APOCALYPSE! NOW!
By ROD DREHER
AARON Katz will be front and center at a weekend showing of "Deep Impact," the comet-hits-Earth apoca-palooza slamming into theaters tomorrow. It's his job.
Katz is not a film critic; he's an archivist and researcher at Boston University's Center for Millennial Studies, which tracks millennium movements and cultural trends. Katz will be watching closely to see how "Deep Impact," and the forthcoming comet film "Armageddon," affect audiences.
"These movies happen to coincide with scientific findings that these things are a real possibility," Katz says. "Will people see them as mere entertainment, or will it make them think that this can really happen? It's interesting how these secular forms play into religious apocalyptic thought."
There's no shortage of that. As the clock ticks down to the year 2000, American culture is rife with expectations of a doom-and-gloom purgation, followed by the rebirth of a society cleansed and renewed.
Many evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants believe we are living through the final days before the second coming of Christ.
There is a great deal of interest among Roman Catholics in apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Among the Eastern Orthodox, an unprecedented number of icons that inexplicably weep myrrh - a plant resin used to make incense - is seen as a harbinger of cataclysm.
Even New Agers, who reject traditional religion, believe the Earth is about to go through convulsive changes to prepare people for an enlightened spiritual age.
"Deep Impact,' "Armageddon' and those kinds of movies are riding a wave of interest in this stuff," says Ted Daniels, editor of the Millennial Prophecy Report. "These ideas are endemic in American culture, and always have been."
But as the millennium approaches, prophetic fervor seems to be increasing.
Peter Lalonde, host of a popular Bible prophecy program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, says the convergence of various events alerts Protestant prophecy scholars that mankind is in its final days.
The foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 tripped the prophecy clock, according to this view.
"That was the signal given in the Bible that we are in the final days," says Lalonde.
Among Catholics in recent years there has been a dramatic surge in enthusiasm for apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Ted Flynn, co-author of "The Thunder of Justice," a best-selling compendium of reported Marian apparitions - many of which have not received official Church approval - all give the same message: God is angry with mankind's faithlessness and immorality, and a harsh judgment is coming soon.
Eastern Orthodoxy is experiencing a similar outpouring of supernatural manifestations in the form of mysterious weeping icons. One such icon is at the Christ of the Hills Monastery, a Russian Orthodox community in Blanco, Texas. Today is the 15th anniversary of the day their icon of the Virgin Mary began inexplicably weeping tears of myrrh.
"God is warning the world," says Father Pangratios, a monk at the Texas monastery. "At no time in the history of our church have there been more icons weeping as now."
Should we take these people seriously? Boston University's Katz says we have no choice. If we ignore millennium fever, we'll be less able to avoid catastrophes such as the deadly government showdown with the apocalyptic Branch Davidian group in Waco, Texas.
"We need to know how to react and deal with people and groups who believe in these things," he says.