Above Human in
distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were
wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from
whence we came—task completed.”
“Task completed,” tragically and needlessly, to escape the
“imminent recycling of life on Earth” that proved to be
nothing more than the manipulative rhetoric of a man who
clearly thought the purpose of having power was to abuse it.
Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple
Two decades before the Heaven’s Gate tragedy was the horror
of the Peoples Temple, a doomsday cult founded by a welleducated former mainstream Christian named James Warren
Jones.
Initially ordained in the Disciples of Christ Church, Jim
Jones originally founded the Peoples Temple in 1955 as a
mission in Indianapolis devoted to helping those who were
living in poverty and with catastrophic illness. He began his
ministry preaching the Holy Bible, love, and equality to his
large interracial congregation. He also began claiming the
ability to cure cancer and heart disease, which understandably
prompted the first of many unwelcome governmental
investigations into Jim Jones, his organizations, and his
practices.
The more powerful Jim Jones became in the eyes of his
followers, the more he rejected the Bible as a pack of lies and
taught that he himself was the messiah, the Second Coming of
Christ. Only he, he claimed, stood between his congregation
and the imminent destruction of the world in a nuclear
holocaust. He and his devoted, multiracial Peoples Temple
membership, being on the side of enlightened righteousness in
an otherwise evil society, would be the sole survivors of this
nuclear extermination, thanks to an anticipatory mass suicide
and simultaneous resurrection, and they would create a new
Eden. It was probably no coincidence that in 1965, right
around the time the government started its first investigation of
Jim Jones, he moved the Peoples Temple to Northern
California—more specifically, to Ukiah, which Esquire
magazine listed as one of nine U.S. cities that could survive a
nuclear attack.
As the Peoples Temple expanded into San Francisco and
Los Angeles, the gospel according to Jim Jones became more
and more communistic and anti-Christian, and his dangerously
manic behavior increased in direct proportion to his addiction
to prescription drugs, primarily phenobarbital. At the same
time, defectors from the church began reporting Jim Jones’s
and the Peoples Temple’s human rights practices and potential
income tax abuses to the government and the news media. By
1977, the pressure from such close scrutiny inspired Jones to
lead about a thousand of his most devoted Peoples Temple
members to relocate to a 4,000-acre agricultural project on
land they’d leased from the government of Guyana in 1974.
Jonestown, as the project came to be called, was anticipated
as a communal “promised land.” Instead it involved brutally
difficult work and a sparse, regimented existence in the middle
of the steamy South American jungle, thousands of miles from
everyone and everything familiar. Jim Jones’s health and
sanity suffered dramatically from the relocation, so that
sudden rages and hours of delusional ranting over the
Jonestown loudspeakers long into the night weren’t
uncommon.
Finally a man named Tim Stoen, a member of the upper
echelon of the Peoples Temple organization and Jim Jones’s
closest advisor, defected from the group, returned to the
United States and formed a group of his own. It was called the
Concerned Relatives, and its purpose was to liberate loved
ones from the “concentration camp” of Jonestown and the grip
of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. The Concerned
Relatives’ efforts were so effective that in November of 1978,
members of the media joined California Congressman Leo
Ryan on a fact-finding trip to Guyana.
The residents of Jonestown put on a great display of
communal harmony to welcome Congressman Ryan and his
companions on their arrival, and Jim Jones assured the visitors
that, contrary to the Concerned Relatives’ reports, all members
of the Peoples Temple were free to leave the organization and
Guyana any time they liked. That claim lost all credibility the
next day when one of the reporters received a note from a
Jonestown resident asking for help in escaping. A total of
sixteen Peoples Temple escapees left for the airstrip with the
Ryan party that morning. As they emerged from the truck to
board the two planes that were waiting there for them, they
were ambushed by a handful of Jim Jones’s gunmen.
Congressman Ryan, an escaped resident of Jonestown, and
three members of the media were killed. The rest of the group
suffered severe injuries.
That horror was only the beginning of the unspeakable
Jonestown tragedy on November 18, 1978. Jim Jones was well
aware that international law enforcement would demand
justice for the murders and attempted murders he’d ordered at
the airstrip. He also knew that the Peoples Temple could never
survive the inevitable impending media scrutiny. And so he
gathered the residents of Jonestown in the community center
and announced that the time had come for the mass exodus
from this evil world they’d prepared for as part of their
commitment to him, their messiah, their Second Coming of
Christ—in other words, he ordered the “revolutionary suicide”
of every member of the Peoples Temple, from the elderly to
the helpless children and infants. Most drank Kool-Aid spiked
with cyanide and various tranquilizers. Jim Jones took a far
easier way out, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his
head. In the end, solely on his orders, more than nine hundred
residents of Jonestown and five people at the nearby Guyana
airstrip lost their lives that day. It’s hard to imagine that the
nuclear holocaust he warned against with such fervor would
have been worse than the cruel deaths the membership of the
Peoples Temple suffered at the hands of the man to whom they
literally entrusted their lives.
The Branch Davidians
In the early nineteenth century, a man named William Miller
founded a group called the Millerites. Among other things, the
Millerites predicted that the end of the world, heralded by the
Second Coming of Jesus Christ, would occur on October 22,
1844.
When that date came and went fairly uneventfully, October
22, 1844, came to be known to the Millerites, understandably,
as the Great Disappointment.
The Millerites picked several more end-of-the-world dates,
all based on their interpretation of certain biblical passages.
When those dates proved to be as meaningless as had October
22, 1844, the membership of the Millerites declined
significantly. Several members, though, persisted in their basic
belief in an imminent, ultimate battle between good and evil
and in the Second Coming of Christ. In 1863 they formed the
Seventh-day Adventists, most definitely a church as opposed
to a cult, and still thriving, with a current membership of more
than twelve million worldwide.
In 1919, a man named Victor Houteff joined the Seventhday Adventist Church. But ten years later, after finding what
he perceived to be several flaws in the church and its
doctrines, he left to form his own sect, the Davidian Seventhday Adventists, which ultimately evolved into the Branch
Davidians. It was in 1935 that Houteff bought land for his
Davidian Adventists outside of Waco, Texas, and named the
settlement the Mount Carmel Center.
One day in 1981, a twenty-two-year-old dyslexic high
school dropout and failed rock star named Vernon Howell
joined the Branch Davidians in Waco. By 1990, he’d staged a
heavily armed takeover of the Mount Carmel Center, become
leader of the Branch Davidians, and changed his name to
David Koresh. As he explained to his congregates, “David”
came from his being the reigning ruler of the biblical House of
David, and “Koresh” was the Hebrew form of the name Cyrus,
the king of Persia who freed the Jewish prisoners in Babylon
so they could return to Israel.
David Koresh taught that he was the messiah, the Second
Coming the Branch Davidians had been anticipating since
their inception, God’s messenger who would personally trigger
the apocalypse and then guide his followers safely to
salvation. In his tediously repetitive marathon Bible studies, he
instilled belief that he would be leading his flock into violent
battle with the U.S. government that would mark the end of
the world and his followers’ passage to eternal lives. No one
within the Branch Davidians was allowed contact with anyone
on the “outside,” since those “outsiders” were evil and bound
to lead them away from the righteousness embodied by no one
but David Koresh.
He had twenty “wives” within the cult, who he promised
would have the honor of bearing his “soldiers.” Conveniently,
he ordered that all the Branch Davidian men take a vow of
celibacy. His youngest “wife” was the ten-year-old daughter of
a devout Koresh follower. And in case any of Koresh’s
younger wives or other children in the Mount Carmel Center
chose to disobey or misbehave, a wooden paddle was always
nearby for beatings as severe as “the messiah” demanded.
David Koresh accepted and achieved nothing less than total
devotion and absolute, unquestioning obedience from his
flock.
That fact became tragically apparent during a fifty-one-day
standoff, the horrifying realization of David Koresh’s vision of
a violent battle with the U.S. government that would mark the
end of his followers’ world. The government had indeed been
watching Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the suspicious
activities at the Mount Carmel Center, and on February 28,
1993, literally dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms arrived with a warrant to search the
compound for illegal weapons. After an initial gun battle in
which four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed,
David Koresh allowed a handful of ATF agents into the
compound just long enough to remove their dead comrades.
And then the standoff began. ATF heavy artillery aimed
squarely at the compound and probably just as much heavy
artillery aimed right back at the ATF. The best of the best FBI
negotiators were brought in to keep up a dialogue with David
Koresh on the direct phone line the ATF had arranged. The
negotiators’ top priority was to secure the freedom of the
forty-six children who’d been living as innocent hostages
behind the distant center walls. It was finally agreed that
David Koresh would broadcast a series of two-minute sermons
on the radio and that he would release two children for each
sermon. That agreement led to the release of twenty-one
children in the first five days.
After a standoff that lasted a total of fifty-one days, the
government agencies that had assembled near Waco at the
Branch Davidian compound arrived at the horribly flawed
conclusion that in the end, if they forcefully attacked, the
majority of adults holed up within the center would make their
escape to save the children still left inside. Completely
miscalculating the control David Koresh had over his
followers, and their belief that death would lead them and their
children to the eternal glory their messiah had promised, the
agents advanced on the compound with a full battalion of
tanks and tear gas.
Within minutes, the Mount Carmel Center was engulfed in
flames. Approximately fifty adults and twenty-five children
died in the fire.
Among the casualties was David Koresh.
And perhaps as a testament to David Koresh’s final,
maniacal insistence on total control over his own and his
followers’ destiny, the catastrophic fire that consumed the
compound, according to FBI wiretaps, appeared to have been
set. So in a way, he was absolutely prophetic—he predicted
the end of the world and then played his part in seeing to it for
all those people who trusted him, and all those innocent
children who had no choice about it at all. Somehow I think
the Branch Davidians expected more and better from their
long-awaited messiah.
The Unification Church: Sun Myung Moon
Legend has it that one day in 1936, on a Korean mountainside,
Jesus Christ appeared to a sixteen-year-old boy and gave him
the news that he’d been chosen by God to establish the
Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. That boy, Sun Myung Moon,
proclaimed himself the messiah, the Second Coming, and/or
the Lord of the Second Advent, and, in 1954, established what
was officially called the Holy Spirit Association for the
Unification of World Christianity, commonly known as the
Unification Church. Half a century later, its membership
purportedly numbers in the tens of thousands in one hundred
countries around the world.
By 1957 the Reverend Moon (a self-ordained title) had
written a 536-page manifesto called Divine Principle, which
he claimed was directly communicated to him by Jesus Christ.
Moonies, as his followers are called, believe the Divine
Principle to be the third testament of the Bible and follow its
authority with unflinching loyalty. And predictably, anyone
who questions Moon’s status as the messiah or doubts the
credibility of the Divine Principle is in league with the Devil,
doing Satan’s handiwork.
Among the basics of Moon’s teachings:
• Adam and Eve were initially created to have a platonic
relationship until they reached perfection. Only then
would they be worthy of marriage and childbearing for
the purpose of establishing God’s kingdom on Earth.
But because of Eve’s sexual sin—sex with the devil,
i.e., the spiritual fall from grace—followed by sex with
Adam, i.e., the physical fall from grace, God’s
intention for them to be the “true parents” of
humankind was never realized.
• Because of Eve’s sexual relationship with Satan, all sin
committed by unredeemed humans is not a moral
choice but is instead the result of genetics—we’re all
sinners as descendants of Eve and Satan, in other
words, until and unless we achieve salvation. And what
do you know, Sun Myung Moon is the only possible
source of salvation. Salvation via Moon could happen
for women by being “cleansed” by him, which meant
having sexual intercourse with him. It could happen for
men through “blood cleansing,” or having sexual
intercourse with a woman who’d been “cleansed” by
Moon. It could happen through a marriage personally
orchestrated and blessed by Moon. And/or it could
happen by absolute submission to Sun Myung Moon’s
omnipotence—willingness to allow Moon to select a
mate, to hand over all earthly assets to the church, to
encourage their children to think of Moon and his wife
as their “true parents,” and so on.
• Jesus Christ, according to Divine Principle/Sun Myung
Moon, was not the son of God or the result of a virgin
birth. Jesus’s intended purpose was to father perfect
children through an approved marriage, but he was
crucified before he could accomplish that purpose.
Rather than symbolizing redemption for Christians, the
cross is actually a symbol of failure, and Jesus never
experienced a physical resurrection. The Second
Coming that God promised isn’t a reference to Jesus at
all, it’s a reference to a “third Adam” who will satisfy
God’s long-awaited plan of providing physical
salvation through marriage from which genetically sinfree children would be born. Moon’s Divine Principle
unmistakably implies that Moon himself is that “third
Adam.”
• The true Trinity is composed of God, the “third Adam,”
and his bride, and God’s kingdom on Earth can be
realized only through the marriages Moon and his wife
personally arrange or approve. Members of the
Unification Church are the only “True Family,” with
the glorified title of “True Parents” being reserved for
no one but Moon, aka the third Adam, and his exalted
wife. (The fact that Moon divorced his first three wives
doesn’t seem to diminish the Moonies’ enthusiasm for
the True Parents concept, which certainly implies that
one third of the church’s Trinity is interchangeable.)
• Salvation is complete only when both physical and
spiritual redemption have taken place. Physical
redemption requires total obedience to Sun Myung
Moon, the third Adam, while spiritual redemption
requires fund-raising, enlisting new church members,
and other means of expanding Moon’s power. But God
will not forgive until and unless there has been some
payment for the sins that have been committed by us
flawed humans. (Moon has twelve children, by the
way, and since they were fathered by the third Adam
and have therefore been genetically purified, they’re
considered by Moonies to be without sin.)
• The commonly prophesied end of the world actually
refers to the end of evil on Earth … which
coincidentally can be achieved only through the
auspices of Sun Myung Moon.
Moon summed up his beliefs about himself, to which he
requires Moonies to adhere unequivocally, in the following
way:
There have been saints, prophets, many religious leaders in
past human history. Master here [referring to himself ] is more
than any of those people and greater than Jesus himself … I
am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Which makes his recurring legal problems seem more than a
little ironic. He’s been convicted and spent time in prison over
the years for such varied crimes as perjury, fraud, bigotry, and
tax evasion. And yet his holdings include major shares in
about three hundred U.S. corporations and foundations, from
publishing companies to newspapers to toy, clothing, and
jewelry manufacturers.
The “Reverend” Sun Myung Moon promised that the
messiah would be revealed, not in the clouds as the Bible
predicts but here on earth, by the year 2000. That messiah was
not to be Jesus Christ, who failed in his mission a couple of
millennia ago. Instead it was to have been a man born in 1920
in Korea—as Moon was—and God was to punish all who
failed to recognize and embrace that messiah.
All these years later, the validity of Sun Myung Moon as the
world’s savior is still eluding me and many of you as well, I’m
sure. And so far that seems to be okay with God. Have you
noticed?
Jeffrey Lundgren
I almost hate to give this man the dignity of having his name
mentioned in print. But since he’s been executed and is no
longer around to bask in a little more publicity, I do think he’s
useful as a comparatively tiny example of how a “doomsday
prophet” can destroy the lives of perfectly intelligent, wellmeaning people.
Jeffrey Lundgren was born in Independence, Missouri, in
1950 to parents who were active in a Mormon splinter group
called the Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints. His father
was a strict disciplinarian with a passion for firearms, a
passion he eagerly shared with his son. His mother, by all
accounts, was a rigid, fairly distant woman.
Jeffrey was a rather chubby, unattractive, inexplicably
arrogant boy without a shred of talent for sports or other
activities that traditionally inspire admiration among
schoolmates. What he did have an uncanny talent for was
memorizing and reciting endless biblical passages, and he
learned very early in life that the appearance of an unusual
closeness to God—even if it was utterly insincere and acquired
only by rote—was an easy way to establish his popularity and
self-proclaimed superiority.
He was attending Central Missouri State University when
he met and began dating a fellow RLDS student named Alice
Keeler. Alice was a shy loner who’d grown up with a father
who was often depressed and violent toward her and her
siblings when using his vast array of multiple sclerosis
medications, and a mother who worked long hard hours to
support the family. An RLDS leader had once told her that she
would meet and marry a prophet of true greatness, so when
she began dating and became pregnant by Jeffrey Lundgren,
she assumed he must be that prophet of true greatness and
became his slavishly obedient wife.
