Yes, science ought to know, as Frost suggests, but so does Louis Farrakhan. The man who single-handedly turned the bow tie, once the sign of clean-cut conservatism, into a sinister, revolutionary symbol, has his own peculiar take on the year 2000. UFOs will invade America, he says, destroying all whites and saving the Nation of Islam. The mother ship is already in orbit and Mr. Farrakhan has already spent some time aboard it, so there’s no point in saying he’s crazy. We won’t have to wait until the year 2000 to find out that what Farrakhan says is true either because smaller ships will be released in 1999.

So there.

Science “ought to know,” Louis Farrakhan does know, and so do the psychics. Many of those who make it their business to predict the future see the coming of the Year 2000 as a time of tremendous apocalyptic activity. Some even predicted that interesting and generally disastrous events would occur in the year preceding the arrival of the millennium. There is, however, a problem: none of the psychics agree with each other as to what kind of disaster will befall us, and none of them seem to agree with Mr. Farrakhan. Nonetheless, let us survey some of what the seers have seen.

Of all the crystal ball gazers, none ever quite attracted the following of Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566). Like Liberace and Cher four centuries later, Michel preferred to be known by one name, that being Nostradamus. The great man saw his many great visions not in a crystal ball but while staring into a bowl of water. Even though this would have made that bowl of water a precursor to television, it doesn’t appear that Nostradamus predicted TV. I guess that even the greatest of seers can’t be expected to see everything.

Originally a physician, Nostradamus’s name was made after one of his generally vague predictions seemed to be fulfilled with the death of King Henry II. Nostradamus then went on to make similarly vague predictions that his followers insist were fulfilled with the London fire of 1666, the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy, the 1969 moon landing, as well as assorted revolutions and terrorist acts. Nostradamus is also said to have predicted the rise to power of three antichrists: Napoleon, Hitler, and one from the Middle East who is still waiting his turn to terrorize the world.

Oh, and yes, Nostradamus acknowledged the Year 2000 with a nice heart attack inducing prediction that suggests there may not be a Year 2000 at all. It seems that something positively awful will happen in July 1999. Nostradamus’s bowl of water showed him the following:

“In the year 1999 and seven months, from the sky will come the great King of

Terror. He will bring back to life the great King of the Angolmois. Before

and after, Mars (war) reigns happily.”

This item is unique among Nostradamus’s predictions in that he offers a specific month and year (though not a day) in which one of his disastrous visions will be fulfilled. If you believe Nostradamus truly possessed the power to see into the future, and you also worry about a potential disaster from the Y2K bug, this prediction should give you hope. Once the “King of Terror” comes out of the sky and brings the “King of the Angolmois” (whoever he is) back to life, well, even the millennium bug will likely wet his pants and seek shelter.

Charles Criswell King never achieved the enduring fame of Nostradamus, but he was a lot funnier and certainly bolder. Criswell, best known today for his loony appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space and other films by the “worst director of all-time,” Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a popular television newscaster who playfully killed some time one night with a series of predictions. The impromptu segment was a hit, and it soon became a regular feature. When one of his predictions amazingly came true, the amazed Criswell dropped his last name, replaced his first name with “Amazing” and began prognosticating full time.

Criswell was funnier than Nostradamus because he knew he was a phony, and he was bolder because he had the nerve to give specific time periods, even exact dates, for the events that he predicted would take place. In Tim Burton’s 1994 movie, Ed Wood, the flamboyant psychic, played by Jeffrey Jones, is seen predicting the colonization of Mars by April 19, 1970 (“Millions of people will live there”), and, perhaps more remarkably, a major comeback for the aged and drug-addled actor Bela Lugosi. In his 1968 book, Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000, the psychic claimed that between 1988 and 1989 a man in Arkansas (Bill Clinton?) would attempt to marry his cat after an experimental sex spray, accidentally released into the atmosphere, creates widespread perversion.

The colonization of Mars didn’t happen, and Bela Lugosi’s comeback occurred only after he was dead and buried. I don’t know about the man and his cat. But if Criswell’s premillennium prediction comes true, well, we’d be better off marrying our own cats on Mars rather than in Arkansas, or joining Lugosi in the grave. Criswell claimed that the end of the world as we know it would take place on August 18, 1999 when a black rainbow will suck all of the oxygen out of the planet.9

Like Nostradamus, the Amazing Criswell did not appear to make any predictions concerning the Y2K bug, but since, again like Nostradamus, his other predictions pretty much spelled doom for our planet before the arrival of the year 2000, I guess he just didn’t think it was necessary.

