History Has Seen Many Apocalyptic Scenarios : Millennium: The standoff in Texas is just another outcropping. Religious analysts foresee a surge of such end-of-the-world predictions as the century draws to a close.

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March 13, 1993 12 AM PT

From Associated Press

NEW YORK — Apocalyptic, end-of-the-world scenarios have been around through most of history, and the Waco, Tex., group in an armed standoff with federal authorities is another peculiar outcropping of it.

Religious analysts foresee a surge of such end-of-times expectations as the close of the century nears.

Convinced of the rising interest in such reckoning, a Philadelphia researcher, Ted Daniels, has made monitoring it his occupation.

“The idea is clearly hot,” said Daniels, who holds a doctorate in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s cooking. I’m not predicting where it will go. But there’s going to be a lot of it.

“It’s going to get increasingly important as the century winds down. I hope to God it’s not violent.”

Daniels, founder of the Millennium Watch Institute and editor of a year-old newsletter, Millennium News, said he keeps tabs on about 600 groups that anticipate an early close of the age and start of a perfect one.

In between, as some theories have it, there will be intervening periods of disorder and suffering, called the tribulation, and a last purging war, Armageddon, before the era of peace and abundance unfolds.

“It’s to be paradise on Earth, the transformation of the world,” Daniels said in an interview. “That’s the kernel of the whole millennial story. This world will be transformed into paradise.”

Daniels’ recently published book, “Millennialism, an International Bibliography,” records several thousand cases in history of groups predicting an end of existing realities followed by a utopian aftermath.

“It’s not strictly a Christian idea,” he said. “Some of these notions are older than Christianity. But mostly, it’s associated with some type of piety. It’s very much involved in the whole New Age thing these days.”

Teachings of most major churches avoid specifying future details, seeing pictorial biblical allusions to such events as symbolic of the struggle between good and evil that is fully resolved only in God’s redeemed creation.

However, millenniumism of various kinds threads evangelical and fundamentalist teachings. The word refers to a supposed 1,000-year reign of Christ, as interpreted from Revelations 20 in that highly symbolic book.

Post-millennialists claim Christ’s reign of righteousness will come before the conclusion of history, while “pre-millennialists” say the golden age will come only after corrupted time is terminated in a final conflict.

The leader of the Branch Davidian group near Waco, David Koresh, seems to be in the “pre-millennial” category, although there apparently is much deviation from it as in his reported messianic claims and his arsenal.

“Most presumed prophets don’t announce they are Jesus,” Daniels said. “The prophet says he is a channel for the supernatural.”

Besides the assorted “millennial” views, there also are highly literalist interpretations known as “dispensationalism,” which links current events with biblical items to theorize timetables for the end.

Popular books that do this, such as Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” sell in the millions.

Complicated mathematical theories are used to extract complex formulas from some biblical books, mainly Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelations, to predict events and schedules leading to the end.

However, after Christ’s Resurrection, when apostles asked him when he would come again, he said, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”

Historic Christianity mainly has avoided trying to set times for that second coming, called the “Parousia,” but there have been sporadic departures from the pattern through the centuries.

They have included the Millerites, who set 1844 for the climactic second coming. Jehovah’s Witnesses set a series of dates for the end in the present century, but have ceased doing so.

In recent years, some groups have gathered on mountaintops, believing the time had come for them to be taken up “in rapture” at the world’s end. Individuals, claiming they have got the right date, attract passing attention.

But it passes, until the next prediction comes along.

“Even scientists are talking about world transformation, things like global warming,” Daniels said. “People listen to the news, watch TV and see global change. People sense it. In fact, the world is changing, politically and economically.”