After four years in the navy, Lundgren was unsuccessful at
any number of jobs because of his arrogance and
irresponsibility. He was also an abusive husband and serial
philanderer, while Alice stood by her man, bore his four
children, and continued clinging to her marriage, assuming
there could be nothing but hell to pay for walking out on an
RLDS prophet of true greatness.
In the meantime, Jeffrey was becoming disenchanted with
the RLDS and decided to form his own sect, essentially a
splinter group of this Mormon splinter group. He proclaimed
himself the one whose divine mission it was to unearth the
truth in the Holy Bible, and his childhood talent of reciting
endless biblical passages worked just as effectively to attract
followers when he was an arrogant, abusive, philandering, flatbroke father of four. Those followers were classic examples of
perfectly decent, earnest, devout people who simply bought
into the very skilled act of a very skilled fraud. One of them in
later years said that when Jeffrey Lundgren came along, he felt
for the first time as if he’d found a family where he belonged
and where he was wanted. Another made this simple, tragic
statement: “I felt like everything I’d ever done, I’d failed at.
Jeffrey made me feel as if finally I could do something right,
and something important, by following him and doing God’s
work.”
His growing flock began donating money to support Jeffrey
and his family, but he quickly grew dissatisfied with the
modest donations and announced that according to orders from
the Bible itself, it was time for him and his family to move to
Kirtland, Ohio, where God would be endowing him with his
true messianic power.
Kirtland, Ohio, wasn’t a random destination for Jeffrey
Lundgren. Based on a “revelation from God,” Joseph Smith,
founder of the Mormon Church, had a huge, magnificent
temple built there in 1836, and Jeffrey and Alice Lundgren
quickly secured jobs as tour guides at the temple when they
moved to Kirtland in 1984. It didn’t take long for Jeffrey to
become dissatisfied with his meager tour guide salary, and he
began dipping into the temple’s donations and profits to the
tune of what’s estimated to be from $25,000 to $30,000.
Jeffrey’s job as an RLDS guide gave him access to visitors
from around the country, and during tours he would teach and
preach his own unorthodox, messianic, self-absorbed version
of the scriptures. His proclamations of himself as a prophet
and the reincarnated Christ, along with an arrogance that the
vulnerable and naive translated as spiritual superiority, began
inspiring followers to move to Kirtland to learn at the feet of
this charismatic man who promised them salvation from the
impending Armageddon.
Before long the RLDS officials became aware of Jeffrey’s
shocking variations on the teachings of the church and
confronted him. In response, Jeffrey withdrew his church
membership and quit his job. Undoubtedly with the help of
stolen church funds, not to mention the increasing number of
followers who began handing over their paychecks and other
worldly possessions to their new great prophet and messiah,
Jeffrey moved his family and his faithful flock to a rented farm
in the countryside near Kirtland.
It was at the farm that Jeffrey started wearing military
fatigues on a regular basis, including during interminable
Bible studies. He accumulated a large arsenal, carried a loaded
gun at all times, and interspersed prayer sessions with
marksmanship and combat training. He became the sole arbiter
of what constituted a sin, which could include anything from
withholding a paycheck from him to sitting in the wrong chair
at communal dinners. He became the group’s sole recipient of
God’s commands, and its sole salvation in the impending war
of Armageddon. The final days of this planet were imminent,
he warned relentlessly. Without him there was no hope of
meeting God and being endowed with eternal life.
Among Jeffrey’s future plans for his spiritual, Godly group
was the seizing of the RLDS temple that had banished him. To
earn their place on his promised journey to see God Himself,
his followers were required not only to overtake the temple but
also to promise to kill anyone and everyone who got in their
way. The arsenal grew, the combat training intensified, and the
endless Bible recitations droned on.
It was February of 1988 when one of the devotees, Kevin
Currie, finally caught on that Jeffrey Lundgren wasn’t a
messiah or a prophet, he was simply a dangerous, cruel,
sociopathic, megalomaniacal thug who used his knowledge of
the Bible and his followers’ terror of doomsday, and of him, to
achieve complete domination. Currie escaped the farm and
fled to Buffalo, New York, fearing Jeffrey’s retribution every
step of the way. He contacted the FBI about Jeffrey, his
arsenal, the relentless combat training among his blindly
obedient followers, and his plan to seize the RLDS temple.
Not completely convinced the report wasn’t a prank, the FBI
faxed the information to Kirtland Police Chief Dennis
Yarborough. Chief Yarborough took the report seriously and
initiated an investigation into Jeffrey Lundgren and his family
and followers at the relatively isolated farm.
Unbeknownst to Kevin Currie, the FBI, or the Kirtland
police, Jeffrey, thanks to yet another vision, had significantly
revised the means by which his flock could earn their place on
the journey to see God, and prove their dedication and total
obedience to their messiah, Jeffrey Lundgren. Rather than
overtaking the RLDS temple, they should focus on a goal
much closer to home—they should sacrifice (read “execute”) a
family that had been getting on Jeffrey’s nerves ever since they
had arrived at the farm. Dennis Avery wasn’t living up to
Jeffrey’s idea of a true man and head of the household, often
deferring to his wife and letting her make some of the few
decisions Jeffrey left to them. Dennis also questioned Jeffrey
occasionally during Bible classes, which was an act of heresy.
Cheryl Avery, Dennis’s wife, was headstrong and clearly
didn’t understand or respect the appropriately subservient,
dutiful role of a woman in the household and the group in
general. And the Averys’ three daughters, aged fifteen,
thirteen, and six, were just plain unruly and disobedient. Add
them all up and it was obvious—God would never grant the
group forgiveness if they knowingly allowed sin to exist
among them, and without God’s forgiveness, there would be
no eternity for them. But if the group sent the most egregious
sinners in the compound, the Averys, to arrive at the
“judgment bar” before the rest of them arrived, God would
take out his wrath on the Avery family and spare the followers
of their great prophet and messiah, Jeffrey Lundgren.
And so it was that on April 17, 1989, while Alice Lundgren
disappeared for a few hours with the youngest children of the
group, the Avery family was led one by one to the barn near
the main house under a variety of pretexts and executed by the
men and women of this devout group and their divine savior,
Jeffrey Lundgren. Dennis Avery was the first to be killed. Sixyear-old Karen Avery was the last. Their bodies were placed in
a pre-dug pit and covered with lime and dirt, with nothing but
a few trash bags to mark their mass grave.
“It had to be done,” Jeffrey reflected afterward. “It was
commanded by God.”
It can only be described as tragic irony that the morning
after the murders, the Kirtland police and the FBI arrived at
the farm. They knew nothing about the execution of the Avery
family that had taken place the night before, so they had no
reason to ask about it. Instead, they were there to follow up on
rumors that weapons were being amassed and that a takeover
of the Mormon temple was being plotted. They found nothing
of any specific relevance to those rumors—they could give the
farm only a cursory glance since they had no probable cause
for a search warrant—and none of Lundgren’s followers
volunteered information that could have led law enforcement
to the five bodies that had been buried in the barn the night
before. Alice Lundgren used the excuse much later that “they
[law enforcement] weren’t asking the right questions.” But
neither she nor anyone else in the group had helped by
coaching the police and the FBI on what those right questions
were. Another Lundgren follower, a meek-looking woman in
her forties, explained her silence, and her participation in the
Avery murders, with the chillingly simple statement, “I was a
sinner, and I knew I could be next.”
That same day, the day after the murders and the day the
law showed up unexpectedly at the farm, Jeffrey Lundgren
divided his followers into small groups and ordered them to
leave the farm at intervals during the night. They were to
travel to a specific location in Pennsylvania, where he and his
family would meet them and give them further instructions. A
Kirtland police officer drove past the farm a few days later and
found it chilling that the Lundgren camp seemed to have
abandoned the property awfully suddenly.
The Lundgren group settled temporarily in Tucker County,
West Virginia, where Jeffrey claimed that God would lead him
to the Sword of Laban, referred to in the Book of Mormon as a
symbol of divine authority and kingship. From there it was off
to a barn near Chilhowee, Missouri (without the Sword of
Laban, which had somehow eluded Jeffrey’s grasp), where
after a cold winter week Jeffrey disbanded the group, ordering
the men to get jobs so that they’d have money to give to
Jeffrey when they reconvened in the spring.
Throughout his time in West Virginia and the move back to
Missouri, Jeffrey had become even more violent, paranoid,
and megalomaniacal than ever. Foxholes, twenty-four-hour-aday guards, and even an antiaircraft machine gun to shoot
down law enforcement helicopters were among the new
staples of the group. The married men were ordered to
willingly offer their wives to Jeffrey on his whim so that they
could be “cleansed with his seed.” Jeffrey knew and thrived on
the fact that his followers were now too terrified of him to
disobey him, and he reminded them on a regular basis that the
same thing could happen to any one of them that had happened
to the Averys if he chose. And if constant fear of his wrath
wasn’t frightening enough, he also reminded them over and
over and over again that the end of the planet Earth was right
around the corner, and only he held the key to their survival
and to God’s willingness to welcome them into His kingdom.
There was yet another fear holding the group’s devotion to
Jeffrey Lundgren together, a psychological angle that’s not
uncommon among cult members. Those who were beginning
to have doubts about their messiah’s sanctity as a prophet and
son of God had to face the fact that if Jeffrey Lundgren was a
fraud and a liar, then they had participated in killing five
innocent people, three of them children, for reasons having
nothing whatsoever to do with God or His will. Their basic
ability to live with themselves and what they’d done was
dependent on believing in Lundgren’s authenticity.
When the group temporarily disbanded, Jeffrey took Alice,
their son Damon and the younger children, and loyal devotee
Danny Kraft to the warmth of San Diego, California, where he
and Alice had lived for a short time after Jeffrey’s tour of duty
in the navy.
A few of the group, in the meantime, seized the opportunity
to escape Jeffrey Lundgren once and for all, finally
abandoning their hope that he wasn’t simply a cruel,
murdering madman. Among them was a man named Keith
Johnson, whose conscience about the Avery murders was
eating him alive. And so on December 31, 1989, Keith poured
his heart out to Kansas City law enforcement about the
murders and everything else he knew about Jeffrey Lundgren.
He even drew them a map to the exact location of the Avery
family’s grave. That map and a written report of Keith’s story
triggered a series of events that led to Chief Yarborough and
several of his deputies in the Kirtland, Missouri, police
department to arrive at and search the still-abandoned farm on
January 3, 1990. Following Keith Johnson’s map, they found
the gravesite of the Avery family fairly quickly, and the tragic
news of the murdered family buried in a barn quickly captured
the attention of the local and national media. Warrants were
issued for Jeffrey and Alice Lundgren, their nineteen-year-old
son Damon, and ten of Jeffrey’s followers, some of whom
turned themselves in the moment they saw the televised
reports that the Averys had been found.
On January 7, 1990, Jeffrey Lundgren, his wife, Alice, and
their son, Damon, were arrested in their motel room in
California. Law enforcement also seized the arsenal of
weapons and ammunition the “messiah and great prophet” had
assembled. The Lundgren family, after some predictable legal
wrangling, were extradited back to Missouri, where they were
reunited with their old devotees in jail, awaiting a series of
trials.
Alice and Damon Lundgren were each sentenced to five life
terms.
Nine of Jeffrey’s followers were given a lesser variety of
sentences. Larry Johnson, the informant/hero who’d bravely
stepped forward to law enforcement, was given immunity for
his testimony.
Despite a stupefying four-hour plea for mercy to the jury
that included the claim, “It’s not a figment of my imagination
that I can in fact talk to God, that I can hear his voice. I am a
prophet of God. I am even more than a prophet,” Jeffrey
Lundgren was sentenced to death. As the date of his execution
approached, he tried to convince the courts that he was too
obese and diabetic to be executed without a “cruel and
unusual” amount of pain. The courts didn’t agree, and on
Tuesday, October 24, 2006, Jeffrey Lundgren, messiah and
great prophet or murderer-liar-philanderer-thief-abusernarcissist-sociopath, depending on whom you talk to, was
executed—his own personal doomsday, I guess, but
undoubtedly not what his devoted followers had in mind when
he assured them that the end of the world was right around the
corner.
The Manson Family
It is common, tragic knowledge that Charles Manson and his
“family” of devout followers committed some of the most
infamous murders in the history of American crime. At
Manson’s command, and under his absolute control, five
young people viciously slaughtered seven total strangers in
two separate upscale neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area in
1969. The exhaustive publicity of the Manson Family, its
brutality, its journey through the court system, and, above all,
its diminutive, wild-eyed leader, Charles Manson, has left the
indelible memory in most people’s minds of the insanity of a
band of “drug-crazed hippies.” And there’s no doubt about it,
these killers were drug-crazed, by their own admissions, and
they looked and lived like many hippies of the late 1960s, in a
communal, unstructured environment.
What often gets lost in the historic infamy of the Manson
Family is the fact that, at its core, it was a doomsday cult, with
Charles Manson as its messiah. And it’s as clear an example as
we’ll ever find of the fact that the Bible can be twisted, turned,
and stood on its head depending on the mind and motivations
of whoever’s reading it.
In other words, we really don’t have the luxury of believing
that if we’re not drug-crazed hippies, we’re immune to
persuasive doomsday “saviors” with off-center, self-serving
interpretations of the book of Revelation. Whether Charles
Manson actually believed his complicated view of the
Apocalypse or whether he simply used it when he discovered
it was an effective manipulation device is anybody’s guess.
But then, let’s face it, the same issue could easily be raised
about Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Sun
Myung Moon, Jeffrey Lundgren, and every other doomsday
cult leader who’s systematically destroyed the lives of a lot of
trusting, vulnerable, unfulfilled, God-fearing people.
Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on
November 12, 1934. His mother was sixteen years old. The
identity of his father was never clearly established, and
whoever he was, Manson claims never to have met him.
Manson’s last name came from his mother’s brief marriage to
an older man named William Manson.
Manson had what can best be described as an unstable
childhood. For the most part he was raised by his grandmother
and/or his aunt while his mother was either in prison for armed
robbery or simply not around for days and weeks at a time. He
was twelve years old when he began bouncing back and forth
between boys’ homes and jail—he committed his first armed
robbery when he was thirteen and was in and out of prisons
and reformatories until he was nineteen. He was evaluated by
any number of prison counselors and too few psychiatrists, all
of whom found him disturbed and disturbing. At the same
time, one of them commented that Manson possessed “certain
facile techniques for dealing with people. These … consist of a
good sense of humor and an ability to ingratiate himself.” In
fact, he enthusiastically took a Dale Carnegie course on “how
to win friends and influence people” during his teenage years,
and even though he didn’t finish, he apparently picked up
some effective pointers.
He also seems to have picked up some effective pointers for
attracting “the family” in the future when he began his first
real career in Los Angeles, as a pimp. (He traveled to Los
Angeles in 1955 in a car he stole in Ohio.) Then came more
prison time, for a variety of federal offenses, during which he
dabbled in Scientology, the Bible, and Buddhism long enough
to adopt some jargon from all three, and he became obsessed
with songwriting, playing the guitar, and, most significantly,
the Beatles.
It was after those stints in prison that Charles Manson began
accumulating followers, the vast majority of whom were in
their late teens to early twenties and, for a variety of reasons,
in search of a sense of belonging and being part of something
that mattered. Or, as one of the Family members put it,
“traveling around the country looking for God.” He started in
the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, one of the most
famous gathering places for the hippie movement of the late
1960s, and returned to Los Angeles with the first female
members of the Family.
Between his guitar playing, songwriting, female entourage,
and developing philosophy about the approaching
Armageddon, Manson temporarily attracted the curiosity of
Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson and record producer
Terry Melcher, the son of actress Doris Day, who was living
with actress Candice Bergen at 10050 Cielo Drive, a small
street near Benedict Canyon, which cuts through the
Hollywood Hills. One night, Charles Manson happened to be a
passenger when Dennis Wilson drove Terry Melcher home to
Cielo Drive and dropped him off at the gate. The Cielo Drive
house was subsequently leased to director Roman Polanski
and his beautiful actress wife, Sharon Tate.
