How We Believe, 2nd Ed.

by Michael Shermer

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  Today’s words and images are more vivid than those of a thousand years ago, with both religious and secular end-times scenarios competing for our attention. Recall The Doors’ disquieting vision in their 1967 rock song “The End,” visually enhanced a decade later by Francis Ford Coppola in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now, as army helicopters torch a Vietnam village the moment Jim Morrison lets loose with a throaty pronouncement “This is the end … .” Or Hal Lindsey’s 1977 “rapture” scene in the film version of The Late Great Planet Earth (narrated by the foreboding baritone voice of Orson Wells), showing Christians snatched from their moving automobiles by a returning Christ. Or more recently in Kevin Costner’s apocalyptic films Waterworld and The Postman. The iconographic theme even finds its way into editorial cartoons, as in a 1996 New Yorker contribution featuring a doomsayer with his placard: “THE END IS NEAR http://www.endnear.com.”

  What are millennial phenomena, how did they develop in the year 1000 and how will they play themselves out in the year 2000, and why do we find them so compelling? Even those who have no particular bent toward ecclesiastical millennialism may find in its secular twin reason enough for legitimate concern. Is the end near? If not, what does the fear of it tell us about ourselves?

  WHAT IS THE MILLENNIUM?

  The millennium (literally in Latin mille thousand, annus year) is a thousand-year block of time that commands our attention because we like to hew the world into tidy categories. Given the average human life span of less than a century, triple-zero increments in a chronology especially stand out. In A.D. 248, for example, Romans celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the mythical founding of the empire by Romulus and Remus with considerable pageantry and fanfare, singing hymns to Apollo and Diana, dancing in the streets and in the hills, and looking forward to being freed from the Barbarian peril. But the millennium takes on deep meaning, and becomes a phenomenon, when associated with the apocalypse (from the Greek apo un, kalypsis veiling, or revelation)—the catastrophic destruction of evil forces in the world followed by the resurrection of the righteous. And this, in turn, is a form of the larger genre of eschatology, or the study of final events and the end of history.

  There are two types of apocalyptic scenarios: religious, where God destroys Satan and sinners and resurrects the virtuous; and secular, where the destruction of evil comes about by natural or historical forces, and good triumphs over evil. Either way it plays out the same: destruction followed by redemption, with the fatalistic twist that The End, or some major break in human history, is inevitable. This apocalyptic millennium is a variation on the destruction-redemption and messiah myths considered in the previous chapter, as well as the still broader categories of renewal and eschatology myths reviewed in Chapter 7. These stories of the end resonate deeply in the human breast for the simple reason that we are all aware of the passing of time, that we are locked into that chronology, and that the end of our personal time must come. This is true whether one is religious or not: Everyone who ever lived has died, and so will we, and so will our descendants. Even if all the religious end-times scenarios prove hollow, the Earth itself will be engulfed by the Red Giant the sun will become in another 4.5 billion years. Even if our descendants colonize the galaxy, or other galaxies, the universe will either collapse into a giant black hole, destroying everything in it, or continue expanding until every star in every galaxy runs out of nuclear fuel and is snuffed out like the candles at the end of a liturgical ceremony. Either way, the end is coming. It is literally only a matter of time.

  Three traditional representations of Judgment Day. Albrecht Dürer’s 1498 The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals, the Distribution of White Garments Among the Martyrs and the Fall of Stars, is a depiction of St. John the Divine’s vision in Revelation, 6:1217: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand.” The Last Judgment by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Below: Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

  The connection between the millennium and the apocalypse was made most poignantly by St. John the Divine in a vision recounted in Revelation 20:110, where he “saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit,” where he threw Satan “and bound him for a thousand years.” According to Revelation, this post-Armageddon event is to be followed by the judgment of sinners and resurrection of the saved, who then “reigned with Christ a thousand years.” After this millennium, “Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations,” join forces with Gog and Magog in one final epic battle—Armageddon—but will be defeated and “thrown into the lake of fire” where he and all of his servants, including all false prophets, “will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

  To some doomsday prophets, this fatidic vision will be played out at the end of human history. But how will we know when we are nearing it? Jesus told his disciples (Luke 21:1011): “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” Herein lies the problem of interpretation, and one reason why millennial phenomena are so widespread. Since nations and kingdoms have always risen against one another; and great earthquakes, famines, and pestilences are common throughout history; and heavenly signs like comets and eclipses abound in every age, whoever is doing the interpreting sees themselves as the chosen generation. For some, the end is always nigh, from Jesus’ first-century disciples who took him literally when he said “there shall be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28), to Carlulaire de Saint-Jouin-de-Marnes’ warning in 964 that “as the century passes, the end of the world approaches,” to Ronald Reagan’s 1971 admonition that “for the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.” Whether it is Satan who brings about the final clash that leads to the terminus of history, or human stupidity through nuclear war, or a chance encounter with an asteroid, the mythic theme of the apocalypse has become a staple of both popular and high culture.

