2004 CE - Beyond the bizarre horizon... The website that goes by the somewhat less-than-musical name, "UFOs and The Bible - Aliens: Angels or Demons?" is a veritable on-line Disneyland for the paranoid conspiracy theorist/UFO cultist/pyramidologist/Bible-buggy wighead looking for confirmation of their every fear... and introduction to dozens more they hadn't even considered before logging on. I'd assumed at first that the place was the work of a lone raver frenetically typing the same bizarro stuff page upon eye-crossing page. But, webmaster Brenda of "Watcher Ministries" assures me that there's a genuine collective behind all that electronic eccentricity. I'm still pondering whether I should be relieved or alarmed by that.
Anyhoo, if there's a buzz-brained theory these folks have missed amassing on their many manic pages, I'm not aware of it. My fave so far, though, has to be the claim that the Littleton CO. massacre was secretly masterminded by Satanic, New Age, New World Order Pagans (in the service of Ishtar, Moloch and Baal) trying to discredit the NRA. Now, I ask ya' who says too many kooks spoil the broth?
September 29, 2004 CE - According to Charles Ryals, this date was supposed to see the relatively close fly-by of the asteroid Toutatis. Real nasty juju, that, as Charlie expected it to bring gloom and doom and a big, bad boom. Bummer.
October 17, 2004 CE - Hey, kids! Guess what? If you just obsessively tote up the dimensions of Noah's Ark you, too, can figure out when the Rapture happens! At least, that was the "Oopinion" (sic) of one Clay Cantrell, who clearly had too much time, too much Bible-babble and too little of anything else taking up space be'twixt his two wee eardrums when he cobbled his sorry site together... which, alas, appeares to have been taken up into the waitin' arms o' Jayzuz... and more than a year before its failure date, too! Now, that's a lack of spirit.
October 4, 2005 CE - Well, now, in the midst of a venue that tends to generate heaps o' hostility toward the science side of the aisle, isn't it refreshing to come across a fella' who positively embraces a "scientific" approach to date slating' Such a one is John Zachary; Rapture rousing numbers cruncher, Nostradamus groupie, short-distance astral traveler, guilty pleasure astrology buff and all-purpose bizarro. Johnny got it all worked out via his keen, empirical logic, advanced 1st grade math skills and trips through the astral plane that Jesus would be doing his repeat performance thang before the first autumnal cold snap of '04 hit. And in case your tiny, unscientific mind failed to grasp the subtle complexities of his fabulous theory, John added a choice selection of links to help the poor, pathetic, non-drivel-drenched reader along. They're still there, too! Best of the bunch is unquestionably the site belonging to one David Pensgard, a creation "scientist" crackpot who's gone to the obsessive-compulsive trouble of cranking out a graphic novel (Yes! A graphic novel! Isn't that exciting?!) to explain his theories in terms even a ficus would find inane.
September 29, 2004 - 2006 CE - Yet another devotee of the "Satan's ET" theory, Arnie Stanton cut and pasted together bits and pieces of Bible Math, Lunar eclipses, Jewish Holidays, State of Israel dating, UFO hysteria and the appearance of asteroid Toutatis and turned the lot into a wiggy website collage. Paranoia reigned supreme in Arnie's mental kingdom, with an Antichrist, evil alien or other unidentified bogeyman lurking around every corner and under every bush. One of his faves was his obsession with the asteroid Toutatis fly-by. He seemed to believe that it would signal the Second Coming... that is, if it didn't plow straight into the Earth and kill everybody. Arnie was really keen on asteroid destruction. So much so, that he invented a shiny, new, as-yet-undiscovered-by-science 14.4 mile long asteroid that would whomp smack into us, no ifs, ands or buts, sometime in '06. This, according to Arnie would "usher in a thousand year reign of peace"... Well, I suppose a completely lifeless planet could be termed "peaceful".
As I'm sure you noticed, Arnie's claims were kind of all over the place, and the abysmal failure of past predictions didn't seem to faze him in the slightest. He even kept them all up on his pages at once, so you could taste and compare. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, a genuine sense of self-consciousness caught up with ol' Arn' and the bulk of his pages vanished overnight. In their place remained nothing but a tiny page devoted to his rock band... of which, he was the only member, and another to his Trombonist Webring... of which, again, he was the only member. Even those eventually vanished into the e-ther, I must report. It's hard to keep a good Kook down, though. And I'll be keeping watch, in case Arnie gets the prophetic fever and resurrects his rant pages once again. Stay tuned.