There are strong theories that it was Terry Melcher’s
ultimate rejection of Charles Manson and his music that
inspired Manson to choose 10050 Cielo Drive as the target for
six savage murders committed at his command on August 9,
1969—of Steven Parent, age eighteen; Sharon Tate, twentysix, actress; Sharon’s unborn son; Abigail Folger, twenty-five,
Folgers Coffee heiress; Voytek Frykowski, thirty-two,
boyfriend of Abigail Folger; and Jay Sebring, thirty-five,
renowned hairstylist. Less than twenty-four hours later, several
miles away in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, two more
murders took place on Manson’s orders—Leno LaBianca,
forty-four, owner of a successful chain of supermarkets, and
his wife, Rosemary, thirty-eight, owner of a dress shop, were
viciously killed in their own home. All the dead were
Caucasian.
The word pig had been written in blood at both locations,
and at the LaBianca house the word healter-skelter [sic] was
scrawled in blood on the refrigerator door. And contrary to the
initial impressions of the Los Angeles police, the murders
were far from motiveless, and the words pig and (properly
spelled) helter-skelter were partial keys to unraveling the
twisted tragic mystery of yet another doomsday cult.
At its simplest, Manson’s prophecy of and role in the
Apocalypse went like this (and it was undoubtedly even more
convincing when told with mind-numbing repetition to a
bunch of lost, vulnerable young people with an endless supply
of recreational drugs in their systems):
• While Charles Manson apparently never made any
specific claim of being the reincarnated Christ, he
spoke often of having once lived two thousand years
ago, a lifetime that ended with his death on the cross.
He also regaled the Family on countless occasions with
his “vision” during a psychedelic mushroom trip: the
bed he was lying on became a cross; he could feel the
nails in his feet and see Mary Magdalene weeping
below him; and when he surrendered to death he could
see through the eyes of all humanity at the same time.
Many Family members later admitted that they truly
believed Charles Manson was Jesus, returned to earth
as a sign promised in the Bible that the end of the
world was coming.
• The biblical book of Revelation, 9:15, reads, “So the
four angels were released, who had been ready for the
hour, the day, the month and the year, to kill a third of
mankind.” The four angels, Manson was sure, were the
Beatles. This belief was reinforced by an earlier
reference (Revelation 9:3) to “locusts, ” obviously
synonymous with “Beatles” in Manson’s interpretation,
especially as they’re described in verses 7 and 8: “their
faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s
hair … they had scales like iron breastplates [the
Beatles’ guitars] … they have tails like scorpions [the
guitars’ electrical cords].” The first verse of Revelation
9 refers to a “fifth angel … and he was given the key of
the shaft of the bottomless pit,” who’s later referred to
in verse 11: “They [the locusts] have as king over them
the angel of the bottomless pit.” Needless to say, that
fifth angel of the bottomless pit, that “fifth Beatle,”
was Charles Manson.
• As a result, Manson convinced himself and the Family
that the Beatles were sending him messages through
their songs. To name just a couple: George Harrison’s
“Piggies,” recorded on the Beatles’ White Album, was
a commentary on materialism, society’s upper class,
and greed. Obviously, to Manson, it was an edict to
select materialistic, upper-class victims to murder, and
to leave the word pig in the victims’ blood as a kind of
souvenir/explanation. And then there was the song
“Helter Skelter,” also on the White Album, which
contains the lyrics, “When I get to the bottom I go back
to the top of the slide/Where I stop and I turn and I go
for a ride/ ’Til I get to the bottom and I see you again.”
To the Beatles it was undoubtedly a harmless reference
to the amusement park slide that in England is called
“helter skelter.” To Manson it was a description of the
Family emerging from the bottomless pit to reclaim the
world after the great war of Armageddon.
• Another Beatles song from the White Album begins,
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these
broken wings and learn to fly/All your life you were
only waiting for this moment to arise.” Manson’s
interpretation: in the war of Armageddon the blacks
were going to rise up against the whites and destroy
them. (See the above reference to Revelation 9:15
about killing a third of mankind. A third of mankind,
Manson said, was the Caucasian race.) The Beatles
were telling the blacks that the time had come for the
war to begin. Unfortunately, the blacks weren’t moving
quickly enough for Manson’s taste, so he commanded
the Family to begin the slaughter of Caucasians and
“pigs,” as brutally and violently as possible. The blacks
would obviously be blamed, the whites would rise up
in outrage, and Armageddon, the war between the
blacks and the whites, would begin. The whites, in fear
and outrage, would head to the ghettos to retaliate, but
the blacks would ultimately triumph. They would
begin rebuilding from the vast destruction this war of
wars had caused, but they would find themselves
unskilled at governing this new Caucasian-free planet.
So naturally, they would turn to Manson and his
Family, who’d been living in the “bottomless pit”
(located in the California desert, according to Charlie).
By that time, the Family would number 144,000
(referred to in Revelation 7) and would reclaim a world
that was now rid of the unenlightened, i.e., those who
didn’t listen to the warnings and the teachings of the
angel of the bottomless pit, the reincarnated Christ,
Charles Manson.
Charles Manson and those members of his Family who had
the misfortune to follow his orders in pursuit of their own
salvation— Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson, Lynette
Fromme, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel—are
serving life sentences for the Tate/LaBianca murders.
If you read the stories in this chapter as nothing more than
cautionary tales, they will have served their purpose. But it’s
my hope that, beyond that, they’ll demonstrate the tragic
danger of letting fear and one charismatic, manipulative,
power-driven voice turn doomsday from an eventual
possibility to a self-fulfilled prophecy. One more time:
anytime someone tells you they’ve received a message that
even hints at harming any living creature, including yourself,
you can count on it beyond all doubt that the message, if there
really was one at all, did not come from God. And if they
claim that they hold the key to the only true interpretation of
the Bible, ask them right up front to clarify their position on
the fifth commandment, which very clearly reads, “Thou shalt
not kill.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The End of Days Through My Eyes
For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of
Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they
were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in
marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did
not understand until the flood came and took them all away;
so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.
Matthew 24:37-39
I’ve been asked hundreds if not thousands of times when I see
this world coming to an end. It’s interesting that rarely does
anyone ask how I see it ending. The question is simply when,
as if the only real issue is whether or not it’s time to start
packing, or stop bothering to pay our bills, or to cancel our
magazine subscriptions. And I suppose that’s why, while I
consider the end of days to be an endlessly intriguing subject, I
avoid discussing it at length during television and personal
appearances: I refuse to indulge the idea that the end of days is
something we should obsess about and panic about and throw
ourselves around the room about. I don’t believe it’s possible
to live the lives we came here to live while being perpetually
braced to die.
We’ve discussed in previous chapters the many different
years in which the world will “definitely” end, from the first
century after Christ’s Crucifixion to the many predictions of
the Millerites, the Mayan calendar’s projection of 2012, Sir
Isaac Newton’s precisely calculated 2060, Nostradamus’s
prophecy of AD 3797, et al. We’ve talked about the tragic
consequences of letting fear of the end lead to homicidal and
suicidal panic orchestrated by sociopathic frauds. If nothing
else, I hope the message has come through loud and clear that
there have been far too many wasted lives, and too much
wasted anxiety, over an event I believe we’re actually going to
create for ourselves.
An Overview of the End of Days
As a psychic, I can see clearly through the end of this century.
Beyond that, nothing. It’s as if sometime during the year 2100,
the lights go out—not for the planet, but for us humans, who
will have succeeded in making Earth uninhabitable in the next
ninety-two years or so.
And it’s true, the earth itself won’t be destroyed at the end
of days. There’s not a meteor shower out there with our name
on it, the earth isn’t going to explode from a catastrophically
overheated core, and it’s not going to drift out of its orbit too
far from the sun to sustain life. From ancient civilizations to
today’s experts, we’ve been warned over and over and over
again: if we don’t take care of this sacred home we’ve been
given, it won’t be able to provide us with shelter, food, and
comfort any longer, just as surely as a house we abuse and
neglect will be condemned as unfit for human habitation
sooner or later.
The Next Ninety-two Years
It’s going to be an interesting century, that’s for sure, full of
soaring highs and crushing lows, brilliant advances and
inevitable steps backward, turbulent chaos and almost
unprecedented peace as the countdown to the end of days
proceeds.
Before I begin a breakdown of what lies ahead in the first
forty-two years and the last fifty years of this century, I do
want to offer a word of caution to our present and future
presidential candidates. Sometime between 2008 and 2020 I
see a sitting president dying in office of a heart attack. The
vice president who assumes the presidency will stun the world
by announcing his intention to declare war on North Korea in
light of his accurate belief that they actually are in possession
of weapons of mass destruction. His efforts to rally
congressional and international support for this declaration of
war will be resoundingly unsuccessful and the source of
enormous alarm, and he’ll be assassinated before his term
ends.
On a more positive note, before the end of 2010, to the
chagrin of countless pharmaceutical companies, the common
cold will be a thing of the past. I don’t know the specifics, but
the cure will involve heat (duh). There’s a small self-contained
cubicle that will become a common fixture in most clinics and
doctors’ offices. At the first hint of a cold, patients will step
into this cubicle for five or six minutes, where a combination
of its precisely elevated temperature, an antibiotic vapor, and
their own body heat will destroy the rhinitis germ that causes
most colds, many allergies, and a variety of asthma-related
illnesses. Speaking not just as a psychic but also as a victim of
my share of colds every year, let me just assure medical and
scientific researchers and pharmaceutical companies around
the world that there’s a massive fortune to be made for
whoever invents, perfects, and secures the patent on this
cubicle.
And now, with those two special alerts out of the way, here
are the broad strokes of the upcoming ninety-two years as I see
them now. But never underestimate our power to influence the
future, for better or worse, so don’t even think about taking
these forecasts as an excuse to sit back, put your feet up, and
stop trying. For most of us, this is our last visit to Earth. Let’s
not set ourselves up for an eternity of wishing we’d made
more of a difference while we were here.
2010-2050
The twenty-first century is going to usher in the arrival of an
extraordinary flood of highly advanced spirits from the Other
Side. In the next chapter we’ll discuss why that’s true. For
now, it’s worth mentioning because of the great strides we
have to look forward to in the areas of childbirth and infant
care. The timing is no coincidence. We’re preparing for those
highly advanced spirits by seeing to it that we give them the
best start on earth we can possibly offer.
By 2010 we’re going to see some brilliant leaps forward in
the field of diagnosing deficiencies and illnesses in the fetus,
thanks to vastly improved ultrasound and amniocentesis. Fetal
surgeries will be so precise that they’ll be able to correct those
deficiencies and illnesses as well as many birth defects and
genetic challenges. There will also be fetal injections to
guarantee nutritional balances and healthy immune systems
before our future children are even born.
Inspired by our ancestors’ routine practice of accepting the
help of gravity during childbirth, 2010 will also see the
reemergence of birthing chambers, for the benefit of both
mothers and newborns. These birthing chambers will involve a
pulley system allowing the mother to give birth while
suspended from strong padded overhanging straps. The baby
drops down, as gravity always intended, into soft sterile
pillows that are waiting in the hands of the doctors, nurses,
and/or midwives in attendance. The walls of the small circular
birthing chambers will act as screens on which calming
imagery of the mother’s choosing will be projected. Gentle
music and the sound of quiet waves will accompany the
imagery. Lights will be dimmed, and aromatherapy will be put
to subtle use. The experience will be more reverent than
clinical, a far less jarring transition for the infant from the
Other Side to Earth and a far more considerate event for the
mother.
Immediately after the child is born, a routine series of blood
tests will reveal any protein and chemical imbalances that will
by then be known to cause a whole array of psychological
disorders, so that everything from depression to potential
schizophrenia will be addressed at birth. Cells will also be
painlessly harvested from inside the infant’s cheek, to serve
two purposes. The first, over the objections of the ACLU, will
be to register the child’s DNA in what will eventually be an
international databank of every person on Earth. The benefits
to the immediate tracking of lost, missing, abandoned, and
exploited children, an equally quick resolution of paternity
issues and crime solving will far outweigh any privacy
concerns. DNA “fingerprints” will be discreetly imprinted on
identification, school and hospital records, Social Security
cards, drivers’ licenses, credit cards, etc., that can be scanned
for authenticity as easily as bar codes are scanned now, and
identity theft will eventually become an archaic crime.
The second purpose in harvesting and preserving infants’
cells at birth has to do with the brilliant advancements in
cloning we can look forward to by around 2025. Having a few
cells on hand will make it possible to clone a new organ to
replace one that has failed, so that the agonizing wait for organ
donors and the obscene practice of selling organs on the black
market will be distant memories.
Last but not least on the subject of childbirth, sometime
around 2010, hospitals will begin saving and carefully
preserving placentas, for a great cause—it will be discovered
in the next few years that a protein complex or nutrient of
some kind in the placenta can slow the progress of
Alzheimer’s disease.
By the way, in case it hasn’t become apparent already, the
late 2007 breakthrough in which skin cells are being
programmed to mimic embryonic stem cells is every bit as
much of a miracle as it seems, if not more so. Not only will it
lead to a thrilling explosion of cures for previously incurable
illnesses, strokes, and paralysis, but by 2012 it will also result
in the ability to exchange old body parts for compatible new
ones, from spinal cords to limbs to burned or cancerous skin.
There’s no way to narrow this down to a specific year, but
please be aware that as the century progresses, there will be
increasing numbers of infertile women and men whose sperm
counts are too low to produce children. Countless biological
theories will be pursued, but none of them will solve the
mystery. Instead, the very simple explanation can be found on
the Other Side: as the end of days closes in, fewer and fewer
spirits will choose to reincarnate and be around when life on
Earth ceases to exist. The fewer the spirits wanting to come
here, the fewer the fetuses they’ll need to occupy. And the
fewer the fetuses required, the fewer the pregnancies. What’s
interesting, and comforting, is that along with the diminished
number of successful pregnancies, couples will find
themselves less and less interested in having children. Their
conscious minds may not understand why that is, but their
spirit minds will be well aware that they charted themselves to
be here at this extraordinary time when spirits choosing to be
born on Earth will become scarce and the population at the end
of days will be dramatically diminished.
Here’s the good news: during the first fifty years of the
twenty-first century, we’re going to see the end of some of the
most insidious diseases and afflictions of our time.
Cancer will be destroyed by injecting highly addictive drugs
specifically into the nuclei of cancerous cells, which will
ultimately result in the cancerous cells consuming and
eradicating themselves to satisfy their addiction. I once
thought this form of treatment would be in use by at least a
handful of exceptional oncologists, if only on an experimental
basis, no later than 2006. I don’t see it happening now until
about 2010.
Also in 2010, diabetes will be significantly reduced and
ultimately cured through brilliant advancements in the use of
proteins.
Microchips implanted in the base of the brain will restore
healthy signals between the brain, the muscular system, and
the neurological system, putting an end to paralysis and
Parkinson’s disease no later than 2012.
In about 2013 or 2014, muscular dystrophy, multiple
sclerosis (MS), and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) will be
defeated through some highly specialized use of the human
growth hormone.
The year 2014 will see the introduction of a safe, healthy
pill or capsule that will replace gastric bypass and lapband
surgeries, and anorexia and bulimia will be eliminated by a
newly discovered medication that targets the pituitary gland.
In 2015 there will be virtually no invasive surgery. Instead,
laser surgery, which of course is already being used with great
success, will be brilliantly enhanced by a computerized sensor
that will be able to pinpoint, analyze, and take appropriate
medical action on the area in question.
Blindness will become a thing of the past by 2020 at the
latest without a reliance on organ transplants when a tiny
digital device is discovered that, when implanted in the frontal
lobes of the brain, will create or reactivate normal, healthy
communication between the brain and the eyes.
No later than 2020, thanks to the development of a synthetic
material that perfectly duplicates the human eardrum, we’ll see
a virtual end to deafness.
One of the twenty-first century’s most significant medical
breakthroughs will be the perfection of synthetic blood in
about 2025. It will be universal in type, enhanced with
nutritional and immune system supplements and easily
manufactured so that there will always be a safe, healthy,
plentiful blood supply for transfusions.
