Is the End Still Near? : Deadlines have passed, but doomsayers remain undaunted. Their problem? Figuring out when Armageddon will arrive.

By now, millions of people should have mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth, the Soviet Union should have invaded Israel and Jesus should have descended from the heavens to usher in a real New World Order.

So went the rough scenario outlined in 1970 by Christian author Hal Lindsey in his bestseller, “The Late Great Planet Earth.”

But two decades and nearly a dozen sequels later, the Lord still waits in the wings, the Soviet empire lies in shambles and the only person to vanish inexplicably has been Jimmy Hoffa.

Something, apparently, went wrong on the way to Armageddon.

Or did it?

Even as skeptics suggest calling off the Apocalypse, some end-of-the-world theorists are busy finding new signs of impending doom. And plenty of non-Christians--from environmentalists to Hopi Indians--also feel jittery as the year 2000 approaches, what with killer bees lurking at the border, earthquakes rumbling and ozone layers depleting.

“The doomsday phenomenon is an absolutely ancient one,” says psychologist Rex Julian Beaber of Los Angeles. “People have been fascinated with the end since the beginning.”

The idea plays into a psychological desire for order and purpose in the world, he says: “It is the end that somehow infuses life with meaning,” prodding people to reckon with spiritual and personal issues they normally avoid.

Modern Armageddonism’s strongest disciples are Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, many of whose views were popularized in “Late Great,” the hottest-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s, according to the New York Times.

They believe the Bible spells out a series of coming events: Plagues, demonic possessions, stars falling from the heavens, a one-world currency and religion, weird weather, famines and, finally, a cataclysmic war near Jerusalem.

“It could happen at any time,” says John F. Walvoord, an influential Christian scholar whose 1974 book, “Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis,” sold 1 million copies during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

And therein lies one of the chief problems with end-time predictions: timing.

Although most prophets of doom are careful not to attach precise dates to their forecasts, many strongly imply that the last days are at hand.

During the 1960s, Lindsey reportedly confided to some that he didn’t see the Earth lasting past the mid-1970s. That changed in time for the 1977 edition of “Late Great,” which had a dust jacket warning readers not to make plans for 1985. In another book, “The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon,” Lindsey hinted that the end could come before the 1990s. When that didn’t pan out, he released “The 1990s--Prophecy on Fast Forward.”

Another apparent glitch involves predictions about a revived Roman Empire. Recent events have forced Christian doomsdayers to adjust their assertions that the European Common Market lays the groundwork for a 10-nation confederacy led by a charismatic dictator known as the Antichrist.

At last count, 12 nations were set to join the Common Market--with others likely to follow--and the headquarters will be in Brussels, not Rome. To explain the discrepancies, Lindsey now says that 10 countries will dominate the confederacy, and he flatly insists that Rome will upstage Brussels.

Another popular commentator, Tim LaHaye, abandoned the 10-nation concept for a dictatorship of 10 world regions .

But arguably the most damaging blow to the Armageddonists’ credibility is the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

For years, Lindsey and other prophets of doom have said the Bible foretells an invasion of Israel by the Soviet Union and East Germany. When the Iron Curtain began cracking, they initially saw no cause to alter that view.

Lindsey, speaking to an audience in Vista two years ago, declared that the splintering of Eastern Europe was “a smoke-and-mirrors game” put on by the Soviets: “We’ve got this idea that the Cold War is over. Don’t you believe it.”

Now, however, doomsday commentators are reconstructing their predictions. The country attacking Israel “is not the Soviet Union; it has never been,” LaHaye recently wrote, even though he previously has said otherwise. “It has always been the Republic of Russia itself.”

Lindsey’s latest scenario suggests that five southern former Soviet republics--all heavily Muslim--will soon unite with “their Islamic brethren” in the Middle East to attack Israel. He notes that the republics possess nuclear weapons and claims that three of them--according to “private intelligence sources which must be protected”--negotiated the sale of warheads to an Iranian scientist last August.

In fact, only one of the republics, Kazakhstan, has nuclear weapons on its soil--but they’re under Russian, not Kazakh, control and are scheduled for dismantling. The republics also seem on good terms with Israel: They have established diplomatic relations with the nation and have welcomed Israeli foreign aid missions.

Stories of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons have been checked out previously by U.S. intelligence officials, The Times and others, and they appear to be false.

Lindsey also claims that a top Iranian intelligence operative named Madi Chamran purchased three nuclear weapons last October. If so, it’s an amazing feat: The only well-known person in Iranian military circles named Chamran died about 10 years ago.

The Armageddon scenarios fall apart biblically as well, historians say.

