The end is nearly here for this breathtaking millennium, which began with Western Europe gripped by almost unimaginable millennial fever as the year 999 became 1000. As a new millennium approaches, it is unleashing a similar angst - both religious and secular in its roots.
Nervousness over whether computers programs can be fixed in time to preserve the records of this century are mixing with breathless religious speculation that a new millennium may mean the end of the world.The only certainty is that 2000 is bringing with it an astonishing set of predictions, fears, plans, hopes and just plain nonsense.
The marketplace of millenarian ideas - which, increasingly, means the ubiquitous, irresponsible Internet - brims with bargains, from Christian premillennialists to secular postmillennialists, from survivalists to members of Hinduism's Kala Jnana movement, who await the coming (soon, they say) of an avatar of righteousness to establish a heavenly kingdom on Earth.
"Although often depicted as a fringe phenomenon," says millennial scholar Daniel Wojcik of the University of Oregon, "millenarianism is extremely pervasive."
In his thoughtful new book, "The End of the World as We Know It," Wojcik says these apocalyptic visions reflect "perceptions of overwhelming societal crisis and a pessimistic outlook for a world so corrupt that it can be redeemed only by superhuman forces through a worldly catastrophe."
This maelstrom of wonderful or wacky ideas divides generally into those with religious and those with secular roots. Both camps (they are not neatly separated) believe the end of the world is coming. The only question is whether it will happen in five minutes, in 5 billion years (when scientists say the sun will burn out) or some time in between.
Naturally, it's the doomsday-is-almost-here folks, both religious and secular, who get the most attention.
Author and missionary Lester Sumrall, in his book "I Predict 2000 A.D.," says the end will come by 2000 - "Then Jesus Christ shall reign from Jerusalem for 1,000 years." (Sumrall left before he knew if he was right, however. He died in 1996.)
By contrast, Los Angeles psychologist Robert R. Butterworth, who studies social angst caused by dire predictions, says this: "All those folks who are predicting events from waves of transcendence to prophecies of doom as we enter the year 2000 are going to have a rude awakening when nothing happens - apart from some wild parties and computer snafus."
Of course, not everyone with religious explanations is in a panic. Important voices of calm and reason in this fearful wilderness can be heard pointing out that Jesus said only God knows such things. And who can be certain what God intends?
Still, the biblical prophecy business is a bull market. What amounts to an entire apocalyptic industry looks for and interprets signs of the end, debating each detail and nuance of prophecy, especially the "rapture" of the Christian church. Practitioners in this vast enterprise write books (for instance, about what apocalyptic things the Virgin Mary tells people in apparitions), broadcast findings on radio and TV, set up Internet Web pages and gather huge followings of people who are at once nervous and joyful with anticipation.
In evaluating these faith-based ideas it helps to remember that the click from 1999 to 2000 reflects a calendar based on an erroneous calculation of the birth of Jesus done by a 6th century Scythian monk named Dionysius Exiguus (often called Dennis the Diminutive). His work led to our modern calendar with its A.D. (for Anno Domini - Year of our Lord) designations.
Which means that this millennium, a man-made derivative of base-10 thinking, won't really end until Dec. 31, 2000, and that the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus' birth probably occurred several years ago.
Calendars - no matter how calculated - are littered with failed apocalyptic dates. Early speculation said history would end in 6000 A.M. (Anno Mundi), one calculation of which corresponded to 800 A.D. This was based on the idea that the world would last 1,000 years for each day Genesis says it took God to create it (plus a 1,000-year Christ-led reign of peace).
In our own time, Jehovah's Witnesses and others have specified dates for the end, only to see them pass. The Seventh-day Adventist Church, in fact, which grew out of a movement that said Christ would return in 1843 or 1844, issued a statement in 1995 opposing date setting. Indeed, certainty about Christo-centric cosmic events on round-number dates may diminish when we recall that this is the Jewish year 5757 and Islamic year 1418.
