The 20th century created enough stressful situations that they began to give rise to new ideas about the end of the world. Why, the apocalypse has never been so close: there are world clashes, totalitarianism, the nuclear threat, and Cold War paranoia. These events gave rise to the most amazing legends, especially if they overlapped with the ideas of new religious movements that blossomed at the same time.
The insecurity of life and constant changes forced people to look for a foothold, which often became religious ideas. Contemporary events have often been explained in conspiracy or apocalyptic terms. For example, UFOs were inextricably linked with the theme of distrust of the state, because in legends the government collaborated with aliens. The logical next step is the creation of eschatological ideas, that is, ideas about the end of the world, on which the teachings of some new religious movements were based.
Reborn after the end of the world as aliens
Religious scholar Michael Barkun, in his work “Conspiracy Theology: Apocalyptic Views in Modern America,” cites interesting statistics. Opinion polls show that the number of Americans who believe in the existence of UFOs has remained consistently high throughout the second half of the twentieth century. In 1978, this figure reached a record 57%. In 2000, 30% believed that Earth had been visited by other civilizations, and 17% believed in alien abduction. Moreover, these people could not be classified as some kind of marginal groups. In a survey of 765 members of UFO communities, Brenda Denzler found that her respondents were mostly middle-class college graduates with incomes just below the national average.
In the 1980s, ufological movements crossed with the ideas of right-wing radicals about the New World Order: supposedly power on the planet was seized by a world government seeking to destroy sovereign states. Symbiosis with ufology became a guide for ideas about the NWO into the mainstream.
Radical right ideas were usually self-censored in the media, so they continued to exist in their own little ghetto. Ideas about flying saucers, although ridiculed by science, quietly existed in popular culture. On their basis, parasitism began. For example, in 1976, neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel published several reports in which flying saucers were called the inventions of the Nazis, who hid in Antarctica after the war. All this led to the spread of apocalyptic ideas.
In 1997, 39 people from the Heaven's Gate community committed group suicide in San Diego. On its website, Heaven's Gate published materials about UFOs and the possibilities of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Community members believed that after death the soul would be transferred to a spaceship, where it would receive a new body. Only it will make it possible to arrive in the biblical Eden - on a planet inhabited by superbeings. This is exactly what, according to cult leader Marshall Applewhite, Jesus Christ did in his time.
The body of one of the members of Heaven's Gate.
Source As the year 2000 approached, members of Heaven's Gate became increasingly convinced that the Earth would perish in an apocalyptic flame, so it was urgent to establish contact with extraterrestrial civilizations and escape while there was still time. In the tail of comet Hale-Bopp, which appeared in view of the Earth, someone saw a camouflaged ship - this served as a trigger for the “transition”.
In his farewell letter, Applewhite wrote: “We have come from the next Superhuman Level, from a distant cosmic land, and now we have emerged from the bodies we wore to return to the world from whence we came. Our mission is complete."
Applewhite constantly experimented on members of the community, detailing daily routines, trying out different sleep cycles, and creating specific diets—once a group drank a mixture of water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper for a month.
Perhaps his idea was to overcome the human during his lifetime. He especially struggled with sex, calling it a primitive animal instinct: he forbade keeping his hands below the waist, forced men and women to sleep separately. As a result, Applewhite and seven of his followers underwent castration, and several other people underwent drug therapy to reduce sexual desire.
Even before the rise of conservative Christian movements in the United States, there was an organization that believed in the end of the world due to UFOs. The Nation of Islam defended blacks in the United States and other countries; for its members, Christianity was a symbol of white conquerors.
Unlike other unorthodox movements, the Nation of Islam asserted its ideas on a scientific basis.
The ideologists of the movement found a rational explanation for everything supernatural; they even understood God as a material being. They considered the idea of an immaterial god a poison invented by whites to enslave blacks.
The righteous were often called scholars, as was Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam.
Elijah Muhammad, founder and head of the Nation of Islam, gives a lecture in Chicago. Source
Blacks should not pray, Muhammad preached, but study their true history and use this knowledge to become morally pure, physically healthy, politically independent and economically self-sufficient. Science was responsible for the enslavement of black civilization, but it would also help bring power back - according to Muhammad, the natural state of black Muslims was to be rulers of the Earth.
