Chiliasm

"Chiliasm" is one of those useful Scrabble words that will send your opponents smugly to their Merriam Websters to learn that their challenge has backfired. It actually means "belief in the Millennium," and all the melodramatic consequences, sort of a pedant's "Y2K." And while its immedicacy has obviously declined since 2000 and it can be shirt-pocketed for another 995 years, the end-of-the-world projections are not off the radar scope.

Developments in the recent annus horribilis 2004 did little to dissuade one of potential catastrophe: our international imperialistic policies that have so agitated our worldwide neighbors; the awful earthquake and tsunami with its stunning swath of destruction; the incipient diseases from that region, such as SARS and avian flu, whose potential spread is enhanced by the destruction in South Asia; and the rise of Christian Fundamentalism as sanctioned and abetted by this Administration.

On the latter note, I wish to comment on a double-feature that I viewed on New Year's Eve. Subdued and as cynical as I was over the previous appalling twelve months, I felt a perverse need to bring the dreadful year to a fitting end by watching apocalyptic movies. Not fun thrill-rides like "Armageddon" or "The Day After Tomorrow," but deadly earnest films based on the unaccountably popular "Left Behind" series of novels that "document" the modern events that reflect the predictions of the Book of Revelations, written by the Apostle John around 90 A.D. when he was in a mood nearly as lugubrious as mine.

The two movies I watched were named "Left Behind--The Movie," and "Left Behind--the Next Chapter," though I'd have liked some other more imaginative title, such as "Left Way Behind" or "Left Behind Too!" or "Left Behind the Eight Ball." But cleverness was not in the filmmaker's agenda. The precipitating event in the first film is the sudden disappearance of about 140 million people who vanish in an instant, leaving their relatives, and neatly piled clothes, behind. This is the event called "The Rapture," an event much more movingly staged in an actually thoughtful religious film called "The Rapture," written by Michael Tolkin and starring a pre-"X Files" David Duchovny. There is great consternation in the World when 140 millions blink out, but you'd think the masses would respond more skeptically when the United Nations, led by the up-and-coming AntiChrist, deduces that the disappearances were caused by "radiation."

Now, as must be clear, I am not a believer, but if 140 million people all went poof at once, and all of them were either devout Chrtistian Fundamentalists or innocent babies, I might be the first one to dig up a Gideon Bible and scrape the mezuzah off my doorpost. It takes the major characters in this film a lot longer to See the Light. In fact about 70 minutes of the first 90-minute movie consists of facial contortions of the protagonists as they register grief, resilience, and finally glowing acceptance of Jesus. The main character, played by Kirk Cameron, can be forgiven his obtuseness, as his brain was likely fried after ten years of stepping on jokes on "Growing Pains."

Okay, the acting was wooden, the writing cheesy, and the special effects about as compelling as watching my Osterizer puree, but this was after all a religious propaganda film aimed at a non-critical audience, almost literally preaching to the choir. I did not expect "Goodfellas." Yet I did finally come to be offended by the end of the second film, whose climax involves the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem announcing in a press conference that all his research had led to the conclusion that the only true Messiah was Jesus Christ. It helped, in his case, that he was informed as much by two fire-breathing archangels standing sentry in their tallises at the Wailing Wall. So much for Shavuos. Bring me my rosary.

What's the point of this rambling? I guess that 40 million people actually believe this, and they all voted for George Bush. The support of Bush by the extreme Christian right (whom I need to distinguish from the millions of intelligent and decent Christian folk out there) is largely contingent on his stalwart support of Israel, but not because these zealots give a damn about the Jewish State. They believe that a Middle East rapprochement will lead to the reconstruction of Solomon's temple, the sign that the AntiChrist is upon us and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are at the starting gate. They actually want this to happen, because they will be raptured up to lounge in a very crowded Heaven (albeit shy of Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etc.) The rest of us, left behind, have to contend with seven years of war, disease, famine and death.

And if this isn't bad enough, the Anaheim Angels have just been renamed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Well, as long as the Angels are still here.