Nearly all religious millennial speculation grows out of the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, especially chapter 20, which speaks of a 1,000-year reign of Christ. A core issue for Christians is how they read the Bible. Do they take it literally, as fundamentalists advocate? Do they view the 1,000 years as symbolic? Or do they simply construct their own doctrine?
Reference to Revelation by biblical prophecy writers often is accompanied by allusion to such books as Daniel and Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament. They are said to hold keys to future events, including identity of the so-called Antichrist, a term that has been applied to everyone from popes to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, from Nero to Napoleon and Mussolini, from Hitler to Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev and computers.
Whatever problems scholars have had with Revelation, it's still true that Christianity's view of history is apocalyptic. It believes Christ will return one day to inaugurate history's end.
English author and theologian Stephen Travis explains: "The hope of Christ's coming at the end of history is the logical and necessary outcome of our faith that God has already acted for our salvation in the historical events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. To remove the hope of a final consummation of what Jesus Christ began in history is to undermine the whole idea of God acting in history."
As 2000 nears, however, all this religious millennial talk now competes (or mingles) with secular millennialism, which worries about an apocalyptic ending by nuclear holocaust, say, or environmental disaster. Or which postulates salvation arriving via UFOs. Or looks for another fatalistic resolution of the problem of evil. In this view, we need not wait for God to smash the world. We can do it ourselves.
For instance, books such as John Walvoord's "Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis" and Hal Lindsey's "Planet Earth - 2000 A.D." take note of potential secular catastrophes and try to fit them into premillennialist interpretations. In addition, visionaries report a growing flow of messages from the Virgin Mary predicting earthly doom.
But many people with no attachment to theology hold deep fears and beliefs about the world ending in some cataclysm (what Wojcik of the University of Oregon calls "a meaningless apocalypse"). And many of those people, too, are astir as we approach 2000.
Some of this fear is unique to this century, especially that related to nuclear weapons. There has always been speculation about another great flood or a plague or disease - or about some terrestrial body crashing into Earth and destroying it. But nuclear and environmental anxiety has grown in importance.
Some beliefs may not quite reach apocalyptic levels, but Stjepan Mestrovic, a Texas A&M sociology professor and author of "The Coming Fin de Siecle," speaks for many when he says: "TV, our fast lifestyle, the decline of tradition, the disappearance of the community - all this has finally killed off our emotional life. I see 2000 as a culmination of this process. The Internet and personal computers won't build bridges. They'll isolate us more into our own private, mental, unemotional lives."
Whatever happens, it's clear that some wise people expect the world to continue.
And just as it's advisable to be wary of a meteorologist who fails to carry an umbrella when forecasting rain or of an economist whose spouse does all the shopping, it's sensible to observe practices of people who study millennial predictions. Thus it's instructive to know that the Center for Millennial Studies, directed by Richard Landes, a Boston University history professor, is planning events that will run well past the new millennium's start. The center, expecting no rain, carries no umbrella.
Similarly, it's worth noting that in his long 1994 apostolic letter, "As the Third Millennium Draws Near," Pope John Paul II says the future of the church belongs to those "who, born in this century, will reach maturity in the next." Doesn't sound like he's expecting the curtain to drop.
And yet the truth is no one knows whether 2000 will usher in the end of history or merely the end of the 1999. And even people who tend to dismiss doomsday talk get drawn in because the questions raised by the new millennium are about final things - with all their terrifying and exhilarating possibilities.
But, in the end, the point is that no one knows if the world will end today in fire or ice, a bang or a whimper or simply continue for 5 billion more years. And that ignorance makes everyone an expert and allows false prophets - Herff Applewhite, David Koresh, Shoko Asahara and others - to play on people's fears and convince them of the logic of their twisted visions.
Now, indeed, we see through a glass, darkly. But we are not blind. And although there are no guarantees, the date-setters' consistent failure suggests there will continue to be plenty of problems to solve in the new millennium - and lots of time in which to solve them.