The really dire bad news for health won’t make its
appearance until late in the second half of the century, which
we’ll discuss several pages from now. The only really
alarming developments in the first half will be far outweighed
by the advancements I’ve just described, but they’re worth
mentioning:
• A bacterial infection resembling the “flesh-eating
disease” of several years ago will arrive in 2010,
transmitted to humans by almost microscopic mites
undetectably imported on exotic birds. Known
medications and antibiotics will be completely
ineffective against this funguslike, extremely
contagious disease, and its victims will be quarantined
until it’s discovered that the bacteria can be destroyed
through some combination of electrical currents and
extreme heat.
• In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will
spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and
the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments.
Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the
fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived,
attack again ten years later, and then disappear
completely.
Strides in mental health in the first half of this century will be
extraordinary, virtually eliminating the majority of the
disorders that plague society today. And if we want to create a
more productive, more successful, more peaceful, bettereducated world in which crime is an anomaly rather than the
norm, we should solve the mysteries of ADHD, OCD,
depression, bipolarism, and schizophrenia and we’ll be well on
our way.
Earlier we discussed the fact that newborn infants will be
tested and treated for chemical imbalances that might lead to
future psychological problems. That will be true for children,
adolescents, and adults as well. No later than the end of 2009,
there will be very precise formulas describing which
imbalances will cause which problems, and which treatments
will be most effective in solving them. We’ll see an end to the
liberal, often careless prescribing of Ritalin and
antidepressants with no blood tests at all to indicate whether
those medications are even appropriate. Instead, links will be
discovered between specific psychological disorders and
specific protein deficiencies, so that when those deficiences
are pin-pointed and addressed with precision, the disorders
will permanently disappear.
By 2013 we’re going to see an amazing development in the
treatment of mental illness. There will be a device, used
exclusively by highly trained psychiatrists and neurologists,
that will employ electromagnetic impulses to treat and often
cure these brain malfunctions. This device will glide slowly
and smoothly across the surface of the skull, much like an
MRI, both horizontally and vertically. As it moves, it will
detect any abnormalities in the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid
that surrounds the brain, blood circulation in and around the
brain, and neurological and chemical activity within each
hemisphere of the brain and between the two hemispheres, the
individual lobes, etc.
Details of the scan, with diagnostic readouts, will be
monitored by the psychiatric or neurological administrator.
When the device senses a disturbance—slow or blocked
circulation, for example, or “misfiring” or dormant
neurotransmitters—it emits a series of electromagnetic
impulses of varying intensity with pinpoint precision to
stimulate the problem area, no matter how microscopic and
otherwise undetectable it might be. These treatments on a
monthly basis, combined with appropriate medications, will
contribute as dramatically to the world of mental health as
DNA has contributed to the world of law enforcement,
essentially “curing” everything from bipolar disorder and
depression to ADHD, OCD, post-traumatic stress syndrome
and chronic anxiety.
As for schizophrenia and severe cases of epilepsy, those will
be successfully treated in 2014 by a microchip implanted in
the brain that will essentially “override” the system when it
detects that any kind of malfunction, misfire, or shutdown is
about to happen. This tiny microchip will perform the same
function for the brain that the pacemaker performs for the
heart, and with equally brilliant success.
We have a very substantial drop in the crime rate to look
forward to in the next fifty years. One reason for this is the
influx of advanced spirits that will be arriving from Home as
the century progresses, as we’ll explain in depth in the next
chapter. The other reason is the advancements in law
enforcement and forensics that will absolutely thrill every
loyal CSI fan.
Probably the most dramatic headline is the fact that by 2025
at the latest, law enforcement will have new and expanded
databases at their disposal that will make it almost not worth
the trouble to commit crimes.
SCAN (I have no idea what the letters in that acronym stand
for) will be a massive international database of DNA collected
from newborn infants and volunteers from the general
population. It will be perpetually interactive with the currently
existing CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System), which is
focused on DNA gathered from criminals and crime scenes.
The SCAN database will link each person’s DNA to such vital
personal information as their medical records and their
emergency contacts. If it did nothing else but eliminate the alltoo-common tragedy of unidentified murder and other fatality
victims, SCAN would be more than worth the forfeiture of
privacy. But its ability to instantly identify lost, missing,
abandoned, and stolen children will make it a Godsend.
The SCAN DNA database will actually be fully operational
no later than 2015, as will the expanded capabilities of today’s
Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. Added
to the tens of millions of fingerprints currently stored and
accessible to law enforcement will be full handprints, palm
prints, footprints (as singular as fingerprints, it turns out), and
prints of the sides of our hands, left behind when we write and
almost unavoidably rest the side of our hands on the writing
surface. The side-of-the-hand print is unique enough, and will
be recognized enough as a valuable forensics tool, that its
inclusion in the AFIS database will solve an internationally
renowned kidnapping by the end of 2009.
In development at the end of 2008 and in full use by
worldwide law enforcement no later than 2014 will be a
database of the utterly unique “fingerprints” that are somehow
imbedded in the iris of the human eye. The day will come
when tiny iris-scanning devices are installed at every ATM
machine, cash register, public building, and airport as a
standard, doubly effective security measure. Let’s say, for
example, that someone manages to steal your ATM card and
pin number. The ATM machine will refuse to dispense cash
when the iris scanner is able to tell in less than a second that it
has an impostor on its hands. But almost as satisfying, at that
instant both a silent alarm and the database will be alerted, and
the police will know the identity of the would-be thief within
moments of the attempted theft.
Most complex and most groundbreaking of the databases in
our future, though, will be the voice database that will be
perfected and in full international use by 2025. This database
will be so highly sensitive that it will be able to detect every
tiny detail of pitch, tone, rhythm, dialect, and countless other
variables that will someday make each voice on Earth as
distinctive as a fingerprint, no matter how many filters,
synthesizers, and other voice-altering devices are used.
Now, imagine the combined forces of all these databases, as
information is immediately transmitted to every airport, train
station, bus depot, car rental company, hotel and motel, bank
and ATM machine, restaurant and diner and convenience store
throughout the world when a criminal is on the run, a child is
abducted, or a missing-persons case is filed. Database
receivers will be as common in public buildings and
businesses as surveillance cameras are today, and law
enforcement will instantly be alerted when a fingerprint, palm
print, hand/side-of-the-hand print, iris “print” or voice “print”
is recognized by the receiver.
Added to this series of coordinated global efforts will be an
international version of John Walsh’s America’s Most Wanted,
which will air seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day on
its own non-profit satellite channel, broadcasting information
on every fugitive and every missing person and child to an
audience of countless millions in every corner of the world,
with corresponding tip lines and Web sites. While the entire
global law enforcement community will be instrumental in
initiating and producing this brilliantly successful effort, it will
have its real roots in the halls of Scotland Yard.
No later than 2014, satellites will be able to detect crimes
and send alerts to law enforcement of the specific location
where their help is needed. And in case there are no eye
witnesses on the scene, or eyewitness accounts of the crime
are inconsistent, as they often are, satellites in orbit for no
other purpose will be able to instantly transmit detailed digital
footage of a crime scene, the ultimate in discreet surveillance
cameras.
In the next chapter we’ll discuss the extraordinary spiritual
unity this planet will experience before the end of days. The
seeds of that unity, and of a true global awareness of the God
center in each of us, will be planted in the next twenty years or
less, accompanied by some dramatic changes in the world of
organized religion.
Pope Benedict will be the last elected Pope. His reign will
be succeeded by a new Catholic practice of selecting a college
of cardinals, essentially a triumvirate of popes who will
collectively share papal responsibilities.
Between 2015 and 2018, a union of Protestant faiths will be
organized, finally acting on the fact that there really is strength
in numbers, to tackle such worldwide problems as hunger,
poverty, homelessness, and the need for universal medical
care.
By around 2025 the strength-in-numbers approach will be
successful enough to inspire a voluntary coalition of all
religions that care to participate. This powerful coalition will
be unified by its yearning for more depth and substance in its
connection to its Creator, and by its willingness to abandon
traditional counterproductive bureaucracy and countless
committees and instead take an active, hands-on approach to
feeding, clothing, housing, curing, and spiritually nurturing
those who need God’s heart at work through His children for
His children.
This 2025 global interfaith coalition will result in the
worldwide construction of Healing Centers—compounds of
four pyramid-shaped buildings staffed entirely by volunteers
and generously equipped with donated supplies, offering
around-the-clock food, clothing, shelter, basic personal
hygiene and laundry facilities, medical care, crisis counseling,
legal aid, and anything and everything else the populations of
surrounding communities can’t provide for themselves.
Of particular significance to the massive spiritual
awakening later in this century will be the Healing Centers’
Dedication Schools, which will offer, among other things,
extensive courses in world religions and will require the
completion of each of those courses prior to graduation.
By 2040, thanks in large part to these Healing Centers and
efforts inspired by them, we’re going to see a great unity of
global faiths, based on an educated awareness that their
similarities far outnumber their differences, and on the
conspicuous impact their combined humanitarian efforts are
having on this earth. And as we’ll discover in the second half
of the century, this unity of faith is only the beginning of a
worldwide spiritual transformation.
The year 2020 will mark the end of the U.S. presidency and
the executive branch of the government. Let’s just say the
American public will finally be fed up by then and leave it at
that.
The legislative branch will essentially absorb the
responsibilities of the executive branch, with a streamlined
body of elected representatives, an equal number from each
state, forming the new legislature, which will be known simply
as the Senate. The “party” system of Democrats, Republicans,
Independents, et al., will un-complicate itself into Liberals and
Conservatives, who will debate and vote on each proposed bill
and law in nationally televised sessions.
Requirements for Senate candidates will be stringent and
continuously monitored. For example, senators will be
prohibited from having any past or present salaried position
with any company that has ever had or might ever have a
professional or contractual connection to federal, state, or local
government, and each senator must submit to random drug and
alcohol testing throughout his or her term.
The long-term effects of this reorganized government and
closely examined body of lawmakers will be a return of
legislative accountability and public trust, and state
governments will follow suit no later than 2024 by becoming
smaller mirror images of the national Senate.
Among the laws that will be enacted during the Senate’s
first six-year term will be:
• the flat tax
• tax bonuses for those with careers in the arts, education,
law enforcement, and public service
• national observance of all major holidays celebrated by
all major religions, as well as a Day of Remembrance
for Holocaust survivors, victims, and their descendants
• “neutering” of all male and female pedophiles proved
guilty by irrefutable evidence as a mandated part of
their prison sentence
• a public health system
• driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, even on
the first offense, will result in mandated inpatient rehab
and detox, and the immediate seizure and auctioning of
the vehicle to defray the rehab and detox expenses
As for a couple of other topics of national interest:
By 2020 we’ll see the end of IRAs, mutual funds, pension,
and retirement plans, and yes, it’s true, the stock market.
And hard as it may be to believe at this moment, by the
mid- 2020s the global image of the United States will be
significantly rehabilitated. What’s fascinating is that we’ll
accomplish this by shifting the vast majority of our
humanitarian focus back on our own problems and their
solutions. We’ll evolve into a nation that inspires rather than
invades and be admired all the more for it.
I think it was in about 1972 that I announced on a San
Francisco television show called People Are Talking, “We’re
starting into a polar tilt.” I was as surprised by the
announcement as the hosts of the show were, especially since I
had no idea what a polar tilt was, and rarely has my office
been as flooded with calls questioning my sanity as it was after
that telecast.
It turns out that a polar tilt is a shift in the angle at which the
earth tilts on its axis, toward or away from the sun, causing all
sorts of changes in ocean currents and weather in general. Out
of curiosity, my staff and I did a little research and discovered
that a nineteenth-century Scottish scientist named James Croll
wrote in 1875 about the climate changes caused by the tilt of
the earth’s axis, and Edgar Cayce commented on the polar tilt
as well.
That having been said, the polar tilt will reach its peak by
2020, in addition to which:
• In around 2018 worldwide seismic activity will result in
a rash of volcanoes and earthquakes. The resulting
atmospheric dust will create enough pollution to cause
disastrous crop failures in the early 2020s.
• Rains approaching monsoon intensity will hit the
eastern seaboard of North and South America in about
2025.
• Between 2025 and 2030 dramatic tidal waves will hit
the Far East and Florida. The Florida tsunamis will be
the result of an unprecedented swarm of hurricanes.
• In around 2026 a series of powerful tsunamis will crash
into Japan. As a result of this major oceanic
disturbance, a new land mass will emerge among the
Hawaiian Islands.
• The year 2029 will usher in a rash of meteor showers
and the unceremonious return to Earth of some of the
trash and debris we’ve abandoned during our space
explorations. Fortunately, considerably more damage
will be done to our topography and plant life than to
our human and animal life.
• Before the year 2050 I absolutely believe that in the
wake of major volcanic and subterranean disturbances
in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, both Atlantis and
Lemuria will rise magnificently from their underwater
graves.
Later in this chapter we’ll discuss the atmospheric,
topographical, and climatic circumstances that will make all
the difference in the world, so to speak, in the second half of
the century and essentially leave it up to us just how quickly
the end of days will come.
No later than 2015 all newly built houses will be solar
powered and prefabricated, made of stone or flame-retardant
synthetic wood over reinforced steel, with roofs of ceramic tile
and solar panels that are both shatterproof and fireproof.
Standard in each home will be a sophisticated security system,
including steel-core exterior doors and unbreakable windows
that can be opened only by the home’s central computer, in an
emergency triggered by an alarm that simultaneously alerts the
fire and police departments, and by the homeowner through a
scan of their “eyeprint.” The eyeprint will be a configuration
of the cornea and iris, as distinctive as a fingerprint, much like
we discussed regarding the iris “fingerprint” database. All
access points of the house will include a peephole, which the
residents and authorized guests will look into so that the
central computer can scan the eyeprint and allow entry.
That same central computer can be programmed to play
music, turn TVs and other home computers on and off, control
appliances and lighting, and completely manage the phone
system—making voice-activated calls, blocking calls,
selectively answering calls, and providing a crystal-clear,
hands-free conversation in any room or rooms of the house.
Building codes for every home, and public building, for that
matter, will mandate powerful, well-concealed air purifiers,
eliminating virtually all airborne viruses and sources of
allergies and asthma attacks.
And another common fixture in most upscale homes by
2015 will be highly functional and incredibly convenient
robots. They’ll be available to the general public by 2019 and
will respond to more than five hundred complicated voice
commands, from cooking to cleaning to pet care to reading
bedtime stories to helping children with their homework to
teaching computer skills.
Last but certainly not least, it will be a very rare private
home that by 2040 won’t be equipped with a retractable roof
to allow the family hovercrafts to come and go as routinely as
the family cars currently come and go from our garages.
Protecting ourselves from terrorists and unsafe air will become
an increasingly urgent priority as technology advances, with
the result that by the late 2020s some of us will be living in
domed cities.
The concept of domed cities will be developed by an
international collaboration of experts. The first of these cities
will appear in the United States. Germany, England, and Japan
will follow immediately, with India, the Middle East, and the
Far East being the last to participate. Eventually there will be
domed cities on every continent, made of a composite of threeply synthetic glass and plastic that’s infinitely more durable
than anything in existence today. It will be tinted for UV
protection but still high enough and clear enough to be
virtually undetectable to the population thriving beneath it, and
it will open and close to allow, or deny, air travel. The air will
be purified, the temperature will be regulated, and all
conditions in general will be scientifically controlled for
maximum health.
Ironically, the downside of domed cities will be their
desirability. The more ideal they become, the more crowded
they’ll become, and the more crowded they become, the more
stressful they’ll become. It will take only a couple of decades
for the population of domed cities to be “weeded out” as the
wealthy take over and the poor are excluded.
That inequity will be solved to some extent by the
appearance of several domed rural regions throughout the
world. Communal societies will form there and become very
successful organic agricultural centers.
Not until the second half of the century will the novelty and
environmental purity of domed living lose much of its appeal,
and the general population will venture out into the “real
world” again, leaving domed cities much less crowded, much
more affordable, and much less in demand.
Of course, as always, our greatest hope for the finest possible
quality of life in the coming century, and for any chance of
postponing or averting the end of days, is a brilliantly educated
generation or two who can succeed in the many areas in which
we’ve either failed or fallen short.