Another notable psychic, one who preferred to use both his first and last names, was the late Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet,” so called because his amazing gifts were evident only when he was in a trance. A grade school dropout, Cayce is said to have offered supposedly accurate and sophisticated medical diagnoses to patients whom he had never met, and, since he was not a doctor, had no business diagnosing in the first place.

Of course, Edgar wouldn’t qualify as a true prophet unless he offered some words of wisdom concerning the millennium. This he did and, yep, he too foresaw disaster upon disaster. Japan will apparently be wiped off the face of the earth, and earthquakes in Los Angeles and San Francisco will send California sliding into the ocean. Edgar had good news though: after all these catastrophes take place, peace will reign throughout the 21st century.10 I guess with just about everybody on the planet either dead or traumatized, things would be pretty peaceful. But again, there was no apparent reference to any bug.

In the latter part of the 20th century, Jeane Dixon served as America’s unofficial psychic laureate. Like Nostradamus and Criswell, she got lucky when one of her predictions seemed to have come true.

In 1963, Dixon insisted that she had sent a warning to the White House that President Kennedy would meet his end if he went to Dallas as scheduled. On November 22 of that year, Kennedy went to Dallas, left his blood and a piece of his brain there, and for Dixon the tragedy was a new beginning, her big break if you will.

Claiming to have direct contact with the Almighty, Dixon used her heavenly connection to write books, a newspaper column on astrology (that appeared, appropriately enough, on the comics page), and to make numerous appearances on The Merv Griffin Show.11 Yes, God doth work in mysterious, downright baffling, ways. Moses received those ten commandments. Jeane Dixon wrote Horoscopes for Dogs and shared the TV screen with Merv.

Dixon may or may not have made a prediction specifically referring to events in the year 2000, but, lo and behold, she claims the man who is probably destined to inhabit the role of the Antichrist was born on February 5, 1962 in the Middle East.12 Since he would be 38 years old in the year 2000, his time to take command would probably be near.

Many Bible believing Christians do not appear to find God’s ways mysterious at all. They read the Bible and, judging by many of their statements and actions, fully comprehend every word and every symbol in its pages. Many of them see the arrival of the Year 2000 as a sign every bit as ominous as the predictions of Nostradamus, Criswell and Cayce. Believing that the year 2000 marks the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus (a claim that many dispute), they insist that the end is coming, and the Y2K bug is the first messenger of our doom.

“I think it’s all gonna happen,” a Christian woman said when interviewed for a TV news story about the belief that Jesus’s return is imminent.13 She is not alone. Books on Bible prophecy, including fictional works depicting the last days, are racking up impressive sales.

Some of these fundamentalists see the new millennium as the culmination of the end-times that many of them insist we've been living in these past one hundred years. When the century turns, hold onto your hats--and your heads!--because famine, war, rebellion, and chaos are coming, all leading to the return of Jesus Christ to Earth. Since the Y2K bug could conceivably unleash all of the above on the world, it might just as well be known in some quarters as 666. Some people don't think there's a difference. The more imaginative readers of the New Testament's Book of Revelation may even swear the Y2K bug is mentioned. In Revelation 9: 3-4, we read:

“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.”

A locust is a bug, so why can't Y2K be a locust?

It's just a thought.

A more widely disseminated thought, one found on the Internet, is that in the lexicon of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word 2000 means “utter destruction,” while in the Greek New Testament, 2000 means “Dangerous, near to falling.”

Read into that what you will, but the hypotheses that Y2K will lead to social disorder and bring about the horrific period known in the Bible as the "tribulation" is a thought that many people are sincerely thinking.

When it comes to Bible prophecy, the man most Christians seem to acknowledge as the expert is Hal Lindsey whose 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth became a phenomenal best seller and, in 1976, inspired a quasi-documentary movie that displayed all the artistry and flair of an Ed Wood production.

