World's end is near — or maybe not quite

By Richard N. Ostling
Associated Press

"What the Bible Scholars Have Missed," shouts the cover line on a book whose title reveals the alleged knowledge:

"World's End: 2009."

To prove we have only five years left, writer Peter Lorie blends biblical bits indiscriminately with the forecasts of seers, including Nostradamus, whose words were enigmatic, and Edgar Cayce, who predicted that much of the United States would be under water by now.

A Barna Research survey conducted last November showed 45 percent of Americans believe the world will end through "supernatural intervention." Penguin, the same conglomerate that published Lorie's book, targets that audience with another book, by televangelist Paul Crouch, which improbably combines evangelicalism with the "Bible code" craze.

Lorie's version: Nostradamus thought the papacy would disappear around now, as did St. Malachy; the Buddha marked this era for chaos and new consciousness, astrology agrees; and the

Vatican might have lied in revealing the Virgin Mary's secret message at Fatima, and it actually foretold the Apocalypse.

The Bible fixes the year, Lorie claims. Apocalyptic authors often say Israel's founding in 1948 is the key. But Lorie says that didn't count because the 1967 Six-Day War assured national survival and 42 months of travail (in Revelation 11:2-3) most likely signifies 42 years after 1967, yielding 2009.

Or maybe it's "42 weeks of years," taking it to 2261, but that wouldn't sell many books.

As the cover of "World's End" proudly proclaims, no Bible scholar buys this. Nor will evangelicals in the "Dispensationalist" camp whose End-Times theology undergirds those "Left Behind" novels and Crouch's book, "The Shadow of the Apocalypse: When All Hell Breaks Loose."

"Shadow" recycles routine Dispensational theology except for Crouch's Bible code fascination, alongside Hal Lindsey, whose 1970 best seller "The Late Great Planet Earth" launched pop Dispensationalism. ("Late Great" said the Bible predicted Russia, Africans and Arabs would soon attack Israel and launch the End.)

Confused? For a mainstream view, see "In God's Time: The Bible and the Future" (Eerdmans) by Craig Hill of Wesley Theological Seminary.

Bible coders, originally Orthodox Jews and atheists, claim that predictions of modern-day horrors like Sept. 11 were hidden in ancient times and can be discovered by computers using "equidistant letter sequences."

Conservative Christians believe God inspired the ideas, or the very words, when the ancients wrote Scripture, but Crouch thinks God "dictated each individual letter."

Crouch figures the two requirements for the End have already occurred: Israel's founding in 1948 and the worldwide spread of Christianity through modern communications.