March 21, 2008 CE - Well, now, if the End is what you've got in mind, you could read through the Bible Code cuckoo website of the Lord's Witnesses from start to finish, page by page, top to bottom 'till you'd gleaned all they have to give on the subject. But, take my word, it really would be much easier and less painful to simply put a bullet through your brain. It'd certainly save you the trouble I endured of slogging through the endless, repetitive idiocy and mindless minutia that ramble aimlessly on for an utterly stupefying number of neuron numbing pages. See, for all their quoting and convoluted code gibbering, their "theories" all just boil down to the standard "Biblical Week" falderal, with the only rub being figuring out when that first Sunday fell. The LW's think they've got it pegged, though, and are simply zippy as pinheads with the joyful news... Joyful being a highly subjective, necessarily sectarian POV, of course.
2008 CE - Mr. Rick Boston, in answer to a request made on Usenet for information on End Time predictions, was nice enough to reply with one of his own. I'll let his post speak for itself:
"Well if you would like to add me to the list you are welcome...In my faith the year 1998 is year "Zero" the year 2008 ten years after Zero will be Earthly Completion... the "Holy Mount Zion" a rock cut by no human hands... to me it is abviously refering to an astroid that "Will" hit the earth unless we wake up and take measures to change the outcome...Bible prophecy is never a "Definate" positive...it is a "Look" into the future of what will happen if no course of action is applied to alter said outcome...in other words they are a warning of what is to come if we do not change our ways.
People laugh and scoff but i had a vision of the end on two separate occasions...the rebuilding will comence in 2011...the earth will survive but "Millions upon Millions" will not make it...Sometime between now and 2011, the planet Jupiter will turn into a small star...This star should be called ShantarOmegan...
Time will tell, but for now I will
ShantarOmegan : Bleeding at the gates of hell..."
The eccentric and ever-entertaining Rick Boston was last spotted posting to newsgroups under, "Far Q", which I can't help thinking sounds like a name you'd give a rib joint on Star Trek. However, his orbit seems to have degraded over the years and he's either changed ID's, manias, or simply burned out upon re-entry. We may never know for certain.
2006 - 2012 CE The New & Improved! Doomsdates of Pastor Harry and his prophetic love monkey, Nostradamus. The mind simply reels in contemplation over what he'll do when 2013 dawns without a sci-fi Savior in sight.
2012 CE - Aussie Kev Peacock is a self-described "skeptic"... He's also a paranoid conspiracy theorist, UFO nut and first-year science lab drop-out with his own loudly quacking "scientific" theory about magnetic fields, solar flares, aliens, Atlantis and... polar shifts! Kev is 100% certifiable... er, certain that the world cabal of evil scientists are hiding the fact that God is just a race of alien moving men and all the human ethnic groups on Earth are ETs from different planets who were relocated here temporarily. Most important though, the evil scientists are staying mum about the news that the coming polar shift will destroy the whole planet, killing everybody. Well, almost everybody. It seems if you're one of the real lucky ones, you'll get properly re-packed, insured against breakage and shipped to a brand new homeworld way across the galaxy. Either way, it's gonna be a case of g'day cruel world... and good riddance, too, according to Kev. Sadly, Kev seems to have gotten a tad shy about showing off his beloved alien fixation to the wide world (for free, anyhow), so his page has gone missing. This seems to be a chronic, recurring condition with Kev. He periodically disappeares for a bit, only to pop up once again, all freshly half-baked and shot through with oodles of conspiracy kookiness like nuts in a really good strudel. Last I heard it, Kev is asking folks to fork over hard cash these days. Yes, like many a Kook before him, Kev is attempting to go pro and reserve his ravings for the hard copy market. Here's wishing him well and hoping he'll be back online soon. The 'net is just is little less nummily nutty without him.
