The Shadow of Armageddon

by LeMay, Jim

  The trend for fewer languages to be spoken by more people and the standardized pan-world culture allowed different societies to grow in similarity. As the differences that separated peoples lessened, so too did the dislike and distrust between them. Although racial and ethnic intolerance still existed, it greatly abated.

  But even as tension between different ethnic groups declined, increased religious fervor exacerbated tension between the world’s many faiths. As society became more fluid and people increasingly moved, so did religions restlessly spread. Different faiths lived side by side as never before. Religious strife became common all over the world, often expressing itself as urban guerilla warfare. Secular crime also increased in cities as growing populations created more crowded living conditions. Urban areas became overcrowded assemblages of armed camps.

  During the early and mid-twentieth century, many believed that as science advanced human knowledge, the influence of that last bastion of irrationality, religion, would be diminished. World culture would become secularized. But just the reverse happened. Religion steadfastly refused to wither away on schedule. In fact the old religions evolved into myriads of different forms, and new ones appeared seemingly overnight. None of this was new of course; this is the way religions have always behaved. Only now, because of faster communication and earth’s vast population, the process seemed to move at a more frantic rate.

  Many have always mistakenly classified the religions of the world into a few easily defined and more or less permanent religious groups: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and so on. The opposite is true and always has been. Old religions are evolving continually with Darwinian fervor. Christianity was practiced around the world in hundreds of conflicting varieties, as were divergent orders of Islam. Buddhism, often thought by Westerners to be a mysterious union of benign peace calmly presiding over the East, was actually a vast family of religions with strongly opposing views. The many branches of Hinduism experienced profound evolutionary changes as far back as the nineteenth century when they were especially influenced by Western Christian ideology.

  Not only have existing religions always mutated with frenetic energy; new ones continually appear. The Romans considered the first Christians to be no more than superstitious rabble. The world was astonished to see people they considered ragged desert barbarians boil out of the Arabian Peninsula and terrified when Islam conquered so much of the known world in such a short time. Protestants started as an upstart schism to the traditional faith in the sixteenth century. Mormons were considered an anachronistic band of Puritans in the 1870s. Up until the 1940s Pentecostals were sneered at as “holy rollers"; a hundred years later, there were estimated to be nearly a billion of them on earth. Throughout the last of the twentieth century, so many new religious sects arose in Japan that it became necessary to distinguish between “new religions” (shin-shukyo) and “new, new religions” (shin-shinshukyo).

  People who tracked religion came to realize that what had once been considered a fanatical cult or a fundamentalist heresy could become the next major religious force.

  When people of the Western world thought of new religions, they generally thought of groups like the Moonies, Hare Krishnas, Scientologists, Bahais, Wiccans, or New Agers, but these in fact included a only tiny part of the total and didn’t influence the world significantly. A few of the relatively new modern religions extant in the twenty-first century included:

  The Ahmadis: A messianic sect of Islam based in Pakistan and founded by a Punjabi Muslim, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, in 1876. He wrote, “I hereby inform you all of the important fact that Almighty God has ... appointed me from Himself from the revival and support of the true faith of Islam.” And further that he had been brought to earth as “the Imam of the age today who must, under Divine Command, be obeyed by all Muslims.” Ahmadis were considered, and therefore persecuted as, heretics by most Muslims. They were barred from entering Mecca. According to Ahmad’s version of religious history, Jesus escaped from the cross and fled to India where he died at the age of 120.

  Cao Dai: A syncretistic religion that combined the tenets of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism with elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It was founded in Vietnam in 1926 by a government official named Ngo Ming Chieu after he received a revelation from Duc Cao Dai, the Supreme Being, during a seance. The movement’s organization strongly resembled that of the Catholic Church. It was led by a Pope, whose headquarters was called the Holy See. Below him were cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests. The Cao Dais loved ritual and symbolism and used a complex mix of candles, incense, complicated altars, karmic cycles, yin and yang, seances, and prayer to worship an unusual pantheon of divinities: Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Quan Am, Ly Thai Bach, Quan Thanh De Quan, and Jesus Christ. Its “Three Saints” were Sun Yat Sen, founder of the modern Republic of China; Trang Trinh, a sixteenth century Vietnamese poet; and French poet and novelist Victor Hugo.

  The Raelians: In 1973, a French-speaking Canadian known as Claude Vorihlon changed his name to Rael and told of his abduction in a UFO by a four-foot humanoid extraterrestrial with olive skin, almond-shaped eyes, and long dark hair. The alien took him to the crater of a French volcano and spoke to him, in perfect French of course. His first words were, “You regret not having brought your camera?” In subsequent conversations, the extraterrestrial told him that the human race had been created, through manipulation of their DNA, by beings from outer space who now wished to return to earth to become better acquainted with their creations and to correct the erroneous “old concept of God.” Prophets in earlier times such as Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad had been given these revelations, but man had forgotten them and so the truths needed to be revealed again. By Rael. The Raelians had raised money to build “the first embassy to welcome people from space.” Earlier revelations told Rael that the embassy should be built near Jerusalem, but when the Israelis refused to cooperate, a subsequent Revelation led them to consider Hawaii as a possibility.