By approximately 2020, the educational system in the
United States will undergo massive structural changes, and not
a moment too soon.
Teachers will be well paid, they’ll be subjected to thorough
background checks, and they’ll be required to hold degrees in
child psychology in addition to their teaching credentials,
since children’s educational and emotional needs will be
considered to be of equal importance.
Higher salaries for teachers will attract more teachers, and
in 2020 there will never be more than fifteen grade-school
students per teacher in any classroom.
Elementary school children will study the usual reading,
writing, spelling, math, and social studies, as well as nutrition,
basic ethics, an art or music course, a foreign language course,
and an active, hands-on course in ecology. No child will
graduate from sixth grade without knowing how to read and
write, and chronic tardiness, absences, or incomplete
homework assignments will be considered the fault of the
parents, not the children, resulting in a combination of fines
and requisite parenting classes.
Middle schools and high schools will involve students
linked by laptop to assigned teachers at education centers
throughout each state. Teachers and students can instantly
access each other with the push of a button, making truancy a
breeze to detect and the overseeing of each student’s work far
more individualized than it is now. Tests in each subject will
be given every three months, locally, administered by “live”
graduate students in the teaching curriculum.
As for higher education, every student will have instant
cyberspace access to the application process at every college
and university around the world, just as every college and
university will have the instant cyberspace ability to recruit
students from around the world. It will become the norm for
college students to attend schools overseas, and as this century
progresses it will be higher education that’s the primary force,
along with the great coalition of religions we discussed earlier,
behind the eventual formation of a true global community.
From 2050 to the End of Days and Beyond
There will be human life on Earth again, millions and millions
of years from now, when this planet has had the opportunity to
cleanse itself of our presence here. And the rest of that thought
is: unless every one of us does everything we can, every single
day, to save the earth.
This earth, this home away from Home, is God’s creation,
not ours. It was here before we were, and it will outlast us if
we don’t get over this arrogant idea that we’re entitled to live
here. Sometimes you’d think that we’re all a bunch of
teenagers, left unsupervised in the house while our parents are
away. Given enough time and freedom, there won’t be a house
left worth living in, and, I promise, the same is true of our
treatment of this planet.
We need to focus on the biggest possible picture to get a
perspective on the facts that will determine our success or
failure in the second half of this century, and whether or not it
will culminate in the end of our days on Earth. Appearances
can be deceiving, after all. For example, from our point of
view, it can seem very much as if our planet is the center of the
universe, with the sun, moon, stars, and distant galaxies
revolving around us. But the truth is, we’re just one of eight
planets—many of them much larger than we are—that revolve
around the sun; there are countless other suns in the cosmos
providing heat, light, and life to their own solar systems; and
there are far more solar systems in far more galaxies than our
most brilliant astronomers have begun to imagine yet.
Similarly, convenient and comforting as it can be to look out
our windows and assume that if everything looks fine,
everything must be fine, we’re doing ourselves a great
disservice to ignore the problems we’ve created and that we
must solve if life on Earth is going to continue into the next
century.
For example, because we humans can get very busy being
smug about our superiority and dominion on Earth, and our
indestructability no matter how we abuse this planet, I think
it’s worth paying at least a moment’s thought to an issue
brought up in a fascinating article called “How Will the World
End?” written by Herbert C. Fyfe for Pearson’s Magazine in
July of 1900. In that article Mr. Fyfe points out:
Countless ages ago in the world’s past history there was a time
when huge monsters, both on land and sea, were common.
These reigned supreme for a time, only to succumb at length
and disappear. Many species even within our own time have
become extinct; can man then always hope to have the
preeminence?
“When once a type is gone,” said the late Mr. J. F. Nesbit,
“Nature never renews it. So infinite are her resources that no
pattern, no number of patterns, matters. And it may be that
man, a late arrival, is destined to a far shorter use of the earth
than the cockroach or the lobster.”
Not over flattering to human vanity, but nevertheless true!
…
The fact is, we know little about the origin of diseases, and
why at certain seasons certain epidemics arise. The bacillus of
plague, of influenza, of cholera, of typhoid, or any other
disease propagated by germs, finds that the climatic or
atmospheric conditions are favourable, and promptly proceeds
to multiply, and, once it had a free run, it could destroy the
entire human race in a month.
We might try to take comfort in the fact that this article was
written more than a century ago, but it’s worth asking
ourselves how much has changed on the points Mr. Fyfe is
raising. We humans still absolutely believe we’re the most
superior species on this planet, and I guess if “most superior”
means “most destructive,” a case can be made. But isn’t it
silly, really, that while we’re busy driving other species to
extinction, we’ve overlooked the distinct possibility that we’re
driving ourselves to extinction at the same time, with the same
careless neglect and demolition of the very planet we rely on
for survival? What has given us the impression that we’re not
every bit as vulnerable, if not more so, as every other earthly
species, especially when we look at the long list of fatal
human diseases we can’t seem to conquer? And if correcting
that misguided impression helps us to wake up and start
paying serious attention to the well-being of this earth, then so
much the better and God bless Mr. Fyfe.
Global Warming
I’m telling you this as a psychic, as a concerned citizen of the
world, as an extensive traveler who’s personally seen 60-
million-year-old glaciers melting off the Alaskan coast, and as
a grandmother whose greatest wish is that my grandchildren’s
grandchildren will be born on a planet in which they can
thrive: global warming—the gradual, alarming increase in
temperatures during the last century—is a potentially fatal
threat to Earth. That’s a fact no matter how you feel about Al
Gore, and no matter whether you’re a tree-hugging hippie or a
right-wing conservative. And if we don’t take it seriously and
do something about it today, it will become one of the primary
factors in creating an uninhabitable world ninety-two years
from now.
I can tell you with psychic certainty that the landscape of
this planet at the end of days will be the same continents we
have now, each of them severely diminished by flooding. Twothirds of the earth is currently covered by water. By the end of
this century, water will cover three-quarters of the planet as ice
caps, glaciers, and snow from the highest mountains continue
to melt. Most of the melting ice will flow into the oceans,
drowning coastal cities and driving the population toward the
middle of the continents. What doesn’t melt into the seas will
seep into the earth, to its red-hot core, creating steam and
pressure, which will in turn cause a rash of catastrophic
volcanoes around the world. Mount Lassen, Mount St.
Helen’s, and Mount Aetna will be among the first to erupt, but
even the dormant Mount Fuji will come to life again no later
than 2085, decimating much of Japan.
Contributing to the atmospheric violence of the last three
decades of this century will be an array of weather extremes
that will make our current climate look ordinary. Hurricanes
and monsoons will more than double in frequency and
intensity. The average heat and cold record temperatures
throughout the world will be a minimum of ten degrees hotter
than they are now. Tornadoes will become destructive yearround threats, rather than seasonal, throughout the central
North and South American continents and in areas of Europe
and Africa once thought to be topographically immune from
them. And where flooding isn’t prevalent, drought will be, so
that it will become virtually impossible to find a healthy,
profitable place to live, let alone a safe one.
Yes, all thanks to global warming. So how dare any of us
ignore it or trivialize it, when it’s literally the difference
between life and death for humankind.
A major contributor to global warming is the infamous
“greenhouse effect,” a term we’ve heard so often that I’m not
sure we even pay attention to it anymore. And believe me, we
need to. I certainly don’t pretend to have a background in
science or the slightest bit of expertise, but as I understand it,
the greenhouse effect is caused by atmospheric gases,
particularly carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone. (At ground
level, ozone is a polluting form of oxygen.) They retain and
reflect the sun’s energy back to Earth to keep us warm. If it
weren’t for the basic greenhouse effect, this planet would
probably be nothing but solid ice.
The danger we’re increasingly creating is really an
enhanced greenhouse effect, in which too much carbon
dioxide, methane, and ozone are filling the air, so that too
much energy from the sun is being retained and reflected back
to Earth, with the result that we keep on getting warmer and
warmer. So a key to the solution to global warming is the
reduction of the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and
ozone we’re allowing to be released into the atmosphere,
through the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, for
example. And eliminating vast areas of trees and other foliage
dramatically compounds the problem, since plants take in
carbon dioxide and give off oxygen—helping to reduce carbon
dioxide from the air without our having to lift a finger, in other
words, and further rewarding us with oxygen, without which
we cannot survive.
Ozone as a pollutant at ground level is obviously not to be
confused with the essential ozone layer, which forms a thin
shield in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth from
the sun’s ultraviolet rays. As far back as the 1980s, scientists
began gathering evidence that the ozone layer was being
depleted, exposing us to potential radiation and the related
possibility of skin cancer, eye damage, and harm to the
immune system. NASA has even begun monitoring holes in
the ozone layer—commonly called holes but actually specific
areas of extreme thinning or depletion.
And in this case the primary culprit is CFC—a man-made
gas called chlorofluorocarbon—which for decades was
popularly used in spray cans and refrigerators. In the year
2000, 120 countries around the world agreed to phase out the
use of CFC. Sadly, while the ozone layer is capable of
repairing itself if no further harm is inflicted on it to
exacerbate the damage, the healing process is guaranteed to be
very slow. Chlorine, which is one of the components of
chlorofluorocarbon, has amazing durability in the atmosphere,
and it just takes one atom of chlorine to destroy one hundred
thousand molecules of ozone.
Add all of this up and we’ve got a planet that’s slowly being
warmed to the point of cataclysmic flooding and violent
weather events because of extreme levels of greenhouse gases
and an ozone layer too diminished to dilute the sun’s radiation
and harmful effects on those greenhouse gases. Rather than
preserving and enhancing our global forests, we’re clearing
them out to create toilet paper and housing developments,
eliminating some of our greatest silent allies in providing
oxygen and cleansing the air of excess carbon dioxide. And
every one of those interacting elements that’s leading the earth
to potential uninhabitability is caused by us. Tragically, we’ve
become a cancer here, sending species after species of animals
into extinction and apparently forgetting that we humans are
every bit as vulnerable to extinction as any other species on
Earth.
I’ve heard the same “Go Green” public service
announcements you have, and seen the same bumper stickers.
But too often there’s no follow-up explanation about what
“going green” means or exactly why it makes a difference. I
also hate to admit it, but I tend to have an aversion to activist
slogans like “Go Green.” Unfairly, I’m sure, it makes me feel
excluded unless I have time to pick up a sign and head to
Washington (and God bless every one of you who
demonstrates for important causes), and it also implies that all
of us know what it is we’re supposed to do about it. I didn’t
know, but I’ve made it my business to find out so that I really
can do something about it, and so that I can share the
information with you.
I’m not advocating these suggestions because they’re just
plain nice, planet-friendly things to do. I’m advocating them,
and implementing them myself, because it actually is up to us
to either resign ourselves to the end of life on Earth at the end
of this century or see to it that we have many more centuries to
enjoy and appreciate this beautiful home away from Home.
And yes, it truly is this simple:
• Use only recycled paper. Why? Because it saves the
atmosphere about five pounds of carbon dioxide per
ream of paper.
• Set your thermostat just two degrees warmer in the
summer than you’re accustomed to and two degrees
cooler in the winter. Why? Because those tiny
adjustments will keep approximately two thousand
pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
• Don’t run your dishwasher until it’s completely full.
Why? Because it will save the atmosphere about one
hundred pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
• Pick the three lamps you use most in your house and
change the bulbs to easily accessible compact
fluorescent bulbs. Why? Because you’ll eliminate an
extra three hundred pounds of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere every year.
• Adjust the heat on your water heater to a maximum of
120 degrees, and have it insulated. Why? Because it
saves 1,550 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air
every year.
• Reduce the duration of your showers by two to three
minutes. Why? Because 350 pounds of carbon dioxide
will be saved every year thanks to less water needing
to be heated.
• Check your tires every month to make sure they’re
properly inflated. Why? Because it will save 250
pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
• Change your heating and air-conditioning filters, or
clean them, as often as recommended. Why? Because
it will keep the units from having to work harder than
they’re designed to work to keep you comfortable, as
well as keeping an extra 350 pounds of carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere per year.
• Turn your computer off rather than letting it “sleep,”
and unplug electronics when you’re not using them.
Why? Because it will save a minimum of twelve
hundred pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
• Take care of the simple chore of caulking and weatherstripping your exterior doors and windows. Why?
Because not only will you be more comfortable all year
long, but you’ll also eliminate seventeen hundred
pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
• Plant a tree, or have one planted by an organization like
Tree-People, in honor of a lost loved one. Why?
Because you’ll be adding more oxygen to the
atmosphere and saving an amazing two thousand
pounds of carbon dioxide.
Those simple adjustments alone add up to a saving of nine
thousand five hundred pounds of carbon dioxide per person
per year. If you need a little more motivation to be convinced,
they’ll also save you about two thousand dollars every year.
And a few more suggestions for today or the near future,
since they’re not necessarily as simple (or affordable) as the
above list:
• As you replace old appliances, buy new ones that bear
an “Energy Star” label, designed to save both carbon
dioxide emissions and money.
• Making sure the walls and ceilings of your home are
well-insulated can save a minimum of two thousand
pounds of carbon dioxide, not to mention hundreds of
dollars every year.
• Changing single-pane windows to double-pane
windows conserves energy, saves a fortune in power
bills, and eliminates an amazing ten thousand pounds
of carbon dioxide.
• Switching from your current showerhead to a low-flow
showerhead will save approximately 350 pounds of
carbon dioxide and an average of around two hundred
dollars per year.
• When it’s time for a new car, remember that a hybrid
will save almost seventeen thousand pounds of carbon
dioxide and $3,800 per year. Even a more fuel-efficient
car will save thousands and thousands of pounds of
carbon dioxide and thousands of dollars at the same
time.
By the way, since the paper industry is the third-largest
contributor to global warming factors, seek out toilet paper,
facial tissues, and paper towels and coffee filters that are made
from recycled paper; recycle magazines, newspapers, and
paper grocery bags; give your dry cleaner a garment bag to use
for your dry cleaning to encourage them to get rid of all that
annoying extra paper and plastic, and never drop off dry
cleaning without returning those equally annoying wire
hangers.
And on the subject of “annoying,” I’m sure it would horrify
all of us to see how many landfills are piled with Styrofoam
cups, since about twenty-five billion of them are thrown away
every year. Plastic bags from the market are a little more
recycleable than Styrofoam but not much. Paper or glass cups
and mugs make drinks taste better than Styrofoam does, don’t
you think? As for all the debris left over from trips to the store,
washable canvas shopping bags eliminate that so conveniently.
Again, I wouldn’t carry on for quite so long on this subject
if it weren’t literally a matter of life and death, of whether or
not we’ll ever live on this earth again once we’ve gone Home.
We caused these problems, and it’s our job to clean them up.
And while we’re at it, let’s pray every single day that it’s not
already too late.
Our Health at the End of Days
We obviously can’t be healthy in an atmosphere that isn’t. So
when I say that illness is what’s going to ultimately end our
lives on Earth, please understand that I’m not really making a
distinction between the fatal diseases in our future and the
disastrous environment we’re in the process of creating.
I can’t stress enough that when the end of times comes,
these disease-related deaths will be amazingly easy and
peaceful. Spirituality will be so commonly understood by then
that people will know exactly what perfect joy awaits them on
the Other Side that they’ll essentially just “step out of their
bodies” and into the tunnel, fearless and full of hope. I can’t
help but be fondly reminded of three of my ministers who
went Home in the last year and a half. Each of them, when
they passed a few months apart, was found in bed, lying
peacefully on their backs with their hands folded on their
chests. Their deaths were clearly as graceful, confident, and
God-centered as could be. And with only the most rare
exceptions—the result of what will by then be an almost
unheard-of act of violence— that’s what death will be like for
everyone at the end of times.
Ironically, in the first half of this century, we’re going to see
the majority of today’s most devastating diseases eradicated.
Cancer, leukemia, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, multiple
sclerosis, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease—all of
those will be so long gone by 2050 that they’ll seem almost
archaic. And yet the medical world will be caught completely
off guard when, in about 2075 or 2080, there will be a sudden
worldwide spread of diseases that seem almost archaic to us
today, particularly polio and smallpox. We’ve become
complacent and stopped vaccinating against those two
disastrous illnesses in particular, and some combination of that
complacency and the unhealthy atmosphere we’ve created will
give them the perfect opportunity to reappear.