December 21, 2012 CE - This is the exact date of the big Galactic Crossing, when the sperm of our solar system inseminates the womb of the galaxy. In the meantime, Anandites will have to pull some serious psychic overtime to embed a coherent bubble into the actual programme script and vector grid of our future species geometry, habits and morphographics. ...And if you have even the vaguest idea what any of that means, you've got one up on me. Best I can manage after several read-throughs of this meandering, neon-colored, super-eye-bleeding sparkly site, is that something big and millennial-like is due to happen... But, in a nice way. The New Agey, multi-myth splicing, aura ogling, ABBA obsessed Ananda folks just want to make the universe a better, if more confused, place. And if their site is any indication, they've at least got the confused part down cold.
May 2013 CE... give or take two years - Another one of those tape loop loons who think that life, the universe and everything is nothing more than a replay of dusty, old Bible stories, W. Thor Zollinger worked out his very own, special little End of Timetable. (which has, I'm sorry to say, recently joined the Internet Invisible) It started with Israelis taking back the Temple Mount for sacred bar-b-que parties in August of 2008, described cheesed-off Muslims invading Israel to show them what-for a year later, hummed along to Jesus wandering in all holier-than-thou-like in April of 2013 and topped that with major earthquakes shimmying clean off the Richter Scale to re-connect the continents the following May. Of course, Thor's schedule didn't entirely end there. He had plans all set for a thousand years of peace, a big ol' Final Battle, a Judging section and a re-fabbed, sea-free (a waterphobe's paradise, I'm guessing) eternal Kingdom. One small-ish trouble though, not long after those earthquakes, the sun was s'posed to freeze in the sky (Yes, that's right! In Thors's world, the sun moves around the earth... which is, apparently, flat) and the moon would refuse to go away, as well. So, properly finishing off his lovely timetable just became impossible, what with not being able to discern stuff like days and dates... and reality and delusion.
2017 CE - The Sword of God Brotherhood had a membership that seemed to consist of little more than the website owner, a person who called him?self, "Barnabus", but displayed a photo of a young woman subtitled "...My old self". It wasn't much, as websites go. In fact, was barely anything as "File Not Found" messages go. But it was headed up with the casual missive that the world was scheduled to end in 2017, per the personal promise of the angel Gabriel. The sole survivors of this calamity would only be those who followed the ways of the SoGB. The rest of us, we were assured, would be caste into the flames of hellfire to roast for all eternity for our evil, sinful crimes!!!... Though, as long as he/she/it had our attention, Barney cheerfully encouraged us to purchase or distribute some of his/her/its fine, Earth-friendly products! And who could turn down a heartwarming salespitch like that, huh?
Well, apparently, lots, 'cause not too long ago, the Confused One's site just up and vanished in a puff of apathy, leaving nothing but a 404 error to mark its passing. Surely a set-back for gender-indefinite, fanatical doomsiren, small business entrepreneurs everywhere.
2024-ish CE - How self-absorbed is the average True Believer? I suppose it varies a bit from TB to TB. But, this one, Michael Ecklund, devoutly believes that God whacked one of his firefighting buddies just so Mikey could show off his new bagpipe playing skills at the guy's funeral. After reading that, somehow, the rest of his harpings about meteors and angels and sin and how God is going to conveniently knock off everyone who doesn't believe exactly what little Mikey does, just loses any of its power to surprise.
2003 - 2028 CE - It's hard to say just what Stewart C. Best thinks will do the Earth in. He's got so many choices. Although catastrophists as a species aren't known for their sense of subtlety, Stewie distinguishes himself from the crowd by being an absolute Olympic champion of eschatological overkill. His wiggy website is a-wash with disasters of every stripe, all presented amid a barrage of Bible quotes, in a mad mix of font colors, styles and sizes (mostly loud and large) emphasizing a tone of hair-raising, spittle-foaming, eyeball-bleeding hysteria. Not that he has anything against the doom-to-come. Oh, heavens, no! In truth, Stew describes each and every gory detail with such meticulous, loving, seat dampening, orgiastic glee that one almost feels compelled to smoke a cigarette and hose the monitor down after perusal.