If blacks do not accept Islam for protection from whites, then they will face the Mother Plan, that is, the apocalypse that will be carried out by UFOs. They were allegedly seen by the prophet Ezekiel, who said: “Allah warned us about how He would one day destroy the world with fire, which would consume and destroy everything in the present world.”
Signs of the apocalypse in the early 1970s included natural disasters, war, the sexual revolution and the collapse of the dollar, which Nixon ordered was no longer convertible into gold.
The Mother Plan will destroy the old order to restore the dominance of the black Muslim civilization, and the white oppressors will face certain death. Later, however, Muhammad expressed another idea: whites, too, could be saved by converting to Islam, and “whiteness” was not only the color of the skin, but also the inner sinfulness that exists within every black person. It is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, slavery, genocide and the Holocaust.
What do scientists think about this?
Representatives of science agree that a catastrophe for humanity is inevitable. Only they associate the apocalypse not with religious teachings, the sinfulness of people and the inevitability of their punishment, but with the indicators of the Earth and the Solar System, as well as with the conditions to which our planet and the Universe have been reduced.
The planet is in crisis. The safe limits within which human societies can be maintained, the planetary boundaries of the Earth, are exceeded, inevitably leading to collapse. Only if humanity listens to science, changes its course and begins to live within the natural limits of the Earth, can disaster be avoided.
What brings the modern world closer to the end of the world:
- Rising global temperatures will lead to more fires.
- Raging forest fires, storms and deadly tsunamis have become an integral part of the evening news, few people know that the main cause of natural disasters is the heating of the planet by 1C above pre-industrial temperatures.
- If the world's population uses up all its fossil fuel reserves, there is the potential to warm the planet by as much as 18 degrees and raise sea levels by hundreds of feet.
What will global warming lead to:
When the temperature of the earth rises, this invariably leads to the death of living organisms:
- 0.6 C and above – mass extinction of amphibians begins;
- 1.0 C – at such temperatures, glaciers begin to gradually melt, which reduces populations, and krill, as is known, is the main source of food for penguins;
- 1.6 C – almost half of the inhabitants of the forest tundra, such as moose, lynx and brown bears, will begin to migrate;
- 2.2 C – large mammals will become extinct;
- 2.6 C – There will be large losses of tropical forests and their dependent habitat species, including orangutans, sloths and jaguars;
- 4 C – at these temperatures, up to 70% of aquatic species will disappear, coral reefs will be dead, and deserts will spread across the globe.
According to scientists, the end of the world is drought, lack of drinking water, famine, and fires.
Computers are zombifying and marking the Antichrist
In the 1970s, the United States experienced a rise in apocalyptic sentiment associated with the ideology of the so-called new Christian right. They included most of the Baptists and Pentecostals, who adhered to conservative views on politics.
They were all distinguished by a pronounced technophobia, which intensified with the advent of computers. Christian conservatives carefully read Orwell and interpreted the text “1984” in their own way - as a description of the coming world of the Antichrist, where people will be enslaved by unknown forces on the other side of the computer screen. Techno-alarm gave rise to the story of “a computer named Beast,” which Alexander Panchenko tells in detail.
In 1975, a radio station in Oklahoma reported that a supercomputer, “The Beast,” was located in Brussels and had seized control of banks around the world. By the early 1980s it would supposedly lead to socialist equalization of wealth. The “Beast” will assign each person an individual number, applied to the skin using a laser beam.
Tattoos, which can only be recognized using infrared scanners, will replace credit cards and will consist of three groups of six numbers.
This creation can notify the bank of purchases in an instant and track the amount remaining in the account. The “beast” will know everything about a person: whether he has credit cards, whether taxes have been paid, which party he voted for. If the buyer has committed a crime, the supercomputer will immediately find out and report it. People will turn into zombies or robots, obedient to their mysterious masters.
The idea mixed the concept of a barcode (the first appeared in the USA in 1974) and lines from the Apocalypse:
“Everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, will receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one will be able to buy or sell except he who has the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. He who has intelligence, count the number of the beast, for it is a human number; its number is six hundred and sixty-six.”
It was no coincidence that Brussels was mentioned, since the new Christian right considered not only computers, but also globalization, their worst enemy. They closely followed politics, interpreting it in an eschatological manner. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was perceived as an attempt by Jews to save themselves before the coming apocalypse. Right-wing Christians did not trust Europe; they were especially worried about the creation of the European Union, such a unique reincarnation of the Roman Empire. All this, naturally, signaled the approach of the Antichrist. When Greece became the tenth member of the EU in 1979, apocalypticists recalled the ten-horned beast from the Apocalypse. They treated the UN with the same mistrust.
