It's the End of the World
as You Know It
Donald Michael Kraig
As I wrote in another article for NMR, I do believe that it is time to recognize that Christians, including many fundamentalist Christians, are not enemies of Wicca or Neopaganism. Rather, there are a small number of people, including several televangelists, who lead their sheep into a series of beliefs that equate Wicca and Neopaganism (as well as New Age philosophies, Buddhism and Hinduism) with Satanism. While this is an obvious deception, it is necessary for them to do so. When you talk with individuals you will be surprised to find that many fundamentalists are open to a more live-and-let-live philosophy.
The form of Christianity which the leaders teach is not, as they claim, Bible based." Rather, it is based on developing an us-versus-them" mentality. In their philosophy, people who are members of other sects of Christianity will not be saved" after the battle armageddon.1 They need something or someone to fight against to unite the sheep in a drive against the (fill in the blank). It is interesting—and unfortunate—to note that this philosophy has carried over into our politics where people running for office seem to be more interested in revealing bad doings by their opponents (to unite people against the dastardly evil doers) rather than actually standing up for something.
It would be nice if the leaders of the fundamentalists would unite people against the evils of poverty, unemployment, disease and illiteracy. Rather, they used to rail against such things as integration, an alleged Jewish attempt to take over the world as exemplified by the spurious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other perceived threats to their brand of religion.
More recently their main bugaboo was communism as practiced, primarily, in the Soviet Union and China. (Actually they are/were autocracies with socialized economies, but why bother with facts?) Unfortunately, the demise of the Soviet Union has equaled the demise of what we in the West perceive as communism, so their number one enemy has vanished. This has left them with a big vacuum. They are trying to replace their anger against the evil empire with local and national activity against access to medical procedures and information which they disagree with. While this has achieved some level of success and notoriety, it has not achieved the level that they would like. They need something bigger; better.
The simple fact is that the attitudes of the leaders of the fundamentalists want their opinions and ideas to control the world, with no alternatives available. This is contrary to the democratic ideals they profess and so many of us believe in. In short, they have in essence declared war against democracy. They propagandize their sheep to turn them into cannon fodder.
Since I support democracy, I have found it necessary to determine what foes of democracy are doing. One of the best ways to do this is simply to watch them on TV or listen to them on radio. Two shows that are my favorites are The 700 Club and The John Ankerberg Show. I urge readers to occasionally watch these programs.
For example, on October 2, 1991, former Republican Party Presidential nomination candidate and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network empire (which allows no words other than those of fundamentalists—there are no Catholics on that network, now dubiously called the Family Network) Pat Robertson had people applauding and smiling because a Witch High Priest" had become a Christian and would be preaching with Larry Lea (against whom he had previously led Witches) this Halloween in San Francisco. Obviously, Robertson never reads any magazines such as Green Egg, otherwise he would have learned about how big a fraud was this Eric Pryor, the alleged Witch High Priest (whom nobody in the Pagan community had ever even heard of until last year, and then only in relation with Lea). My personal feeling is this is obviously a deceptive scam created by Lea and/or Pryor and agreed to by both.
Fortunately, Wicca is small potatoes to the fundamentalists—they want something bigger. That something bigger is the end of the world.
It's the End of the World as You Know It is a repeating line in a song that is currently popular. For the fundamentalist leaders and their true believers this is an absolute truism. You see, although the New Testament of the Bible claims that nobody knows when Jesus will come again, it also says that there will be signs of the return of the Christian Savior. According to the fundamentalist leaders, these signs are now coming about. Further, this is the first time in history that they have all come true. Examples of this include President Bush's call for a New World Order," the economic uniting of Europe and the Jewish state of Israel.
Frankly, the end of the world is a big kick in the butt. If they were correct—if—it would be something to worry about. Unfortunately, they have been proven wrong in this belief, time after time, after time.
In the earliest centuries of the Common Era, Christians expected the end of the world and the Second Coming of Jesus to occur momentarily. Many gave up all their belongings and lived a communal life. The end of the world never came.
In the year 999 C.E., bands of pilgrims—knights, citizens and serfs—sold their goods and possessions in Europe and moved to Palestine. They believed that Jesus would arrive in the year 1000 and that the Last Judgement would take place in Jerusalem. The end of the world never came.
In 1739 a prophet named Whiston declared that the world would be destroyed, according to prophecy, on October 13th. On that day crowds went out to into the fields to see the destruction of London which would mark the beginning of the end. The end of the world never came.
In the British magazine The Occult Review for October, 1926, we read that The Reverend Walter Wynn, a writer on Biblical Prophecy and the meaning of the Great Pyramid...wrote: `The exact astronomical prophecies in Daniel, the Revelation, and the Great Pyramid admit of no deception. 99.9 of them (sic) have been exactly fulfilled... November 10-11, 1918, to May 29, 1928 [is] a period of truce in chaos. From the latter date to September 15-16, 1936, intensified tribulation. After that the personal reign of Christ. Sorry, Rev. Wynn but the end of the world never came.
I recently had a chance to go through an almost complete collection of The Occult Review that started in 1905 and ran through World War II. One of the important questions that was sounded during World War I in the pages of the magazine was whether the current war was Armageddon and if the Kaiser was the antichrist. During World War II the same questions were asked, only this time people wondered if Hitler was the antichrist. The end of the world never came (although some say it did metaphorically with the end of the ancient regime, but that is irrelevant to this discussion).
And, as many people know, Nostradamus has allegedly predicted the end of the world by the end of this century. The late Michel de Notre Dame will probably be as successful as other prognosticators from pre-biblical times to Pat Robertson.
Will the world come to an end? Yes, some year it will. However, I have yet to see the slightest indication that it will occur on some particular date. So why focus on it?
The fundamentalist leaders need to focus on the end of the world! They even have a name for their imagination about the end of the world: eschatology. If people think only about the future and not about the present then current needs become unimportant. You can give the leaders all your money and live in poverty if the end of the world is right around the corner. You have no need to consider other opinions and ideas or read books other than the Christian bible if the end will be here soon.
These are just a few of the reasons that I can proudly say, like Bertrand Russell, that I am not a Christian.
1991 by Donald Michael Kraig
1) One such ultra-fundamentalist sect was known as the Plymouth Brethren, of which Aleister Crowley's family were members. Earlier in their history many Plymouth Brothers had decided to bail out from living with all the heathens (i.e., other Christians) in England. They made a pilgrimage to a recently-discovered continent. That is why when these Pilgrims landed they called the spot where they landed Plymouth Rock. Yes, the first surviving colony in North America was created by ultra-fundamentalists.
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