The end is near -- but only south of the border

By MICHAEL VALPY
Saturday, April 26, 2003 - Page F8

A Time/CNN poll has found that 17 per cent of Americans -- nearly one 
in five -- believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetimes, 
and 59 per cent believe that the prophecies about the end of the world 
found in the Christian New Testament Book of Revelations are true and 
will happen, if not in the near future.  

Apparently, many of them also think that British Prime Minister Tony 
Blair fits the definition of the Antichrist who will govern the world for 
seven years during the Time of Tribulation, after which Jesus will appear 
in glory to rule for 1,000 years before the Last Judgment of God. (Do a 
Google search of "Blair" and "Antichrist" if you've
time on your hands.)  

The war against Iraq, the ancient biblical Babylon described 
in repeated references in Revelations, has booted Americans' 
eschatological thoughts into overdrive.  

End-times allusions abound. Revelations Chapter 9, Verse 11, for 
example -- yes, indeed, 9:11 -- talks about a king who is "the angel 
of the bottomless pit" commanding an army of locusts with the power 
of scorpions, the king's name being Abaddon in Hebrew or Apollyon in 
Greek, both meaning "Destroyer," an Arabic translation of Saddam.  

ArmageddonBooks.com, one of many prospering U.S. Christian 
publishing houses, has released a newly updated edition of The Rise 
of Babylon -- A Sign of the Endtimes with Saddam Hussein's face on 
its fiery cover.  

An International Prophecy Conference held this month in Tulsa, Okla., 
devoted a session to "Iraq and the Rebuilding of Babylon."  

And an 11-book (so far) fictional account of Revelations' prophecies, the 
Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, has sold more than 40 million 
copies and appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. One in 10 
Americans has read at least one of the books.  

In the series, an airline pilot is busy attempting to seduce a young flight 
attendant when the Tribulation begins. He recognizes the signs (half the 
passengers on his plane suddenly vanish, leaving their clothes behind) 
because his wife is a born-again Christian and together they've listened 
to religious broadcasts. As one of the left-behinds, he becomes the 
Antichrist's implacable foe.  

The reason Tony Blair has been fingered by some as the Beast stems 
from Revelations, which says the Antichrist is a cunning deceiver 
-- Mr. Blair is titularly a socialist -- who will succeed in leading 
a world government. Mr. Blair advocates a permanent presidency of the 
European Union, a job it is thought he aspires to (as a first step).  

For Canadians accustomed to being told by their own media that they're 
becoming indistinguishable from their "American cousins," this is 
engrossing stuff.  

Eschatology -- from the Greek word eschatos, meaning "last" or
"farthest" 
-- flies so low on the radar screen of Canadian religious beliefs that 
Canadian pollsters rarely, if ever, bother probing it, says religion 
sociologist Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge.  

Michael Adams, president of polling firm Environics, notes in his 
forthcoming book, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the 
Myth of Converging Values, that over the past half-century Canadians 
have shifted from attending religious services far more regularly than 
Americans to attending less than half as regularly.  

Mr. Adams says this growing American religious fervour, much of which 
is Christian fundamentalist, puts the United States at odds with other 
advanced industrial nations. As one paradoxical explanation, he cites 
the American doctrine of separation of church and state. With religion's 
historically closer links with the state in Canada and Europe (state- 
funded denominational schools in Canada, for example), the church has 
become linked to the same distrust and questioning to which the state 
has been exposed.  

But in the United States -- setting aside the sex scandal in the Roman 
Catholic Church -- institutional religion has remained the bedrock and 
keeper of the flame of American values, the moral equivalent of the 
Canadian constitutional mantra of peace, order and good government.  

More intriguing (although it fits, when you think about it) is 
Mr. Adams's report that religious beliefs in the two countries 
closely track Americans' and Canadians' attitudes toward traditional 
patriarchal authority.  

Nearly half of Americans -- 49 per cent -- believe that "the father of 
the family must be master in his own home" while only 18 per cent of 
Canadians do, a values gulf that has widened over the past decade (in 
1992, the numbers were respectively 42 and 26 per cent).  

When CNN proclaims that Armageddon has arrived, it will be helpful to 
have the CBC.  

Michael Valpy writes on spiritual matters for The Globe and Mail.

                          -==-

Source: The Globe and Mail ...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/
LAC/20030426/FCCOLU_2/National/Idx


Cheers, Steve..

---