The environment will take its toll on our immune systems,
there’s no doubt about it. It’s karmic, really, the earth’s way of
paying us back for all the abuse and neglect—still another
reason we’ve got to start treasuring and nurturing this planet if
we ever expect it to do the same for us again. There will be
dramatic increases in fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome,
sterility and infertility, and countless, virtually untraceable
allergies. It’s probably also a form of payback that we’ll be
more vulnerable than ever to diseases carried by unhealthy
animals, from currently unheard-of bird flus and variations of
Lyme disease to a deadly relative of West Nile virus that will
arrive via insects from South America.
These illnesses and plagues will hit hard and very suddenly,
much more quickly than scientists and researchers can keep up
with them, let alone conquer them. And that, sadly, along with
a toxic atmosphere and having nowhere to live that’s not
disastrously flooded and weather challenged, is what will
bring us to the end of our lives on Earth.
Not a nuclear holocaust—when all is said and done, no
world leader will be insane enough to actually push that
legendary red button.
Not a collision with some monster asteroid or meteor
shower, a fatal, haphazard whim of the cosmos.
Just our own self-created, self-fulfilled prophecy of the end
of days.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
—T. S. Eliot
CHAPTER EIGHT
Humankind at the End of Days
I don’t think it’s productive to have any discussion about the
end of our time on Earth that doesn’t explain the full context
of what will happen to us before, during, and after. Without
that, the subject of the end of days is nothing but
sensationalism, a series of threatening, fear-inducing headlines
that offer no hope and no reminder that we were living busy,
productive, joyful lives before we came here, and we’ll go
right on with those same lives when our days on this planet are
over.
It’s simply a fact that as this century progresses, humankind
will become more and more spiritually oriented. I’m seeing it
already, every single day, in readings, lectures, and television
appearances. Clients whose questions even five years ago were
primarily focused on Mr. or Ms. Right, finances, career
concerns, and health problems are now almost exclusively
wanting to know about their spiritual goals—specifically,
whether or not they’re on track in fulfilling those goals and
whether or not they’re accomplishing the life purposes they set
up for themselves.
This increasing global growth in spirituality as a priority is
no accident and no coincidence. God didn’t create a
whimsical, haphazard universe in which it’s a roll of the dice
what might happen next. There’s an eternal order, a divine
plan that guides our spirits like an inescapable safety net, even
when we’re too self-involved to believe that it’s there and that
it will never, ever let us fall. God’s plan for us has existed
since time began, and it will go right on existing into infinity.
And it’s because of that plan that we can count on Earth
becoming a far more God-centered place as the countdown to
the end of days begins ticking away more loudly.
Preparing to Come Here
Later in this chapter I’ll describe the specifics of our arrival
back Home and the perfect eternity of our lives there. For now,
I want to remind you—and I do mean “remind” you, since
your spirit remembers it perfectly—of the process we
undertake when we decide to take a temporary break from the
Other Side and come here to challenge our souls toward their
highest possible advancement.
Life on the Other Side, as you’ll read in a while, is idyllic.
It’s paradise. We’re surrounded by endless, exquisite beauty.
We live among the angels and the messiahs, loved and loving,
perpetually busy and stimulated, in a sanctified atmosphere
that’s alive with the immediate, tangible presence of God.
It seems almost insane that from time to time we choose to
leave Home for yet another incarnation on this harsh,
imperfect planet. But as my Spirit Guide Francine always says
when I complain to her about some particularly tough
challenges I’m going through, “What have you learned when
times were good?” Perfection, wonderful as it is, doesn’t
inspire growth. And God created each of us with our own
unique potential and a divine insistence on reaching that
potential, no matter what it takes. On the Other Side we can
study all we want about every subject that exists, including
fear, negativity, temptation, violence, and cruelty. But studying
those subjects without experiencing them is like reading every
book to be found on driving a car without ever getting behind
the wheel. Since fear, negativity, temptation, violence, and
cruelty don’t exist at Home, we have to come here to confront
it, grow from it, and ultimately overcome it, not only for the
benefit of humankind but also for the progress toward the
highest potential of our souls.
We never arrive on Earth without mapping out specific
goals and challenges for ourselves, just as we’d never decide
to attend college and then pull out of the driveway without
having a clue what school we’re headed for, what courses we
want to take, or where we’ll be living while we’re there. Our
plans for each new incarnation are meticulously detailed, to
guarantee the success of our trip away from Home. We choose
our parents. We choose our siblings. We choose our birthplace
and the exact time and date of our birth, which means we
select every detail of our astrological chart. We choose every
aspect of our physical appearance and every physical and
mental challenge we’ll be facing. We choose our friends, our
lovers, our spouses, our children, our bosses, our coworkers,
our casual acquaintances, and our pets. We choose all the Dark
Entities we’ll meet along the way. (More about Dark Entities
later in this chapter). We choose every city, neighborhood, and
house we’ll live in. We choose our preferences, our
weaknesses, our flaws, our skills, and our areas of
incompetence.
It’s a reliable assumption that the more difficult the
circumstances a spirit charts for its new incarnation, the more
advanced that spirit is in its journey toward perfection. One of
the many things that makes my hair stand on end is when I
hear some judgmental fool state as if it’s true that someone
who’s mentally or physically challenged is “obviously” being
punished for some sin they committed in a past life. Just
exactly the opposite is true. The superior courage and wisdom
it takes to chart a life involving any form of severe
disadvantage is worthy of our greatest admiration and nothing
less. It’s the definition of an advanced soul.
As this century progresses, more and more of these
advanced souls will be incarnating. That’s not a guess or an
assumption, it’s simple logic. We write our charts with full
knowledge of the earthly “backdrop” against which we’ll be
living the life we’re mapping out. Civil wars, world wars, the
Great Depression, the Holocaust, the World Trade Center
tragedy—every one of those events, every event no matter
how historic or seemingly trivial, was and is anticipated on the
Other Side by those who choose to be here and involved at the
time. Again, the more difficult the life a soul charts for itself,
the more advanced the soul that composed the chart.
Advanced souls have willingly participated in earthly
cataclysms since the beginning of life on Earth, and advanced
souls will willingly participate at the end.
By definition, then, as we approach the year 2100, we’re
going to see more and more advanced souls volunteering to
incarnate and be here for the end of days (if they choose,
which we’ll discuss momentarily) . And as the population of
advanced souls on this planet increases, the spirituality on
Earth will become increasingly powerful, almost palpable, a
global, inspiring, purifying wave of the divine.
In addition to the growing number of advanced spirits
among us, my Spirit Guide Francine tells me that the veil
between the dimension of the Other Side and the dimension of
Earth is slowly but surely fading away. To understand that, you
have to know that the Other Side is only three feet above our
ground level. It simply exists on a frequency so much higher
than ours on Earth that it’s difficult for us to perceive its
presence. As this century progresses, the difference between
these two frequencies will diminish, with the result that
humankind will become increasingly aware of the spirit world
of Home—i.e., increasingly at peace with the approaching end
of days thanks to more and more reminders of where we came
from and where we’re joyfully headed.
It’s worth noting that, just as I’m meeting more and more
people whose spirituality is a top priority, I’m also meeting
more and more people who are on their last incarnations on
Earth. Remember, we choose when and how often to take
these brief “field trips” away from the Other Side, and it’s not
uncommon for a spirit to choose to come here dozens of times.
(I’m on my fifty-second incarnation, for example, and my last,
I’m delighted to add.) I’m convinced that some of us are on
our last incarnations because we’ve learned all we feel we
need to from the earthly experience, while others of us are
simply aware that by the time we’d be considering another
“field trip,” Earth won’t be able to sustain human life any
longer. And I can’t stress enough, we’ll be perfectly content
with the sacred bliss of eternity, not on this temporary plane
we’re just visiting but on the divine dimension of our real
Home.
Exit Points
I mentioned earlier that the increasingly advanced spirits who
choose to incarnate in this century can also choose whether or
not they want that incarnation to end with the end of
humankind’s days on Earth. That’s because in the charts we
write before we come here we include something called Exit
Points.
Exit Points are simply circumstances we prearrange that can
result in the end of the incarnation we’re about to undertake, if
we choose to take advantage of them at the moment they
occur. We write five Exit Points into our charts, but we don’t
necessarily wait until the fifth one to head Home. We might
decide on our first one, or our second, third, or fourth, that
we’ve accomplished all we intended on this trip. Nor do we
space them out in regular intervals when we plan them. We
might arrange for two or three Exit Points in the same year, for
example, and our next one another twenty or thirty years later.
Obvious Exit Points include critical illnesses, accidents,
near misses, and any other events that could logically be
expected to result in death but are “somehow” survived against
all odds. Other Exit Points are so subtle that we might not even
notice them until and unless we look back on them later. A
decision “for no reason” to drive a different route from usual
to a frequent destination; “trivial” delays that cause us to miss
a plane or be on the road at the time we’d intended; staying
home from a social event or an appointment because we
suddenly “just don’t feel like it”—any number of incidents
that seem meaningless at the time could easily be our spirit’s
memory of an Exit Point that we’ve decided against taking.
The fact of Exit Points brings up another fascinating point
about the end of days: every human being who’s alive when
the end of days arrives will be here by their own charted
design, and will have written “the end of life on Earth” as their
fifth Exit Point. Their conscious minds might not be aware of
that choice, but their spirit minds will know that their chart is
now complete and their purpose for their final trip to this
planet has been accomplished.
Extraterrestrials
One of the most dramatic headlines in 2012 will be the
discovery of some mysterious debris in a California/Nevada
desert. It will be impossible to tell what the original shape of
the large, mangled object was, but the alloy it was made of
clearly wasn’t manufactured from earthly materials. A group
of civilians will come across it and, for a refreshing change of
pace, will thoroughly document the event and notify the
authorities rather than the tabloids. As a result, the government
won’t have the opportunity to “spin” the debris into
nonexistence, nor can those who discovered it be accused of
trying to perpetrate a fraud by selling their story.
This discovery will occur in conjunction with a series of
untraceable signals that will disrupt satellite transmissions and
wireless communications throughout the world. And by the
end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013, having finally put two
and two together, organized groups of explorers, researchers,
government agencies, and other experts will undertake formal
worldwide expeditions in search of extraterrestrials.
Of course, extraterrestrials have been here for millions of
years and they’re here now, calling as little attention to
themselves as possible as they contribute to our society
through careers that their advanced knowledge make possible.
They’re among our most brilliant researchers, space engineers,
nuclear physicists, teachers, scientists, judges, social reformers
—any pursuit that will leave its mark as indelibly as their
collaboration with us on the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge all
those centuries ago. Two of them are currently valued
employees of NASA, and one of them was a Nobel Prize
winner. It’s preposterous to be afraid of extraterrestrials, as
science fiction books and movies have encouraged us to be.
Let’s face it, they’re so far beyond us technologically that they
can easily and routinely travel here from Andromeda, the
Pleiades, and other galaxies we aren’t even aware of yet. But
we think they don’t have the technology to destroy us in the
blink of an eye if that were their purpose for being here?
In about 2018, extraterrestrials will be making our search
for them much easier—they’ll begin “outing” themselves,
safely and sanely and very much in public, to such
organizations as the United Nations, Scotland Yard, NASA,
and even a Camp David summit. They’ll step forward by the
thousands and willingly subject themselves to a whole battery
of psychological and biological tests, confirming that the
origins of their various species are not earthly.
By the early 2020s, we humans will reach an accord with
the extraterrestrials in our midst and those still to come. Many
of the dramatic advancements in our own space travel will be
the direct result of what we’ve learned from them, from the
manned Mars exploration in 2012 and the chartered moon
junkets in the late 2030s to the lunar base of the early 2040s
that will become a wildly popular tourist destination.
Let’s face it, we’re not just a part of a global community,
we’re also a part of a universal community. Why that seems to
frighten some people I have no idea. Because we earthly
residents are the universal version of the “new kids on the
block,” we have an infinite wealth of development and
spiritual growth to look forward to from our brothers and
sisters on other planets when we finally embrace them and
start listening.
Of even more importance, residents of other planets are
God’s creation, His children, just as we are, after all. They
have the same journeys of the soul that we do, the same
options of reincarnation, and the same sacred bliss to look
forward to on the Other Side—not our Other Side, but their
own. Every inhabited planet throughout the universe has a
divine Home of its own, and just think how grateful we might
be for that fact when we can no longer live on the earthly
home we’re in the process of destroying.
I know that some of you who are reading this are feeling a
deep, odd twinge of familiarity in your soul, very possibly
without having a clue what’s causing it. It’s not because you’re
actually aliens from somewhere else in the universe. Aliens
know exactly who they are and where they came from.
Instead, it’s because, probably without a conscious awareness
of it, you’re a highly advanced spirit called a Mystical
Traveler, and Mystical Travelers have a whole different
perspective on the earthly end of days.
Mystical Travelers
In all this talk about advanced spirits, I don’t want to give the
mistaken impression that “advanced” means “more
important.” In God’s eyes, every one of us is of equal
importance and value. We are all His children, and He created
each of us to be utterly unique, each with our own purpose,
dependent on our highest possible level of advancement. For a
simple earthly example of the equal importance of various
levels of advancement, think of the military. Generals are
absolutely highly advanced and essential, but without the
armies of soldiers they command, what do you think their odds
would be of winning a battle? I promise you, every purpose
God bestows is indispensable to His great plan for this infinite,
flawless universe, and every spirit is equally cherished. So
when I talk about a level of highly advanced souls called
Mystical Travelers, I’m not implying that these are souls
who’ve been specially endowed by God or are held in higher
esteem than the rest of us.
Mystical Travelers are spirits who, in the course of their
soul’s journey, have essentially said to God, “Wherever in this
universe you need me, I’ll willingly go.” Their universal
mission is to help maintain the divine spiritual connection
between God and His children as a thriving, viable, everpresent force. Toward that purpose, they’ve volunteered to
incarnate on any inhabited planet in any galaxy where God
needs them. Most Mystical Travelers have experienced many
lifetimes on Earth as well as on other planets, and whether or
not they become public figures, they quietly touch the lives
around them in ways that are almost transcendent in their
impact. They seem divinely lit from within, and the rest of us
are drawn to them, quite literally like moths to flames. They’re
uncommonly peaceful, uncommonly empathetic, uncommonly
spiritual, and uncommonly graceful in the often difficult work
they’re here to do on God’s behalf. Mother Teresa was a
Mystical Traveler. Joan of Arc was a Mystical Traveler.
Thirteen-year-old poet, philosopher, and theologian Mattie
Stepanek was a Mystical Traveler. There are more among us
who may never become famous but who will leave no doubt
about their spiritual brilliance for those who will never be the
same because of them. And even more of them will gather on
Earth as this century progresses, to lend their incomparable
hearts, courage, and spirits to God’s greatest service while the
end of days draws closer.
Then, rather than the eternity of divine perfection on the
Other Side that most of us have to look forward to when life
on Earth becomes impossible, Mystical Travelers will stop at
Home just long enough to chart their next incarnation on any
other planet in any other galaxy where God needs them most.
The Dark Side at the End of Days
The Dark Side is that segment of the population who’ve
rejected God and His laws of humanity, integrity, compassion,
and non-judgmental love. We’ll call them Dark Entities for
this discussion, since their polar opposites, those who embrace
and revere God and the white light of the Holy Spirit, are
called White Entities. And don’t let it enter your mind that
“dark” and “white” are references to race or skin color. The
mere suggestion of any such thing is offensive.
God didn’t create the evil negativity that rules the Dark
Side. What He did create are spirits endowed with free will.
And some spirits used that free will to turn their backs on their
Creator and pursue lives unencumbered by adoration of
anyone but themselves. Dark Entities are their own gods, too
narcissistic to believe in any being superior to them. They
might profess a deep, profound belief in God, and they might
even be able to recite the entire Bible by heart—if they think it
will help gain the trust, allegiance, and adoration of someone
they’re eager to manipulate and control. They might also be
very fond of working Satan and other mythical devils into
their monologues (Dark Entities only occasionally tolerate
actual give-and-take conversation), but only when they’re
facing consequences they don’t like and they need someone
else to blame.