  To complicate matters, there are a number of widely divergent beliefs concerning the end-times, especially within Christianity. Premillennial Christians, for example, believe that Christ must first return to usher in the millennium. Postmillennial Christians, however, believe that Christ will return after humans have already set up God’s kingdom on earth. Of course, some individuals have chosen a more moderate middle ground by worrying very little about the precise timing of eschatological events, concentrating simply on the foundational hope of their faith, that is, that someday (who knows when?) Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead.

  For secular millennialists a similar typology can be constructed. Premillennial secularists tend to be pessimistic in their view of humanity and history, where change
can only come about after a catastrophe. Postmillennial secularists tend to be optimistic and try to work toward a better world before disaster strikes. Folklorist Daniel Wojcik, in his compelling history of The End of the World as We Know It, makes a similar distinction between unconditional apocalypticism, where the end of the world is “imminent and unalterable” and “irredeemable by human effort,” and conditional apocalypticism, where “within the broad constraints of history’s inevitable progression, human beings may forestall worldly catastrophes if they act in accordance with divine will or a superhuman plan.” Hal Lindsey offered a prime example of unconditional apocalypticism in There’s a New World Coming, when he addressed skeptics directly: “To the skeptic who says that Christ is not coming soon, I would ask him to put the book of Revelation in one hand, and the daily newspaper in the other, and then sincerely ask God to show him where we are on His prophetic time-clock.” The Montana-based Church Universal and Triumphant, headed by Elizabeth Claire Prophet, is an example of conditional apocalypticism, where they prepare for the worst by stockpiling foodstuffs and constructing bomb shelters, but pray for the best (so far so good).

  Calculating precisely when the end will come has generated a mini-publishing industry at the end of this millennium, but it has a long and honored history. Numerous thinkers over the last 2,000 years—from Church Fathers of early Christendom, to theologians of the Middle Ages, to philosophers of Early Modern Europe—concluded that the universe would end exactly 6,000 years after its six-day creation. They based this conclusion on the passage in II Peter 3:8, where “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” Since God rested on the seventh day, the seventh millennium would begin following the battle of Armageddon. It was a cosmic millennial week.

  Jewish tradition, for example, held that there were 2,000 years before the Law (Torah), 2,000 years under the Law, and 2,000 years under the Messiah. The fifth-century Church Father Augustine, in his theological epic, The City of God, outlined the six ages of history (plus one still to come) that included: (1) Adam to the Flood, (2) the Flood to Abraham, (3) Abraham to David, (4) David to the Exile, (5) the Exile to Jesus, (6) the (present) Gospel Age, and (7) the (final) Millennium. In a 1525 sermon, the Protestant revolutionary Martin Luther preached that the end would come exactly 6,000 years after Creation, which he dated at 3961 B.C. (pushing the end off until A.D. 2039, leaving plenty of time for his reforms to take effect). Even Christopher Columbus, in his unfinished Book of Prophecies, saw himself “predestined to fulfill a number of prophecies in preparation for the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world.” It is entirely possible, in fact, that one of the major motivations for Columbus’s voyages of exploration was to fulfill his perceived destiny. The world, he calculated, began in 5343 B.C. and would last 7,000 years (including the final millennium), making the end only a century and a half away, just enough time to save the souls of the newly discovered godless savages of the Indies.

  The various dates for the creation computed by countless observers in this scholarly tradition were derived by calculating the ages of the patriarchs, kings, and other biblical peoples, and generally fell in the range between 5500 B.C. (in the Septuagint) and 3761 B.C. (in the still-used Jewish calendar). In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher, in his Annals of the Old Testament, Deduced from the First Origin of the World, produced the most comprehensive creation history of his time. In addition to applying Old Testament genealogies, Ussher used astronomical and secular historical data on other societies (especially Babylon), Roman history and the New Testament, and calibrated Hebrew chronology with the Christian calendar. The 6,000-year history of the Earth, he figured, would end precisely 2,000 years after Christ’s birth. But when was that? The B.C.A.D. chronological system was not introduced until the sixth century A.D. According to biblical accounts Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod (recall, Herod talked to the Magi and ordered the slaying of the innocents). Since Herod died in 4 B.C., this is the date often used by theologians for the latest possible birth date of Jesus. Steeped in tradition, Ussher then assumed the creation would have occurred on the first Sunday following the autumnal equinox, which under the old Julian (Roman) calendar would have been Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C. With a final confident flare, he even deduced the time: high noon! (Ussher figured that since God created the heavens and the Earth and light all on Day One, it must have taken at least half a day to accomplish the feat, so, he concluded, “In the middle of the first day, light was created.”)