Even before the appearance of the legend of the “Beast,” similar statements arose, and also in connection with the European Union. Pentecostal pastor David Wilkerson wrote that the restored Roman Empire is putting forward a leader of the entire world who will create a system of living credit cards by marking invisible numbers on people's foreheads and hands.
The same idea of controlling people using the number of the Beast existed in Russia, where it was supplemented with various details.
Tools of the Antichrist were often called plastic cards that have a mystical effect on the owner: the bearer of the seal hidden in it will not be able to repent in confession and make the sign of the cross.
The appearance of cards somewhat changed the attitude towards money. Although the love of money remains a sin, money is seen as salvation from the power of the Antichrist: it is a tool for the “end times” to fight against the seal of the Antichrist.
Another motive of “technical” eschatology is the implantation of microchips into the body. Since the late 1990s, anti-globalist publications have reprinted “The Speech of Dr. Cole Sandersen,” written on behalf of an American engineer who allegedly took part in the development and implantation of microchips into the human body and received a revelation from God that this was the mark of the Beast.
1936, 1943, 1972 and 1975
Herbert Armstrong, an advertising executive, was one of the first preachers to preach the gospel on the airwaves long before it became popular. In 1933, he founded the Worldwide Church of God, and 3 years later he was already predicting the end of the world. When the first date he set turned out to be false, he, without any embarrassment, revised the prediction and pushed it back to 1943, and when that didn’t work (even though World War II seemed to many to be the beginning of the end of times), he moved the date to 1972. Perhaps, like the pontiffs of the past, he hoped that he would already be in the next world and would protect himself from the ridicule of society during his lifetime, but his good health failed him: in 1972, Herbert was still alive. The last date announced was 1975 - and, imagine, there were still those who believed it!
Nature versus the godless
The beginning of the 1990s in Russia was marked by the emergence of many different cults, sects and new religious movements. The union had fallen, the ideological hole in the heart had to be plugged with something - when you are used to living in a totalitarian system, you quickly learn to find support in life on your own (in a similar way, they hunted witches in post-war Germany).
The collapse of the usual way of life revealed fears of modern civilization. The logical antithesis of fear of nuclear weapons and environmental crisis is a return to nature and pagan traditions.
The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had a particular influence on the emergence of such ideas. Even the name of the city was a hint, because Chernobyl in Ukrainian means wormwood. Associations immediately arise with the star Wormwood from the biblical Apocalypse:
“The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.
The name of this star is “Wormwood”; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter.”
Maria Astakhova in her work “The End of the World in One Single Country” quotes the literature of the religious movement “White Brotherhood”. The brothers called climate change, the appearance of mutants among animals and people, the disappearance of minerals and water pollution, tsunamis, cases of AIDS and salmonellosis as harbingers of the end of the world. Mass Orthodox literature predicted an earthquake in Moscow, the flooding of a huge part of the land, heat, hurricanes and droughts.
The state of nature was explained by a decline in morality: when people behave sinfully, a natural disaster can occur on the other side of the world. This is how God reacts to people's behavior.
In the 1990s, such associations as the “Union of Wends”, “Thesaurus” and “Cult of Anastasia” appeared, promoting both the chosenness of Russians and the ecological way of life. Vladimir Megre, the leader of the Cult of Anastasia, promised life in the lap of nature, abandonment of hazardous industries, life without wars and crime. To build a relationship with nature, one should plant the seeds of cedar, a sacred tree. Even its wood helped against diseases if rubbed correctly.
One of the most notable movements was the “Church of the Last Testament”, they are also “Vissarionists” - after the spiritual name of its leader, Sergei Torop. Vissarion considered himself the incarnation of Christ, which did not stop him from preaching neo-pagan ideas about mother earth, which needs to be pleased.
Vissarion with a follower, 1996. Source
Environmental disasters were supposed to cause the end of the world. To escape, Vissarion called to follow him to the “energy oasis of the Earth” - Lake Tiberkul near Krasnoyarsk, where the “Church of the Last Testament” created a community based on subsistence farming and self-sufficiency.
The “Church of the Last Testament” has existed for almost 30 years, although in 2020 Sergei Torop was detained by the FSB.
