Scott Kamps
In 1918, H.L. Mencken wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Doomsday hysteria permeates religious and political history.
Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) popularized dating Jesus’ coming and the end of the world, predicting His return within 40 years of the modern nation of Israel’s founding. Edgar Whisenant echoed with his book 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988, selling four million-plus copies; his corrective book followed, claiming calculation errors and Jesus’ return in 1989.
Pat Robertson made a prediction of Jesus’ return in his 1990 book, prophesying an April 2007 date.
Since then, red heifers, Bible codes, blood moons and reading modern nations of our world back into the Bible have enabled “enlightened Bible experts” to predict Jesus’ return (specifically or generally). While Christians should live in light of and long for Christ’s’ coming; Jesus plainly said, “…concerning that day and hour no one knows.
So – as I teach my kids – listen to Jesus and ignore those who contradict.
Christians are not the only apocalyptic predictors of doom. Consider secular Progressivism’s climate change hysteria and notable prophets of panic:
* Paul Erlich warned of a “dying planet” because of overpopulation: “…unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years” (New York Times, 1969).
* In 1970, Nobel Laureate George Wald predicted civilization’s end within 30 years “…unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
* Fear-mongering over global cooling claimed: “Meteorologists...are almost unanimous… If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic” (Newsweek, 1975).
* A 1979 New York Times story cautioned of cataclysmic global warming: “Climatologists are warned North Pole might melt.”
* Scaremongering of acid rain (1980s) and ozone depletion (1990s) became widespread.
* In 2006, Al Gore’s doomsday prophecies of a “point of no return” for the planet by 2016 conveniently got him a Nobel prize and millions of dollars.
* In 2019, AOC declared 2031 as the potential end. Biden followed up in a tweet, “Science tells us that how we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet.”
Biden’s tweet reminds me of another Mencken quote, “The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”
Oops, I meant this one: “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.