Is the end of the world near? Yes, Lindsey says. Trouble is, he has been saying it for a long time now, so long that he has been accused by some critics of rewriting the predictions he made in 1970 to make them fit a world that has dramatically changed since his book first went to press. I don’t know whether or not Lindsey’s later writings suggest a Biblical significance to the year 2000, but in the film version of his first best seller, Lindsey or his producers saw fit to include a clip of Dr. George Wald, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, saying that man’s days seem to be numbered:

“The truth is that I am one of those scientists who finds it hard to see how the human race is to bring itself and bring the human enterprise much past the year 2000”

One aspect of most Biblical apocalypse scenarios that never changes is the significance of the Middle East in the end times. In Lindsey’s view, the countdown to the last days officially began on May 14, 1948 when the Jews returned to their homeland of Israel. In the last days, the always volatile region will threaten the whole world, and a great leader, the Antichrist, aka the beast of the Book of Revelation, will rise up from the chaos to establish order in a world gone mad. After ruling over the entire world for seven years, this mock savior will be exposed as nothing but a puppet of Satan when Jesus Christ returns in triumph to bring human history to a close.

No matter how strongly they believe in the Bible, however, some folks simply lack the patience to let God’s plan for the world unfold in the way He has chosen, and hope to “create Armageddon in order to bring back Christ.”

Only days into 1999, Israeli police arrested three people and ordered eleven others deported when it was suspected they were members of a cult called the Concerned Christians led by a 44-year-old Denver, Colorado man named Monte Kim Miller. Even though his prediction that a devastating earthquake would pummel Denver on October 10, 1998 did not come to pass, Miller had no trouble convincing what is estimated to be 70 of his followers to relocate to Israel with the intention of carrying out violent acts at the end of 1999.

These potential acts, which apparently included a shootout with police in Jerusalem, were intended to “accelerate the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

Miller believed he was preordained by God to lead these acts and even saw himself as having earned a mention in chapter 11, verse 3 of the Book of Revelation:

“And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophecy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.”

Yep, Miller thinks he’s one of those two witnesses. How he’ll look in sackcloth is anyone’s guess.

Because of its significance in Scripture, particularly in end-times scenarios, the Holy Land is becoming as crowded with those awaiting Armageddon and the second coming of Christ as Graceland is whenever the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth and death roll around.

Some are clearly delusional, insisting that they are Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Most are making the journey to the middle east because they believe God has instructed them to go. All share one common belief: “Jesus is coming soon.”

If these pilgrims are right, the world will soon be introduced to the most dreaded figure in all of Scripture, the Antichrist:

"And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed; and all the world wondered after the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, who is like unto the beast, who is able to make war with him?"

Yes, this beast, this man empowered by the devil himself, will be the superman who "saves" the world from certain doom. He will establish a one world government in which no one will be permitted to buy or sell unless they receive his mark (666) on their hand or forehead. Some suspect that this “mark of the beast” will take the form, not of a tattoo or mark from a branding iron, but a microchip.

An article published in a 1994 issue of Nexus that is now available on the Internet presents testimony from Dr. Carl W. Sanders, an electronic engineer with ties to government and business organizations. Sanders was once involved in the designing of microchips and is convinced that one such chip was specifically intended to serve as the “Mark of the Beast” referred to in Revelation 13:16-17.

Sanders claims to have been present at a meeting at which Henry Kissinger and various representatives from the CIA discussed the need for a device that would enable the government to identify people.

The main question asked at this meeting?

“How can you control a people if you cannot identify them?”

Sanders also warns that Section 100 of the Emigration Control Act of 1986 gives the president the authority to require people to submit to any identification device that he decides is necessary.

There are people who actually believe that President Clinton may be the Antichrist. Are those not horns coming out of his head each time he makes a television appearance? Well, no, they're not, but a lot of TVs still have an aerial on top of the box, and it's easy to see what one wants to see, especially when Clinton's behavior does suggest he's horny. (Certainly, making war with Clinton seems impossible. No matter how seriously he appears to be wounded, his wounds are healed and he survives to act contrite once again.)

Hal Lindsey interprets Revelation 13:3 as saying this man, be it Clinton or another world leader, will appear to have been assassinated but will miraculously survive or perhaps be risen from the dead. It would be a Satanic counterfeit of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Lindsey writes: “Overnight he will become the byword of the world. He is going to be distinguished as supernatural.”

The Antichrist will be proclaimed as God and usher in a time of great peace and prosperity, an assurance to those who shun Biblical truth that salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ just isn’t necessary. Ultimately, though, the Antichrist will be exposed as an impostor. World War III will break out and bring the world to the brink of total annihilation. Only with the return of Jesus Christ will the world be saved.

