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| December 21, 2012 -- the end date in the ancient Mayan calendar. Will it bring the Apocalypse? However you choose to characterize THE END, recent tsunamis, earthquakes, and revolutions certainly make the notion of impending global calamity seem feasible. But this isn’t the first time society has entertained end-times speculation. |
By Jennifer Leigh Parker
Notorious Doomsday Prophets
December 21, 2012 -- the end date in the
ancient Mayan calendar. Will it bring the Apocalypse? However you choose to
characterize THE END, recent tsunamis, earthquakes, and revolutions certainly
make the notion of impending global calamity seem feasible. But this isn’t the
first time society has entertained end-times speculation.
The Mayans
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The mystery-shrouded meaning of this date has
served as fodder for doomsday prophets worldwide.
But before you run out wearing your cardboard
sign necklace, note that the collapse of ancient Mayan civilization was
reportedly self-inflicted.
According to Mayan scholars, non-productive
members of society such as the aristocracy and priesthood exhausted their
resources.
Yet millions of people today trust them with
an end of the world prediction.
If they were prophetic, wouldn’t they have
foreseen the implosion of their own society, and worked to avoid it?
While Dec. 21, 2012 is the last date on the
Mayan calendar, no mention of catastrophe was ever mentioned by the Maya.
Whether or not you believe in doomsday 2012,
Mayan history does warn against ignoring signs our own demise.
Nostradamus
The astrological consultant Nostradamus was
most famous for his book Les Propheties, published in 1555.
The book, still in print today, contained
collections of cryptic prophecies called quatrains. An example:
Century I Quatrain 46
“Very near Auch,
Lectoure and Mirande
a great fire will fall from the sky for three
nights.
The cause will appear both stupefying and
marvellous;
shortly afterwards there will be an
earthquake.”
Interpret him as you will -- followers of
Nostradamus believe his quatrains predicted major historical events, such as
the French Revolution, the atomic bomb, the rise of Hitler and even 9/11.
Note that credit given to the “seer” has only
ever been in hindsight, and that no one has been able to interpret Les
Propheties specifically enough to identify any event in advance.
As for the end of the world, 2012 is not in
the cards. Nostradamus predicted it to be the year 3786 or 3797, depending on
which expert you believe.
William Miller and the Millerites
An American Baptist preacher, Miller is
credited as the founder of Adventism (heir to the Jehovah’s Witnesses).
Miller prophesied The
End in 1844, based on Bible passage Daniel 8:14: “Unto two thousand and
three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”
This image is of a Millerite prophetic time
chart from 1843, about the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation.
Assuming ‘cleansing’ meant a purifying
apocalypse, Miller predicted its occurrence during ‘Advent,’ or Christ’s Second
Coming.
For Miller, the apocalypse would entail a
great fire in which saints would be resurrected and all evil would be
annihilated.
In his conferences on
the Advent, Miller wrote: “I was thus brought to the solemn conclusion, that
in about 25 years from that time 1818 all the affairs of our present state
would be wound up.”
His final prediction settled on 1844.
Needless to say, the
dissolution of his followers on the “the 10th day of the seventh month of
the present year, 1844,” is now referred to as “The Great
Disappointment.”
Jim Jones
Also known as the “mad messiah,” Jones was
founder and leader of the “People’s Temple.”
In 1965, Jones claimed that the world would
be engulfed in a nuclear war on July 15, 1967.
When that didn’t happen, Jones went about
establishing his communist commune in “Jonestown” in Guyana.
The isolated jungle land leased by Jones from
the Guyanese government was used as the location of the People’s Temple.
Jones is notorious for the November 18, 1978
mass murder of more than 900 Temple members there.
Recorded on audiotape, the cult leader
convinced members to commit “revolutionary suicide” by ingesting cyanide
poisoning in protest against capitalism.
The incident was the single greatest loss of
American life in a non-natural disaster until Sept. 11, 2001.
Jones died alongside temple members of a
self-inflicted gun wound.
David Koresh and the Branch Davidians
The Waco Branch Davidians based their faith
on apocalypticism.
The actions of this religious sect were
predicated on the notion that they lived in the final times according to the
Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible.
David Koresh claimed himself their final
prophet. The Davidian movement went up in flames during a siege in Waco, Texas,
in 1993.
Leader Koresh named the group’s headquarters
“Ranch Apocalypse.” His followers lived with him waiting for the apocalypse,
but instead met a fiery end fighting the FBI.
During the siege, 76 Branch Davidians,
including Koresh, died barricaded in their building when it caught fire.
Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate followers believed in UFOs and
impending doom, for which the only escape was to voluntarily “turn against the
next level” by committing suicide.
The leaders of the group, Marshall Applewhite
and Bonnie Nettles, convinced members that their “evacuation” plan would be a
fast-approaching UFO which would act as their mode of transport to beyond.
Text of the
Applewhite/Nettles mantra reads: “Since this is the close of the Age, the
battle in the Heavens with their servants on Earth will be the means of that
closing and the spading under of the plants (including the humans) of this
civilization.”
Apparently, they aimed to avoid a “spading.”
The 39 members of the group died wearing arm
patches that read: “Heaven’s Gate Away Team,” after having spent $10,000 on
alien abduction insurance.
Aum Shinrikyo
“Aum” was a Japanese religious movement
founded by Shoko Asahara.
His 1984 doomsday prophecy described a final
conflict culminating in a nuclear “Armageddon”, borrowing again the term from
the Book of Revelation.
According to Robert Jay Lifton, author of
“Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the
New Global Terrorism,” Asahara predicted Armageddon would occur in 1997, and
that humanity would end, except (surprise!) for the elite few who joined Aum.
Founder Shoko Asahara was convicted of
masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
According to the Japan Times, the subway
nerve gas attack killed 12 people and injured some 5,500.
For this crime, among others, Asahara was
sentenced to death. His appeal against the sentence was unsuccessful, and he is
currently awaiting execution.
James Rawles and the Survivalists
Dominating the survivalist underground
blogosphere as editor of www.survivalblog.com is James Rawles, who also wrote
“How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” — presumably holed up on a
remote farm in what he calls the “hinter boonies.”
Rawles’ version of impending doom involves a
vaguely defined socio-economic collapse caused initially by a power grid
failure.
“[The power grid] is
the real linchpin of society. It fuels our economy, and controls all
automatic-ordering systems. Without it, our economy would just shut down. In
winter, you’d see a mass out-migration from cities as refugees flood the
countryside.”
So, how do survivalists prepare? Rawles says
any “prepper worth his salt” has a self-sufficient retreat replete with stored
firewood or coal, with years worth of food stores.
The serious ones have
their own gardens and livestock. “It’s important to be well-armed, and take
advanced medical training.”
Yet for Rawles and
his followers, preparing for the worst is a lifestyle. He adds, proudly: “Just
today I was out in my barn getting ready for the delivery of a new dairy cow.”
Jennifer
Leigh Parker is
a writer, reporter, and editor with more than 10 years of experience, including
full-time positions at CNBC, Bloomberg News, and Surface Media. Her travel
coverage has been featured on Bloomberg Radio, published by The Week, and
syndicated by the Washington Post.
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