The pages drip with such choice catastrophes as America (or "Babylon" as Stew delightfully refers to it) being utterly destroyed by a sneaky nuke attack, then sinking into a lake of "molten fire". Earthquakes shaking, volcanoes erupting, polar ice melting, floodwaters rising, mad Moslems attacking, killer comets impacting, weather storming, tidals waving, anarchy reigning, the anti christing, the moon spinning out of its orbit and, of course,... the poles shifting are the order of the Last Days. Stew's tippy-top obsession, however, is with the sun, which he is certain will go nova sometime between 2003 and 2028... Or maybe even in 2003 and 2028. Hey, the more, the merrier in Stew's interior world! Of course, these lil' novas are also potentially survivable - albeit for just a select and very special few. And naturally, one can enhance the chances of being among those lucky leftovers by purchasing the many, many, many audio cassettes, video tapes and self-published books, all starring Stewie and his psychosis that he tirelessly hawks all over his site. It's so great to know that not only can one find salvation in this day and age, one can charge it on MasterCard, Visa or American Express.
2028 CE - Right from the top, Jim, the siteowner of "Asteroid Doomsday Countdown Clock" admits that NASA has completely refuted their earlier calculations that asteroid 1997XF was going to be passing dangerously close to Earth in 2028. But, hey, if he just accepted that, he wouldn't have this nifty paranoid website to kvetch about it and spread hysteria amongst the easily manipulated, now would he? And what fun would that be?
2030 CE - I get email. Oh, my, do I ever get email. Some of it is even vaguely comprehensible. Lots of people seem to have a problem with my site or my attitude or just plain me. I get teary-eyed pleas for conversion, threats of hell and chortles of typed laughter over my imminent and well-deserved doom. I get prayers, I get Bible quotes (reams of them), I get clippings from news sites and loon pages. I've gotten a few threats of legal action, which amuse me no end and a few threats of bodily harm, which neither I nor the perps' ISPs found quite so entertaining. Of course, not everyone who's written me has a brain marked, "Abby-something". And there are even a few folks who've graced my In box with a positive comment or two.
But, positive or negative, abby or normal, the one thing my mailbox just doesn't seem to attract too often are prophecies. Ironic, isn't it? Kind'a disappointing, too. So, it was with true surprise and delight that I opened a post in June of '02 from one Janus Gregoric, titled "Earth signs climaxing" It's a post-Soviet delectation by a "Dr. Eve" that rises to dizzying heights of splendid schizophrenic lunacy by incoherently rambling on every little thing from the Satanic meaning of "Ozzu Osbourne" (sic) to the Nazihood of Mrs. Tony Blair and ex-Spice Girl, Cilla Black. Along the way, Evie also makes some quality raving time for Rasputin, the Lindburgh kidnapping, John Lennon, alternate universes, Che Guevara, Vladimir Putin, Jesus and the Virgin, the end of it all circa 2030 and David Beckham and Manchester United's chances for a boffo football season.
There's also a rather vague allusion to a "zebra act"... the exact nature of which I believe is best not to even contemplate on.
In sum, one would be hard-pressed to ask for a more perfect little look into a rabidly bat-infested belfry. I don't normally publicly link the letters I get. But, this was an exceptional exception. Just watch your step when you go, the guano's thick on the ground.
2034 CE - John Denton likes to think of himself as a practical, business-like, no-nonsense kind'a guy with a keen appreciation of the finer points of contract law, the rules of a solid, market-based economy and the importance of maintaining a strict corporate infrastructure. So, leave it to Johnny D. to suss out an Armageddon that ends up looking like nothing so much as a bank foreclosure on a bad loan.
Actually, that would only be from the non-saved point-of-view. For those lucky enough to open up the same Christmas Club account John has, he promises Doomsday will be more like having a really big IRA mature. Personally, I'm not familiar with IRAs that guarantee to kill off all other investors who put their money in other banks. But, then, I've never invested in the Lord.
September 14, 2047 CE 03:28 AM SET - Once upon a time the on-line Church of !BLAIR! boasted a website containing a perfectly good apocalyptic prophecy. After all those meteors, asteroids, angry gods, aliens and polar shifts, it was really refreshing to learn that Armageddon would come at the furry hands of extra-terrestrial, rainbow-colored lemurs wielding deadly giant burritos. Unfortunately, the siteowner, Reverend Clifford Gdansk the Ix, got bored of the place, tore the scriptures down and then abandoned what was left to the virtual elements. Pity.
(Reference to the Co!B! can be found at The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance)
|