  Since Ussher’s book became the most widely read and frequently quoted source for the creation of the world, it was believed by many that the end would come 6,000 years later on October 23, 1996. Since you are reading this book it would appear the end has once again been postponed. But as Stephen Jay Gould points out in Questioning the Millennium, something of near-miraculous proportions did happen on that date. Down two games to one in the World Series against the mighty Atlanta Braves, and hopelessly behind 6 to 3 in the eighth inning of the critical fourth game (no one ever comes back from a three-to-one deficit), the New York Yankees pulled off a preternatural comeback to win the game and eventually the series. “So,” Gould concludes with a twinkle in his eye, “on the eminently reasonable assumption that God is a Yankee fan (and both a kindly and inscrutable figure as well), He may have used 6000 Annus Mundi to send a signal and solicit our earnest preparation before He runs out of reasons for delay and must ring down the truly final curtain on earthly business as usual.”

  Actually, the date gets pushed off another year because, as Gould notes, there was no year zero in Western mathematics when the B.C.–A.D. system was introduced, so the first year of the first century was 1, not 0. So 6,000 years from 4004 B.C. is actually 1997, not 1996. Did anything of note happen on October 23, 1997? Yes, actually, something did. On that date the United States Energy Department released a statement disclosing that as many as 30,000 nuclear bombs cannot be accounted for in the disassembly process that is part of the latest arms control agreement. According to official records, approximately 70,000 nuclear bombs have been produced since World War II. Of these, 26,735 have been destroyed, 1,741 are awaiting destruction, and 11,000 remain active in the Pentagon’s strategic stockpile. Apparently no one knows what happened to the remaining 30,000 bombs. To make matters worse, the Energy Department also admitted that of the 95.5 tons of bomb-grade plutonium produced in the United States since the Second World War, 2.8 tons of it remain unaccounted for—not the end of the world, though perhaps the necessary ingredients for it.

  Finally, it should be pointed out that the missing zero at the B.C.–A.D. marker solves the problem of when the next millennium really begins. Since the first century had no zero, it began with the year 1 and did not end until the end of the year 100. This is true for every century since, including ours. Therefore, the twentieth century, and the second millennium, end on December 31, 2000, and the new century and millennium begin the next day, January 1, 2001.

  WHEN PROPHECY FAILS—A.D. 1000

  Since myths tend to recur as enduring features of our cultural landscape (primarily due to the fact that there are only so many plot themes in stories, so they are bound to repeat in general outline), we should not be surprised that apocalyptic visions of the end have been reiterated throughout the past two thousand years. The most interesting year, for obvious reasons, is A.D. 1000. Did people then believe the end was nigh? Surprisingly, the matter of what happened at the last triple-zero cleavage in history is not at all clear, primarily owing to the historical black hole known as the Dark Ages. There just is not that much data from which to piece together an adequate picture. We do not know if this absence of evidence is evidence of an absence (of terror), or if the hysteria was expressed in some other fashion not clearly recorded for history. Chroniclers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in the finest mode of progressivist history (with a little anti-Catholicism thrown in for good measure), portrayed their ancestors in the year 1000 as irrationally hysterical. Th
e nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet, for example, saw evidence of the terror in statues of the period: “See how they implore, with clasped hands, that desired but dreaded moment … which is to redeem them from their unspeakable sorrows.” In his 1841 classic work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay recorded that “during the thousandth year the number of pilgrims increased. Most of them were smitten with terror as with a plague. Every phenomenon of nature filled them with alarm. It was the opinion that thunder was the voice of God, announcing the day of judgment. Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of terror.”

  The only problem with this account is that there is almost no evidence for it. This apparent nonevent led to an “anti-terror” movement among historians, who pointed out that nothing special happened in 1000 because other dates, such as 909, 950, 1010, and especially 1033 (a thousand years after the crucifixion) were equally apocalyptic. Hillel Schwartz’s classic survey of fins de siécle from the 990s to the 1990s, Century’s End, turned up far less panic than the author anticipated. Admitting that he was “feeding on coincidence,” Schwartz concluded that any sense of doom at century’s ends is a figment of modern historians. Christopher Hitchens amusingly calls this PMS—Pre-Millennial Syndrome. Like its biological counterpart, PMS is cyclical and predictable, but the actual malaise is rarely as bad as what was anticipated. Carnegie-Mellon historian Peter Stearns goes so far as to declare that “the apocalyptic history of the year 1000 turns out to be one of the most successful, large-scale frauds in modern treatments of the past.” Well, which is it, fear, feign, or fraud? Is there evidence that demands a verdict?