Even if Clinton is not the beast of the end-times, he is the President of the United States and is supposed to be our most ardent protector of the Constitution. As a suspected perjurer and, without question, a man who defines words in ways that suggest he has created his own personalized dictionary, Clinton's respect for the Constitution or anything related to law and the truth is suspect. Nonetheless, the Constitution gives the president the right to declare martial law, an act that enables the chief-executive to temporarily suspend the rights of its citizens in times of national emergency. It was Abraham Lincoln who, during the Civil War, discovered that the Constitution subtly gave the president the powers of a dictator in cases of “military necessity.”

Generally, martial law means that the military takes control and civil rights are trampled underfoot. Even though martial law is designed as a temporary measure, would you trust the government to promptly restore our rights once the emergency has passed?

Many people, Bible-believers and atheists alike, harbor a deep mistrust of the government and take it for granted that once our rights have been taken away, the government can never be trusted to return them to us. Like former president Ronald Reagan, they see the government as a kind of beast: a bloated, oppressive octopus-like creature whose tentacles slap us silly until we're too worn out to resist its suffocating, all-powerful embrace.

It hasn’t been too widely promoted (how surprising) but the federal government is anticipating the possibility that the Y2K bug could cause such massive failures that “military necessity” may move the president to suspend the rights of American citizens. John Koskinen, the man whom the president has appointed chief exterminator of the bug, said as much not long ago:

“In a crisis and emergency situation, the free market may not be the best way to distribute resources....If there’s a point in time where we have to take resources and make a judgment on an emergency basis, we will be prepared to do that.”

If power outages and civil disorder are as extreme as some people believe they will be, chances are not only good that the feds will suspend the Constitution but that the citizenry, concerned for their safety and survival, will demand that the president take such measures. If the worst possible scenario should become reality, it is even possible that the year 2000 elections will be canceled, making President Clinton our dictator.

Far-fetched?

Paranoid?

On May 22, 1998, our president--a known liar, a man most parents would not trust with their daughters, and only the second president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives--signed “Presidential Decision Directive 63” which deals with what is cryptically referred to as “cyber-terrorism.” The CIA reportedly connects this directive with possible civil unrest resulting from the Y2K bug.

As Joseph Farah, writing in World Net Daily, reports, this directive “calls for the development of a plan to ensure ‘essential national security missions’ as well as general public health and safety by, you guessed it, the year 2000.”

Meanwhile, Farah also reports that the National Guard is already making plans to mobilize all 480,000 members of its troops should chaos reign when the bug bites in the year 2000.

Understand, the question of martial law is not being raised by survivalists or those on the far right or far left of the political spectrum. It is the federal government that has placed it on the table, and it is the media that, with a few brave exceptions, is keeping the government’s plans under wraps.

David M. Bresnahan quotes one of the National Guard officers as saying what we can expect from President Clinton in an emergency situation: “Let’s put it this way, our civil rights are going to take a nose-dive.”

And discussion of martial law is not limited to the United States. In The Ottawa Citizen, David Pugliese reported recently that a Year 2000 contingency planning group recommended that the government “consider invoking the Emergencies Act, the successor to the War Measures Act, if the millennium bug causes widespread chaos....”

Whether or not William Jefferson Clinton turns out to be the beast in the Book of Revelations or not, it is fairly well understood that he is a beast in too many ways to be worthy of the trust of the American people. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in January 1998, our president lied and continued to lie well into August to protect his own hide, completely unconcerned with the effect the scandal was taking on the country. Even after everybody knew he lied, he still managed to dance around the truth, repeatedly lying about being a liar by insisting his remarks under oath had been “legally accurate.”

If the Antichrist does turn out to be the president of the United States, there may have never been a president as morally suited for the role as Slick Willie. But far too many presidents have been fingered as the Antichrist in the past. Carter, Reagan, and Bush were all painted in the same sinister tones by Bible-thumping conspiracy buffs. The odds are that Clinton will just turn out to be a man of deficient character, and by no means the first, who occupied the Oval Office. If chaos does reign after the attack of the Y2K bug and Clinton assumes dictatorial powers, well, it will be the end all right though not likely, as Robert Frost called it, the “end deluxe.”

If there is an end of some kind in the year 2000, the question is, who will be responsible? The Y2K bug, the mother ship that Louis Farrakhan has flown upon, the “King of Terror,” the president, the Antichrist, or ourselves?

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Email: brianwfairbanks@yahoo.com