The Dark Side exists in both human and spirit form, just as
we White Entities do. In human form, they look exactly like
the rest of us. (Don’t forget, if it weren’t for the choices
they’ve made, they’d be the rest of us.) They might be a
family member, a lover or spouse, a neighbor, coworker, a
boss, a supposed friend. In spirit form, their negative energy
can deeply affect everything from mechanical and electrical
devices to our mental health without our even realizing what’s
happening. But whether they’re in human form or spirit form,
Dark Entities all share the same basic qualities:
• They have no conscience, no sincere remorse, and no
sense of responsibility for their actions. They take all
the credit and none of the blame for everything that
happens around them, and self-justification is their first
and only response to criticism.
• In psychiatric terms, they’re true sociopaths. They
expertly mimic human behavior without ever really
feeling it. They can simulate charm, sensitivity,
empathy, love, regret, and piety to gain proximity to us.
They promptly drop the act once they’ve won us over,
though, having no further use for it and frankly finding
it to be too much work. We White Entities, because our
emotions and faith are genuine, have trouble imagining
that we’ve been witnessing a performance. So we cling
to our trust in them and our loyalty to them, trying
desperately to reinspire that wonderful person we’re
sure is in there because we saw them with our own
eyes, unable to grasp that that wonderful person never
really existed in the first place.
• As far as the Dark Side is concerned, we White Entities
are nothing but a collection of walking mirrors. If their
reflection through our eyes is flattering, we’re valuable
to them. But the minute we catch on that we’ve been
looking at a mask, and they no longer like the way they
look in our “mirror, ” they’ll react in one of two ways
—they’ll get as far away from us as possible, or they’ll
repeat the award-winning performance that attracted us
in the first place in the hope of attracting us again.
• Dark Entities couldn’t care less about the laws of God
or the laws of respectable society. They live by their
own self-serving rules, which change at their
convenience and don’t necessarily apply to anyone else
around them. They view even their worst behavior as
perfectly, invariably acceptable; but they might become
outraged if someone else aims that same behavior at
them. The result of this seeming inconsistency is that
the White Entities close to them are kept constantly off
balance, which gives the Dark Entity that much more
power.
• The goal of the Dark Entity isn’t to turn a White Entity
dark. They know that can’t be done. Their goal is to
extinguish the White Entity’s light, since darkness
can’t exist where light is present. They don’t
necessarily try to destroy the White Entity physically.
More often they’ll simply create as much emotional
turbulence, self-doubt, guilt, and depression as possible
in as many White Entities they have access to, so that
the White Entities lose their self-confidence, strength,
and power.
• Dark Entities rarely enjoy each other’s company—with
no light to extinguish, no flattering reflection to gaze
into, and no control to be gained over someone with
the same bag of tricks, there would be no point.
Instead, they methodically and deliberately seek us out.
And at least once in our lives, we’re likely to seek
them out too. It has nothing to do with being stupid. It
has to do with taking our spiritual responsibilities
seriously and believing it’s our moral responsibility to
reach out to someone we perceive to be lost, in trouble,
or misunderstood.
Of course, it’s against our humanitarian instincts to turn our
back on a child of God who needs us. But when it’s the Dark
Side we’re up against, we’re wasting our time. A Dark Entity
can’t be turned white, any more than a White Entity can be
turned dark. We can’t appeal to a conscience that doesn’t exist;
we can’t inspire genuine remorse in someone who takes no
responsibility for their actions; and we can’t ignite sincere love
in someone who only loves God Himself on an as-needed
basis. I say this as both a spiritual psychic and as a person
who’s learned the hard way: if there’s a Dark Entity in your
life, in Jesus’s own words, “Shake off the dust from your feet
[and] leave.” (Matthew 10:14)
No discussion of who Dark Entities are would be complete
without making it clear who they aren’t. Not all murderers and
other violent criminals are Dark Entities. Not everyone who’s
ever hurt you is a Dark Entity. Not everyone who’s illtempered or hard to get along with is a Dark Entity. Not
everyone you don’t like, or who doesn’t like you, is a Dark
Entity. There are White Entities I don’t like. There are White
Entities who don’t like me. This isn’t about labeling people, or
passing judgment, or worst of all, becoming a spiritual snob,
which can be just as repelling as the Dark Side itself. It’s
simply about learning how and why we need to pay close
attention to who’s in our lives. True, we wrote every one of
those people into our charts before we came here. But we
wrote in some of them to teach us the wisdom of knowing
when to walk away— the one area in which the Dark Side can
be of use to us for a change.
They sound like the perfect candidates to be sent straight to
hell, especially at the end of days, don’t they? You’re about to
read, though, why I’ll never believe that hell is where any of
us ends up.
The Left Door
I promise you from the core of my soul that the closest thing to
an actual place called “hell” is this earth we’re living on, this
tough boot camp we voluntarily come to from time to time for
progress along the eternal journey of our souls. There is no
bottomless pit. There is no fiery abyss of flames and agony.
There is no eternal banishment to a place more horrible than
we can ever imagine.
That being true—and it is—it’s fair to wonder what happens
to the Dark Side when their lifetime ends. The answer isn’t
pretty, but again, they have no one to thank but themselves.
When a Dark Entity dies, their spirit never experiences the
tunnel and the sacred light at its end. Instead, they’re propelled
straight through the Other Side’s Left Door, or, as my
granddaughter used to call it when she was a little girl, Mean
Heaven. Please don’t let me create the mistaken impression
that when we reach the Other Side we see two doors and have
to choose between the left and the right. Only a handful of
times have I heard of a near-death survivor being conscious of
finding two doors at the end of the tunnel, and there was no
danger of their stepping through the wrong one.
The Dark Side has already chosen the Left Door through an
unrepentent lifetime of physically, emotionally, and/or
spiritually abusing God’s children, so no other door is even
visible to them when they die. And inside the Left Door is an
infinite abyss of godless, joyless, all-consuming nothingness.
The only permanent residents of this abyss are faceless
beings in hooded cloaks, who’ve become the artistic and
literary archetype for the persona of Death, aka the Grim
Reaper. These beings don’t act as dark spirit guides or
avenging angels. They function more as a council, overseeing
the paths of the spirits who make a brief appearance in their
presence.
And the spirit’s time in the void behind the Left Door is
nothing if not brief. Unlike spirits on the Other Side who can
choose when and whether to return to Earth for another
incarnation, Dark Entities travel straight from their bodies at
death, through the Left Door into the Godless darkness they’ve
chosen, and right back in utero again, on a self-inflicted
horseshoe-shaped journey that leaves them as dark at birth as
they were at death in their previous life.
Let’s take Ted Bundy as a prototype of the Dark Side, since
his series of murders are indisputed and by all accounts he
didn’t experience a moment of even insincere remorse before
he was executed. The instant Ted Bundy died, his spirit
traveled through the Left Door and entered the womb of some
poor unsuspecting woman who is probably wondering where
she went wrong as a parent, when the truth is the dark course
of her child’s life was already determined before it was born.
I’ve said a million times in lectures, and I’ll say it again now:
do not get pregnant immediately after hearing the news that
Charles Manson has died, unless you want to be the horribly
unlucky recipient of that dark spirit when it horseshoes back to
Earth again.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was, and how many of my
longstanding questions were answered, when I learned the
truth about the Dark Side’s journey through the Left Door and
back into the womb. As a psychic, I can look at most people
and see a whole crowd of spirits from the Other Side, from
Spirit Guides to departed loved ones to angels. But from time
to time I’ll notice someone who seems to have no spirits
around them at all, who seems isolated from the divine loving
support that constantly surrounds most of us. I used to worry
that I was developing “blind spots” where some people were
concerned, and if that were true I needed to do something
about it. Now I know that there’s a perfectly good reason why
some people don’t have a team from the Other Side around
them: it’s impossible to accumulate a team from a place
you’ve never been. Those solitary people are Dark Entities
who, by their own choice, take the Left Door instead, and pay
a horrible spiritual price for it too.
I’ve also found great spiritual comfort in the truth of the
journey of the Dark Side. On one hand, I know that the perfect
God I believe in could never really be vindictive enough to
banish any of His children from His sacred presence for
eternity. On the other hand, I couldn’t make peace with the
idea that Ted Bundy and I, who are what I’ll politely call polar
opposites on the subject of the sanctity of humanity, could end
up in the very same embrace of the Other Side between
lifetimes, as if there is no significant difference between my
soul and the soul of a serial killer.
Now I know what sends Ted Bundy and other card-carrying
members of the Dark Side through the Left Door for countless
dark incarnations while most of us make it safely Home to the
Other Side: the Dark Side defiantly turns their backs on a God
who never did and never will stop loving them, which is the
one thing most of us find as spiritually inconceivable as the
Dark Side itself.
And to prove that our Creator really does love each of His
children eternally and unconditionally, not even Dark Entities
are doomed to horseshoe from the Left Door into the womb
again forever. The spirits and angels on the Other Side are well
aware of these lost spirits, and sooner or later they literally
catch them in their quick transit from one dimension to
another and bring them Home to be embraced by God and
infused with love again by the white light of the Holy Spirit,
the only force powerful enough to reunite them with the
sanctity of their souls.
The Dark Side at the End of Days
The continuous cycle Dark Entities experience when each
incarnation ends—from Earth through the Left Door and right
back in utero again—is obviously going to hit a serious snag
when life on Earth is no longer possible: how can they
horseshoe into an earthly womb when there are no longer any
earthly wombs to be found? What will happen to the earth’s
Dark Side after the end of days?
There is in this universe an infinite, unfathomable force
field, a great “uncreated mass” we can’t begin to comprehend,
a core from which the love and power of God emanate. This
uncreated mass is where the rarest, most highly advanced
souls from every inhabited planet willingly end their journeys,
forfeiting their identities to be literally absorbed into the
essence of God’s force field. Once a spirit has given itself to
that ultimate power, it never regains its previous identity. It
doesn’t cease to exist, it simply becomes indistinguishable and
inseparable from the mass of which it’s become a part. For
example, picture pouring a cup of water into the Pacific
Ocean. That cup of water hasn’t ceased to exist, but it can’t
and won’t ever again be separated from the huge body that’s
consumed it.
So there are those rare, supreme spirits who offer their very
identities to God’s infinite uncreated mass. And it’s into that
same ultimate sanctity that Dark Entities will be absorbed at
the end of days, in a final, loving, holy embrace of purification
by the One who created them and who never let their rejection
of Him dissuade Him from adoring them.
Earthbounds at the End of Days
Earthbounds, or ghosts, as many of you know, are spirits who,
for a variety of reasons, either see the tunnel that will take
them to the Other Side when they die and reject it, or they
refuse to acknowledge it at all. This leaves them stranded,
outside of their bodies, caught between the lower vibrational
level we exist in on Earth and the much higher-frequency
vibrational level of Home.
Ghosts are clueless that, in earthly terms, they’ve died.
They’re very much alive as far as they’re concerned, exactly
where they were an hour, a day, or a week ago. Nothing has
changed from their perspective except for the sudden,
inexplicable fact that no one seems to be able to see or hear
them because they’ve “changed frequencies” without knowing
it. People who’ve experienced hauntings complain about how
ornery and irritable ghosts seem to be. Try having everyone
around you suddenly start treating you as if you don’t exist
and see if you don’t find it irritating.
While the details vary dramatically from one ghost to the
next, the two most common reasons why they inadvertently or
deliberately miss the opportunity to go Home boil down to
passion (which can be either love or hate) and fear. Some stay
behind to care for a child they adore, or to wait for a lover to
come home, or to protect their cherished home from intruders.
Others stay behind to seek revenge on real or imagined
enemies (which never works, by the way, so don’t spend one
minute worrying about that). Still others are so afraid God will
find them undeserving of His loving welcome Home that they
remain earthbound rather than face Him.
Fortunately, mostly for them but for us as well, let’s face it,
there is no such thing as a ghost who’s eternally trapped here
on Earth. Thanks to an enormous and constantly growing
human awareness that will be virtually universal by the last
decades of this century, a lot of ghosts are directed to the
tunnel and the Other Side by people who recognize them and
understand that there’s really great compassion in saying,
“You’re dead. Go Home.” But the spirits on the Other Side are
far more aware of earthbound souls than we are, and they
perform their own constant interventions for as long as it takes
until each ghost has celebrated the joyful reunion that’s
waiting for them on the other end of that tunnel.
I will never forget the indescribable experience of visiting
Ground Zero not long after the despicable terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Among the
countless feelings that flooded through me were the surprise,
relief, and gratitude that not a single one of the three thousand
casualties of that awful tragedy failed to make it quickly and
safely Home. Not a single ghost was left behind, confused and
lost and frightened, thanks to God’s exquisite, perfect, loving
grace.
And exactly the same thing will happen at the end of days.
Through the grace of God, none of His children will be left
behind or cast aside, including the earthbounds who will
suddenly see the tunnel, joyfully embrace it, and join the rest
of us in continuing our perfect, blissful lives on the Other Side.
The Cosmic Other Side
As long as Earth exists, our Other Side will exist as well.
It’s where all our earthly spirits come from when we enter
the womb, and it’s where we return when we die. It’s a very
real place, more beautiful than our finite minds can imagine,
but our spirit minds remember it and are Homesick for it from
the moment we leave until the moment we get back.
It’s not far, far away. It’s not over the rainbow, or beyond
the moon and the stars. As I mentioned earlier, it’s right here
among us, another dimension superimposed on ours, just three
feet above our version of ground level. Its topography is a
perfect mirror image of Earth, with one exception: because
there’s no erosion or pollution on the Other Side, its landscape
is an image of the earth from thousands of years ago, when
bodies of water were pure blue and mountains and coastlines
were perfectly intact. On the Other Side, Atlantis and Lemuria,
our lost continents, thrive. So do the world’s great
architectural, literary, and artistic masterpieces, even if they’re
crumbling or have long since been destroyed in our harsh
world.
The same is true for every other inhabited planet. Their
Other Sides are three feet above their ground levels, at a much
higher vibrational frequency than that of the planet they
surround. Their topographies are identical to their “home”
planets, and their great works and structures are impeccably
preserved.
Remember, the end of days on Earth will mean that this
planet will be unable to sustain life, but the planet itself will
remain intact. As long as Earth itself exists, our Other Side
will exist. The same is true for every other inhabited planet
and their respective Other Sides. And as inhabited planets
become more spiritually advanced and less separate from one
another—which we have to look forward to in the coming
decades—their Other Sides will begin blending with the great,
infinite, universal Other Side, especially when their
environments will no longer support human life. If the earth
were destroyed tomorrow, we and our Other Side would join
the spirits whose planets have already completed their natural
cycles, who are living the same joyful, sacred lives that wait
for us among the stars, where our Home beyond Home called
the Cosmic Other Side eternally thrives. To picture its location
in the most beautiful possible way, think of the ancient
imagery of “The Great Man” in the night sky.
The Great Man’s head is the constellation Aries.
His feet are the constellation Pisces.
The rest of His body is outlined by the other ten
constellations of the zodiac.
That is the closest we can come to imagining where we can
look to find some hint of the Cosmic Other Side.
The Cosmic Other Side is as identical a reflection of the
universe as our Other Side is of Earth, and it’s populated by
incarnated spirits and messiahs from formerly inhabited
planets that no longer exist.
All, of course, simply part of God’s promise that we are
eternally safe and loved, and the lives he gave us are
guaranteed to never end.
Leaving Earth, Going Home
I once appeared on Larry King Live with the late Mattie
Stepanek, the theologian, philosopher, poet, and Mystical
Traveler who passed away at the age of thirteen. Mattie, as
most of you know, suffered for much of his life from a tragic
inherited disease called dysautonomic mitochondrial
myopathy, and he was in a wheelchair when we met, speaking
with the help of a respirator, the most cheerful, positive, selfassured, God-centered child you can imagine.
Larry King asked, “Mattie, are you afraid of death?”
And Mattie replied, “I’m afraid of dying, but I’m not afraid
of death.”