  Soka Gokkai International: A branch of Buddhism inspired by thirteenth-century Buddhist monk Nichiren whose beliefs opposed the more traditional otherworldly viewpoint of most Buddhist sects. In fact, its adherents believe that true Buddhists should embrace earthly experience and turn it into enlightened wisdom rather than trying to escape it. Soka Gokkai – the term means “value-creating society” – was first founded in 1930 in Japan by Makiguchi Tsunesaburo and Toda Josei. After World War II, it had to be re-established and from that point on began to grow dramatically by use of an aggressive program of evangelism. At first this aggressive behavior was subjected to strong criticism, but by the late twentieth century the religion became generally accepted, not only in Japan but around the world. The United Nations accepted the religion as a non-governmental organization.

  The Vineyard Church and The Toronto Blessing: The Vineyard Church, founded in 1974, was an evangelistic charismatic Christian church based in Canada, characterized by informality, spontaneity, and a lack of traditional hierarchy. The Toronto Blessing appeared suddenly in 1994 after a service performed by a preacher from Florida named Rodney Howard Browne. The service was delivered in the Toronto branch of the Vineyard Church which for awhile accepted its offspring as an affiliate. The offspring quickly became too unconventional even for its parent, however, and soon the original organization no longer recognized it. During services its adherents often experienced “a move of the Holy Spirit” that induced uncontrollable laughter, apparent drunken behavior, or barking like dogs or roaring like lions.

  Umbanda: A syncretistic religion stressing spirit worship and spirit healing based in Brazil. It amalgamated African religion (primarily Yoruban) with local native beliefs, elements of Catholicism, and the spiritist ideas of French philosopher Allan Kardec, who claimed to have had philosophical and scientific conversations (through mediums from all over the world) with members of the spirit world. Umbanda first became a recognizable movement in the 1920s and grew at an extraordina
ry rate throughout the twentieth century. It was so successful uniting the many races and faiths of Brazil it was often called the “national religion” of that country, though it spread to nearly two dozen other nations during the twentieth century and a dozen more in the twenty-first.

  The Gaians: Started as a philosophical movement sometime around the turn of the century, based loosely on the work of the British medical researcher James Lovelock, though without his knowledge and certainly without his blessing. Gaians believed that the planet Earth behaved like a living creature in its reaction to evolutionary pressures. Gaians identified seven spheres of influence on the earth that interacted in a complex way to maintain a balance amenable to life: air, fire, sea, ice, rock, life, and human affairs. In the year 2040, British philosophers Arthur and Louise Wickersham established Gaianism as a religion, which taught that the spheres were actually kingdoms overseen by essences with godlike attributes called “Powers” that interacted harmoniously to maintain balance. The Wickershams preached the importance of propitiating these quasi-deities to keep the kingdoms in balance through various ceremonies and sacrifices. The ancient proto-religions, they said, had worshipped Gaia (the Earth’s proper name, according to them) and the kingdoms had been in balance. Modern religions had abandoned the worship of Gaia, and the kingdoms were so dangerously out of balance that the planet and all life on it were threatened.

  Just before 2072, the revival of at least two ancient religions occurred. One was started by a neo-Yoruban prophet emerging from the wilderness of western African to ignite a revival of that religion throughout sub-Saharan Africa. His movement complimented the new passion sweeping native African societies for awareness of and pride in all things African and the expulsion of European ideals and culture. Many of the shamanistic religions that had arisen in that continent during the twenty-first century joined forces with them and began to convert or throw out the Christians who had taken so much power from the Muslims in Africa during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

  The other was the Mayan religion in Central America. It had cohabited with Catholicism for centuries, sometimes very quietly to avoid persecution, but a group of Mayan priests now rose to lead their people in the denunciation of Christianity, maintaining that its teachings went against the natural order of the universe. They were especially incensed that the Christians believed that one God had created the world and that he was male, while their religion taught that two deities, one male and one female, were the creators. The Mayans attacked Christian churches and schools and in some communities the Christians themselves. In the late 2060s, rumors grew of a movement to establish a new Mayan empire with a capitol in Yucatan that would occupy southern Mexico and several Central American countries.

  There were a number of evolutionary changes to existing religions that no one could have foreseen. Islam became a major religion in the United States, especially among poor people, and found itself competing for converts with more traditional evangelical Christian groups. A branch of the Episcopalians developed a distinctly charismatic character and set out to win adherents world-wide. They became such a strong force in India, especially among the Dalits (once known as the Untouchables), that the Muslims and Hindus, who had been fighting there, sometimes violently and bloodily for nearly a century, joined forces against this new threat. Catholicism became especially strong in China. The first Chinese archbishop appeared in the 2050s.

  Of course there was a backlash against this return to religion, though in most countries the resistance was weak and in many nations controlled by the more fanatic theocracies, severely punished. Those in opposition had at least some influence on their societies, though. The family, for example, had been drastically redefined over the past century, particularly in western societies. Marriage in the traditional sense was no longer as common as in the past. Family groups consisting of homosexual partners were acceptable in western countries, as were families with three or more spouses of one or both sexes. Many times the partners, whether formally married or not, kept their own last names. Children from such unions might end up with a surname from either parent, a hybrid from one or both, or a last name totally unrelated to either.

