WHY THE APOCALYPSE SCARE?

"FOR decades, Christian fundamentalists have been prophesying hat [some] sort of society-wide breakdown lies just around the corner," notes Damian Thompson, a religion writer, in Time magazine. "Now to their astonishment, not only are these scenarios being taken seriously, but they are being circulated by the very people who used to ridicule them: computer programmers, business leaders and politicians." He asserts that fear of a worldwide computer failure in the year 2000 "has turned thoroughly secular individuals into unlikely millenarians" who fear the advent of disasters like "mass panic, government paralysis, food riots, planes crashing into skyscrapers."

Adding to the general anxiety are the disquieting activities of various small religious groups, often termed "apocalyptic." In January 1999, in a article titled "Jerusalem and the Sirens of the Apocalypse," the French daily Le Figaro said: "The [Israeli] security services estimate at over a hundred the number of 'millenarians' on or near the Mount of Olives awaiting the parousia or the apocalypse."

The 1998 Britannica Book of the Year contains a special report on "Doomsday Cults." It mentions, among others, suicide cults, such as Heaven's Gate, the People's Temple and the Order of the Solar Temple, and Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth), which organized the deadly poison-gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. Summing up this report, Martin E. Marty, professor of religion at the University of Chicago, wrote: "The turning of the calendar page to 2000 is inspiring-and will almost certainly inspire all kinds of prophecies and movements. Some may become dangerous. It will be a time that should not be face complacently."

Next time: History Of The Apocalypse Scare

Watchtower,1999