I think there’s great universal truth in that statement, I’m
just not sure I’ve ever heard it put more simply and clearly. As
we anticipate the end of days, or just the end of our lives on
Earth whenever and however they occur, isn’t it really the
process of death that frightens us, as opposed to death itself?
Ask anyone who’s had a near-death experience and they’ll
all tell you the same thing: they no longer have any fear of
death whatsoever. That was true for Mattie Stepanek, and it’s
true for me. I had a near-death experience when I underwent
routine surgery at the age of forty-two. In fact, it’s fair to say I
had an actual death experience, since the monitor keeping
track of my vital signs flatlined for a few minutes. And I have
the advantage of remembering every moment of it, so I can
give you a firsthand account of exactly what happens when we
die:
• The legendary tunnel immediately appeared. It didn’t
come from “up there somewhere.” Instead, it rose up
from my body, seemingly from my own etheric
substance. It didn’t lead up toward the sky, it led
“across,” at maybe a twenty-degree angle, confirming
what my Spirit Guide Francine had told me a million
times—the Other Side really is a paradise that’s right
here among us, only three feet above our ground level.
• I had never felt, or been, so completely, thrillingly,
vibrantly alive as I was when I moved through the
tunnel. I felt free and weightless, relieved to be rid of
my body and free from the pull of gravity. I was
immediately infused with peace, bliss, and total recall
of Home and the truth of eternity. With that recall came
a release of all worry about the loved ones I’d left
behind. I knew they would be fine as they proceeded
living out their charts, and I also knew that in what
would seem like the blink of an eye to me, we’d be
together again on the Other Side, so there was no
sadness, no sense of loss, and no missing them.
• The sacred, brilliant white light appeared ahead of me.
Everything I’d heard and read about it was true—
somehow, it seemed almost alive, pulsating with God’s
love and His infinite knowledge, and an awareness
flooded through me that the light was as familiar to me
as my own soul.
• The figure of a loved one appeared in the large opening
at the end of the tunnel. (In my case it was my
cherished Grandma Ada, whom I’d yearned to see
again since I was eighteen.) Beyond her I could see a
grassy, flower-filled meadow, like the most beautiful
meadow on Earth with its colors enriched and
magnified a thousand times.
That trip Home for me was obviously interrupted, by
Grandma Ada gesturing for me to stop and by a distant voice
of a friend by my hospital bed pleading, “Sylvia, don’t go,
you’re so needed.” I was deeply depressed for days about
finding myself back on Earth, and while I eventually became
grateful to have stayed, I can promise you from the core of my
soul that death was and is absolutely nothing to fear. It is
exactly the return to the all-encompassing love of God’s arms
that we’ve all hoped it will be—and that our spirits remember
perfectly and look forward to.
Before I describe the utter joy of our actual arrival on the
Other Side, I want to clarify my strong beliefs about a couple
of the most breathlessly anticipated events of the end of days,
urging you as always to study, think, and come to your own
conclusions.
The Second Coming and the Rapture
According to Christian literature and legend, two major events
involving Jesus Christ will be among the most telling signs
that the end of days are at hand: his reappearance on Earth in
human form, and his appearance among the clouds to take the
faithful to heaven in a phenomenon called the Rapture.
They’re both beautiful thoughts, but I don’t happen to
believe that either of them will happen when the end of days
arrives.
I take Jesus at his sacred word when he said, in Matthew
28:20, “And lo, I am with you always, to the very end of
time.” He didn’t say, “I will be with you,” which implies some
future event, but of far more importance, it also implies that
there might be some period of time when he’s absent from us.
That’s simply not true. He’s been with us every second since
his divine Resurrection, he’s with us at this moment, he’ll be
with us when we return to our lives on the Other Side, and
he’ll be with us throughout our joyful eternity at Home. We
can stop waiting for him and watching for him. He’s already
here, an essential part of our present tense.
Didn’t he accomplish everything we could ever want or
need or hope for during his one divine incarnation? For what
reason would he come again? To prove that he’s real, and that
he truly is the Son of God? Don’t we already know that
beyond all doubt? And sadly, isn’t it likely that his Second
Coming would create the same controversy and skepticism he
faced two thousand years ago?
Besides, what more effective way to put every phony
“reincarnated messiah” out of business—and believe me, more
and more of them will be cropping up as this century
progresses—than to say, and mean, “I’ve stopped looking for
Jesus ‘out there,’ because I have the peace of knowing he’s
already right here.”
Then point to your heart and remember:
And lo, I AM with you always, to the very end of time.
I also believe that the anticipation of the Rapture—Christ
embracing the faithful in the sky at the end of days—is
actually the anticipation of imagery that was never meant to be
taken literally. And I believe that the real Rapture preceding
the end of days will be far more thrilling and far, far more
sacred.
Remember, part of the Rapture of the book of Revelation is
God’s judgment of all of humankind “by what was written in
the book of life, by what they had done.” (Revelation 20:12)
“And if any one’s name was not found written in the book of
life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15) I
said in an earlier chapter and I’ll say again—the God I know,
the God I worship who created us all, is perfect in His
kindness, His forgiveness, His wide-open arms, and his
absolute, unconditional love. I cannot and will not conceive of
a God so cruel, spiteful, and merciless that he would condemn
any of His children to an eternity in a “lake of fire.” Even the
Dark Entities who’ve turned away from God, while He
continues to love them and wait for their return to Him, will
become a part of Him when life on Earth ends. So unless Jesus
would appear in the clouds to deliver all of us, without
judgment or discrimination, I can’t imagine the Revelation
version of the Rapture. And as you’ll read later in this chapter,
no one judges our lives on Earth but us, after we’ve arrived on
the Other Side.
There’s also a simple matter of logistics, by the way. While
Jesus can obviously appear anywhere and everywhere he
wants, I repeat— from personal experience, my Spirit Guide
Francine, and more study and research than I can possibly
describe—that the Other Side is three feet above the ground
level of Earth. So why our spirits would be drawn all the way
up into the sky for our trip to a Home just three feet above us I
can’t imagine.
I promise, the true Rapture is going to be far more
spiritually enormous, and far more Godly in its universal,
unconditional love. A beautiful story, not a biblical one, that
illustrates that unconditional love so eloquently: the end of
days had arrived, and the righteous who were gathered in
anticipation of the Rapture finally asked God about Jesus’s
whereabouts. “Jesus is outside the gate,” God replied, “waiting
for Judas.”
The true Rapture will be the increasing groundswell of deep
spirituality that will be pervasive throughout the world by the
end of days. It will supersede individual religions, politics,
racial differences, anything and everything that stands in the
way of humankind finally understanding that because we all
share the same Father and the same Home, what separates us
pales in comparison to what unites us.
The true Rapture will be the subtle lifting of the veil
between our dimension and the dimension of the Other Side,
so that we on Earth will have easy access to the spirit world
that waits to celebrate our return.
The true Rapture will be a diminishing fear of the end of
days, as our memories of our previous lives and deaths
become clearer to us and we know beyond all doubt that we
are eternal, that death is nothing but an illusion and that a
simple step through the veil between dimensions will bring us
the peace and joy and is our birthright as God’s children.
The true Rapture will be the understanding that God is not
vengeful and cruel, so that at the end of days all of us—all of
us— will be safe and loved in His arms forever.
The Antichrist
We might as well get the subject of the Antichrist out of the
way while we’re at it, since being braced for his arrival seems
to be as essential to the end-of-days anticipation as the Second
Coming and the Rapture.
It will be a brief discussion, because we can officially stop
watching for the Antichrist.
The Antichrist is already here, in human form.
The Antichrist has a name.
The name is apathy.
It’s a fact that “evil prevails when good men do nothing.”
Too many have been doing nothing for far too long, and what
could be more “anti-Christ” than to take the position that
poverty, hunger, injustice, and abuse of the planet and its
inhabitants are none of our business, or that we’re just too
busy to do anything about it? Apathy is a luxury we can’t
afford any longer, nor do we want to, because in the end it will
destroy us.
As spirituality on Earth takes firm root in this century and
begins to thrive—as each of us finds our God center and, by
definition, we become more Christlike—the Antichrist of
apathy will be driven away. A day will come when we can’t
imagine not taking care of each other and this world that’s
been entrusted to us.
And it’s completely up to us how far in the future that day
is, and how long we’re going to tolerate the Antichrist in our
midst by doing nothing.
Arriving on the Other Side
We hear so often about the tunnel and the brilliant white light
at its end we have to look forward to when we die that it
almost creates the impression that our journey Home stops
there. But of course the journey only begins there. And I think
it’s unkind at the very least that so few discussions of the end
of days address the question, “And then what?”
The answer is, “And then we pick up our real lives again,
right where they left off.”
Just as all roads lead to Rome, according to the old saying,
all tunnels lead to the entrance to the Other Side. No matter
where on this earth we leave our bodies, we all take exactly
the same trip to exactly the same place. We emerge from the
tunnel to find ourselves in a breathtakingly beautiful meadow.
Waiting there to greet us are deceased loved ones from the life
we’ve just left behind, as well as friends and loved ones from
all our past lives, on Earth and on the Other Side. Our Spirit
Guides are there. Our true soul mates are there. And best of all
as far as I’m concerned, every animal we’ve ever loved from
every lifetime we’ve lived is on hand, with such pure, urgent
joy that the people waiting to welcome us have a hard time
making their way through the happy crowd.
Beyond the meadow, and our glorious “welcome Home”
party, is a gleaming cluster of massive, gorgeous structures
that are essential to our transition from Earth to the Other Side:
• The Hall of Records, with its towering marble columns
and glittering dome, which contains, among other
things, every chart of every incarnation of every one of
our lives on Earth;
• The Hall of Justice, pillared, domed white marble, most
revered for its impossibly beautiful gardens and its
treasured statue of Azna, the Mother God;
• The Towers, twin monoliths of white marble and blue
glass, where extra care is provided for arrivals from
Earth who need special psychological and emotional
help with their return Home;
• And the Hall of Wisdom, with its vast marble steps and
massive entry doors, to which most of us directly
proceed from our thrilling wealth of reunions.
I promised earlier that I would describe the only judgment
we’ll face at the end of days. It’s the same judgment we face
every time we finish an incarnation and return Home, and it’s
undoubtedly the harshest judgment we could ever imagine.
It takes place in a gigantic room in the Hall of Wisdom. Our
Spirit Guide accompanies us to one of the countless white
marble benches that surround the room. We take a seat by
ourselves, with our Spirit Guides looking on, and begin a
process that many near-death survivors recall but few
remember in enough detail to understand exactly what
happened.
You’ve heard those who have had a close brush with death
describe feeling as if their whole life flashed before their eyes.
The truth is, they didn’t just imagine it. What they actually
experienced was an abbreviated trip to the quiet stillness of
that room in the Hall of Wisdom where the Scanning Machine
sits waiting.
The Scanning Machine is a huge convex dome of blue glass.
And through that glass dome, we watch each and every
moment of the life we’ve just lived unfold before our eyes.
Rather than appearing like a movie, our life plays out in the
form of a three-dimensional hologram, so that no matter where
we move around the Scanning Machine, we can see every
detail, good or bad, right or wrong, with perfect clarity. We
review our lives for as long as it takes, even “rewinding” as
much “footage” as we want as often as we want.
Obviously our encounter with the Scanning Machine is
more than just an entertaining way for us to make the
transition from Earth to the Other Side. It’s an essential step in
the eternal journey of our spirits. As we trudge along through
our lives on Earth, we have no significant memories of the
charts we wrote for those lives to help us accomplish the
specific goals we came here for. But the moment we return
Home and arrive at the Scanning Machine, we have total recall
of our charts. So it’s not just a matter of watching our last
incarnation unfold in three-dimensional detail for the sheer
nostalgia of it, it’s a matter of seeing how that incarnation
stacked up against the detailed plans we laid out for it ahead of
time. And make no mistake about it, it’s the toughest judge of
all who ultimately evaluates our success and failure—not our
Spirit Guide, not God, but us. Us as our spirit selves, mind
you, from the perspective of the Other Side, where not only is
there no negativity but there’s also no defensiveness and no
ego-driven self-justification to prevent us from facing the truth
of our actions and being accountable for them.
During our lives on the Other Side, the Scanning Machine is
one of our most valuable research tools. In the same way we
study our just-completed incarnation when we first return
Home, we can also study every other incarnation we’ve spent
on Earth, and, for that matter, every incarnation of anyone and
everyone who interests us, by essentially “playing” any chart
we choose through the hologram “projector” of the Scanning
Machine. We can be an eyewitness to any event in our spirit’s
history or the history of humankind, or if we prefer we can
even “merge” with that event, becoming a part of it, feeling all
the emotions its actual participants felt, without altering its
dynamics or its outcome in any way.
The Scanning Machine is one of our most cherished
destinations when we return Home and as we proceed with our
busy lives there. But its value will only intensify when the end
of days comes and our time on Earth is through. It will allow
us to revisit as often as we like the lives we lived and the
lessons we learned on that planet we’ll never see again. And,
more than that, it will provide our souls with the immeasurable
growth that learning from our earthly mistakes can offer as the
reincarnation phase of our eternal lives draws to a close.
Life on the Other Side
By no coincidence, I’ve written an entire book called Life on
the Other Side, which I hope you’ll refer to every time you
find yourself becoming even slightly anxious about the end of
days. If you come away with nothing else from that book or
this one, I hope you’ll remember and believe this one simple
truth: our lives on Earth are nothing but sleepwalking
compared to the blissful, divine exhilaration of being alive in
that sacred place that’s our real Home.
Never doubt that the Other Side is every bit as real as Earth.
In fact, my Spirit Guide Francine insists it’s far more real, and
that we are actually the ghosts in their world rather than the
other way around.
The landscape is exquisite—again, identical to Earth as it
was before erosion, pollution, natural disasters, and human
destruction took their toll. Atlantis and Lemuria thrive in clear
blue oceans. The Parthenon, the Great Library of Alexandria,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Venus de Milo, all
earthly wonders and treasures look brand-new. Coastlines and
mountaintops are as sharply defined as the day they were
created. And everything thrives in weather that is a perpetually
calm, pure seventy-eight degrees.
There is no day or night, no time at all on the Other Side.
All that exists is “now.” In our spirit identities, which are the
finest of all our personality traits on Earth, we never need to
eat or sleep. We have careers that reflect our greatest passions
and talents, and our social lives are as busy as we choose, with
the widest possible variety of friends since everyone at Home
knows and loves each other. We create our homes through
thought projection, just as travel involves nothing more than
thinking ourselves wherever we’d like to be.
While God’s presence fills the very air we breathe, there are
magnificent houses of worship everywhere, with all religions
shared and celebrated. The angels walk among us, never
speaking to us or to each other, making no sounds at all until
they join in a massive choir to perform indescribably thrilling
concerts of hymns in a revered structure called the Hall of
Voices.
There is no negativity, no sorrow, no illness, no pain, no
imperfection of any kind on the Other Side. No matter what
age we were when we left our earthly bodies behind, we’re all
thirty-three years old at Home, at our perpetual peak of
vitality. We are pure love and purely loving with every breath
we take. Our eternal lives are a constant celebration of the joy
of living in our Creator’s holy presence.
All of which leads to what may be the most significant point
of all about that time when life on Earth ceases to exist: with
so much sacred, peaceful joy waiting for us on the Other Side,
maybe we should stop calling it the end of days and start
calling it the beginning.
THE BENEDICTION
from the Inca Q’ero shamans
Follow your own footsteps.
Learn from the rivers,
the trees and the rocks.
Honor the Christ,
the Buddha,
your brothers and sisters.
Honor your Earth Mother and the Great Spirit.
Honor yourself and all of creation.
Look with the eyes of your soul and engage the essential.
Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sylvia Browne is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of
many books, including Psychic Children, The Two Marys, The
Mystical Life of Jesus, Insight, Phenomenon, and Prophecy. A
working psychic for more than fifty years, she appears weekly
on The Montel Williams Show, and regularly on Larry King
Live. She lives in California.
1
Zil-Hajj—the last month of the Islamic calendar
2
Eidul-Ahja—the Festival of Sacrifice
3
The Ka’aba—an oblong stone building in the center of the
Holy City of Makkah that
houses the sacred Black Stone given to Abraham by the angel
Gabriel
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