Vissarion's doctrines were not strictly binding. Thus, adultery was condemned in every possible way, but it was explained that this only applied to married people. You cannot lie, but in cases where a lie can bring more good than evil, it is allowed.
Night liturgy before Christmas (for Vissarion’s followers it is January 14, Vissarion’s birthday). Source
The notorious “Aum Shinrikyo” (an organization banned in Russia; legal in Japan to this day, but under the supervision of intelligence services), which carried out a gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, tried to bring the apocalypse closer in practice. From 10 to 12 people died, more than 5,000 received poisoning of varying severity. Some of them still experience vision problems.
The organization was completely authoritarian: neophytes transferred all their property to the general disposal, and the leadership even kept information about their blood type.
Leader and founder of Aum Shinrikyo Shoko Asahara with his supporter. Source
The goal of the adherents of Aum Shinrikyo was to achieve a state of samadhi.
It could be achieved through exhausting fasting and eating special food prepared in the sect, as well as listening to music composed by the leader himself. Only complete submission to Asahara could save him from the end of the world. Participants wore electric headgear to synchronize their brain activity with Asahara's thoughts.
Although Aum Shinrikyo considered themselves primarily Buddhists, Asahara used Christian imagery in his end-of-the-world preaching and even wrote a book, “Proclaiming Myself as Christ.” He gave amazing arguments: the interpretation of the prophecy of Nostradamus and the fact that Jesus Christ had the same wavy beard. Although Asahara himself admitted that he only read the Apocalypse from the Bible, this did not prevent him from seeing in himself a savior and “the Spirit of truth that comes from the Father.”
Interpreting St. John the Evangelist, Asahara announced that on August 1, 1999, nuclear Armageddon would come in the form of a third world war, which would be started by Japan and the United States. He declared all people to be sinners who must be killed for their own salvation. And only if a quarter of the population becomes his followers, catastrophe can be avoided.
Particular attention should be paid to the influence of the medieval Buddhist thinker Shinran on Asahara. He questioned the absoluteness of Good and Evil. According to Shinran, Good is one of the dimensions of Evil, which through self-denial has turned into its complete opposite. A person who has set himself strict boundaries of Good actually remains in Evil. And if this is so, then the path to Good does not have to be pure.
Members of Aum Shinrikyo meditate in front of a portrait of Asahara. Source
Shinran's thesis “For the sake of salvation in the Pure Land one can kill a hundred or a thousand people” was perceived in Japan as an allegory. Mental subtleties were alien to Asahara, and he took everything literally. And since he was sure that a world catastrophe was inevitable anyway, he set his goal as the survival of the chosen saints (that is, members of Aum Shinrikyo).
The terrorist attack was a pre-emptive strike against the enemies of all saints, which at the same time increased the mystical status of their souls. On March 20, 1995, five of Asahara's followers planted 11 newspaper-wrapped bags containing sarin gas on Tokyo subway trains, pierced the bags, and exited the cars. Soon all the passengers began to choke.
Why We Don't Need to Fear the Second Coming
We can already observe many signs of the end of the World. Should we be afraid of him? Priest Dimitry Sizonenko says that Christians need to prepare not for the end of the world, but precisely for the coming of Christ:
“...the terrible thing about waiting for Christ is that when He comes, we will have nothing to offer Him.”
Modern culture and the media instill fear of the future in the public consciousness. Priest Roman Savchuk notes that in this way we are distracted from the main thing - the salvation of the soul. Christ did not want to frighten us, He warned and exhorted (Matthew 24:6).
In his interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew, St. John Chrysostom says that we should not fall into despondency, because the true disciples of Christ will be “above misfortunes.” The Bible indicates that for people faithful to God the Second Coming will be joyful (1 Pet. 5:4; 2 Tim. 4:7-8). It will be formidable and terrible for unrepentant sinners. Deacon John Lyashchenko points out that the book “Revelation” is not filled with fear of the Antichrist and the forces of evil. On the contrary, it is permeated with the expectation of the Savior’s coming and being with Him:
“The main theme of the book of Revelation is not to give up on Christ, no matter what, to be faithful to Him to the end.”
So, in the Holy Scriptures the Lord does not intimidate us, but calls us to perseverance and courage. We are not able to prevent the end of the world, but we can prepare our souls for the Coming of the Savior and a worthy transition to Eternity.