  Sometimes the religions themselves were responsible for changes in the family. Gaians, for example, often formed families with more than two adults. One sect of Gaians in upstate New York went so far as to encourage the establishment of “eternal families” of seven adults, symbolizing the “Seven Holy Kingdoms of Gaia.” These families became “eternal” by marrying additional parents into the family as older parents died. This branch and many other Gaians gave up their family names and took on names more related to nature such as Field, Seaside, or Wilderness.

  * * * *

  Many writers and thinkers had started recognizing the collapse of the Western-based worldwide culture as early as the latter part of the twentieth century. A lot of them believed its demise was not necessarily a bad thing. The culture had endowed wonderful gifts on the world, but now its spark had gone out. So it is with cultures as with people, they argued; over a lifetime they exhaust the strength and exuberance they’re born with and run out of good ideas. When, in their dotage, the sparkling inventions of youth become tired old anachronisms, it’s time to step aside and let a new culture form on the ruins of the old. So it had been with the cultures of the Classical Greeks and Romans and with many cultures before and since, all over the world.

  If the nativity of Western culture is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance, say around 1500 C.E., and its demise sometime during the first part of the twenty-first century, then Western culture lasted for over five hundred years. Not a bad age for a culture. About the length of the Romans’ period of cultural ascendancy, longer than that of the Greeks. Of course the ancient Egyptians had flourished for over three thousand years and the Chinese had persisted for over two millennia and were still going strong, but it was no shame for a culture not to match these Methuselahs in age. But though, for better or for worse, modern culture appeared to be in decline, science and technology continued to advance beyond what the lay person’s imagination could conceive. The wealth and power of the technics, which grew at a rate commensurate with the exponential expansion of their technical wonders, increased distrust among the non-technics. The gap in educational opportunities further differentiated the technic and non-technic classes. Higher education had become so expensive that so-called “classical” or “liberal arts” curricula were increasingly excluded from its programs, as these did nothing to further technological advancements, while subsidizing education on students unable to pay their own way became untenable.

  The new underclass of the under- or virtually uneducated rebelled, albeit largely ineffectually. Some refused to learn to read very much or at all; techne made it almost unnecessary anyway. And, though the number of languages and dialects worldwide had decreased, the vocabularies and linguistic structures between the technics and non-technics changed so much that new dialects formed. The new angry underclass spoke their new dialects of the uneducated proudly, returning to old-fashioned accents that they believed celebrated a time of greater moral values and less technology. The technics, of course, ignored these impotent acts of rebellion. They really didn’t care.

  But, unknown to the technics, their colleagues in one branch of techne were breeding the agent of their own destruction along with that of the rest of man’s world. No one foresaw the Great Dying that was to come.

  Sample Chapters from A Shadow Over the Afterworld

  Author’s Note: A Shadow Over the Afterworld continues to follow the life of John Moore and many of the same characters appear in both books. It is not, however, necessarily a sequel since either book can be read without having read the other.

  Chapter One

  John Moore hesitated in the doorway. Not for his eyes to adjust to the darkness; the hallway behind him was scarcely less dim. And not to make the pre-entry visual investigation as he had been taught
: search for signs of danger first, valuables second. He had already finished that. No, he paused because of the room’s lone occupant, slumped in the far corner, though a little embarrassed at his trepidation; said occupant had long ago lost the ability to harm anyone.

  At last, he took a deep breath, stepped quietly into the room’s palpable silence and strode to its center. He turned about, examining it carefully, except for that corner.

  To his left squatted a large desk with a few objects from before the Last Days on it and a chair behind it. Among the objects, the uses of many which often baffled him, he recognized one of the machines people of those days used for reading books, researching information, communicating long distances, making purchases and many other wonderful things which they called “commcomps.” Dust-shrouded shelves against the wall behind the desk bore cubes that had once held pictures that moved, vases that must have held plants and other objects for uses he couldn’t even guess. He asked himself, as he often did, why these people needed all this stuff. Among the shelves’ jumble though, he immediately recognized treasure of incredible value: pre-Last Days books.

  Summer’s lethargic silence permeated the room. Ancient dust blanketed everything, disturbed only where his footprints crossed an intricate rug. The dust and gloom diluted whatever color the room might once have had into a dim despondent sepia. A single beam of light split the stygian darkness from a narrow gap in the only window’s draperies, pointing a brilliant finger across the room to the corner he did not yet want to see.

  The dark did nothing to relieve the unrelenting heat, if anything more oppressive here than it had been outdoors. Sweat formed on his face and neck as soon as he wiped it away with his handkerchief. The room smelled of dust and desolation; the interiors of graves must smell like this. Dust motes danced in the bone-white shaft of light slicing through the draperies. He remembered imagining, as a little boy, that they were joyful, miniscule dancing fairies. These looked more like gleeful demons. His gaze, at last captured by their mad dance, followed the bright spear of light across the hardwood floor and the rug he stood on. It ended at the corner he had avoided seeing, at about the ankles of a grayish human-shaped pile.