The claims by Lindsey and others that Old Testament prophecies about Rosh, Meshech and Tubal refer to Russia, Moscow and Tobolsk, respectively, are “indefensible,” says Edwin Yamauchi of Ohio’s Miami University: Rosh is Hebrew for chief or head, and Meshech and Tubal were areas in what now is Turkey. Prophecies about Gog and Magog have also been linked with Russia, but scholars say they could just as easily refer to Turkey or Spain.

And then there’s the Gomer problem. A Bible passage in Ezekiel lists Russia’s allies in the invasion of Israel as Persia (Iran), Ethiopia, Libya and “Gomer and all his bands.” Until the Berlin Wall came down, Gomer was almost universally thought to be East Germany.

These days, Gomer is lucky to even get mentioned. A 1991 prophecy book by Edgar James, for example, didn’t name Gomer when listing the attackers cited in Ezekiel, according to Liberty magazine. The reason for the omission, the magazine suggests, was that “Gomer . . . suddenly ceased to exist.”

LaHaye acknowledges that Armageddonists have been forced to “rethink” and “modify” a few interpretations, but he dismisses suggestions that the changes undermine the movement’s credibility: “The world is in a state of flux and it’s too early at this point to say we have to abandon (our basic theories). Things could change overnight.”

Others disagree.

“I think some people have a lot of explaining to do,” says Walter Capps, a professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara.

Craig Blaising, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, says bluntly: “Lindsey went too far.” (Lindsey was out of town, according to a spokesman, and didn’t have time to be interviewed for this article.)

Blaising believes biblical prophecies about Armageddon but says the doomsayers use “selective interpretation” to make current events fit their theories. “They’re looking for signs of the signs.”

It’s an age-old practice.

“Literally since 1 AD, we’ve been hearing that all the signs are there,” says psychologist Beaber. “And the nature of signs is sufficiently ambiguous that they always are there.”

Martin Luther thought he was living in the last times, Blaising says. He saw the Pope as the Antichrist, the Turks as the prophesied army of the east and the bubonic plague as fulfillment of predictions that much of the planet’s population would be wiped out.

Other Christians detected signs of the end in World Wars I and II. And candidates for the role of Antichrist have included Napoleon, Hitler, Anwar Sadat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Saddam Hussein.

“Every single time, they’re wrong,” Beaber says. “And yet the world never gives up . . . partly because of the fear of ‘Golly gee, what if this time they’re right?’ ”

Lindsey has acknowledged that history’s failed attempts to decipher the Bible have “discredited prophecy.” The difference this time, he has said, is that Israel is once again a nation--the key prophetic sign that he calls “the fuse of Armageddon.”

In the mid-1800s, Bible prognosticators began predicting Israel’s resurrection, saying the Second Coming of Christ couldn’t happen without it. Some even aided efforts to establish Israeli statehood, Blaising says.

When the new nation formed in 1948, it set off a wave of doomsaying that continues to this day.

The fervor might have peaked during last year’s Persian Gulf War. In early 1991, sales of books on the Apocalypse shot up tenfold, says Dick Malone of Spring Arbor Distributors, the world’s largest supplier of Christian books: “It was crazy.”

Publishers rushed dozens of new titles onto the market, only to see sales nose dive after the fighting ended.

But fascination with the subject hasn’t ended. Even many non-Christians feel a sense of foreboding.

The Hopi Indians, for instance, are waiting for “the Great Redeemer to return with the tablets,” says Charles B. Strozier, a history professor at John Jay College in New York.

And the environmental movement--with its dire warnings about shrinking rain forests, depleted ozone and other coming catastrophes--also thinks apocalyptically, says Beaber.

The specter of doomsday, whether secular or religious, is like a weekend sale, Beaber says: “It’s a device to get you to act now . . . (to overcome) the notion of ‘I can always do it tomorrow.’ ”

With religious prophecies, the underlying message is that “there’s a time limit to save yourself from Hell,” he says.

For environmentalists, he adds, it’s an attempt to counter the notion that “you can always pollute a little more” without reaching an ecological point of no return.

But even people who reject religious and environmental Armageddonism find something unnerving about the year 2000. From a scientific point of view, it’s just another year, but many people “imbue special dates with magic powers,” Beaber says. It’s like New Year’s Day on a much more ominous scale.

Indeed, on Dec. 31 in 999, some people in Europe flocked to churches thinking the world would end at midnight. By dawn, everyone had sheepishly returned home.

Some observers predict the current Armageddon fixation also will fade.

The last two decades of religious prophesying have created “a certain weariness,” says Gordon Melton, director of the Santa Barbara-based Institute for the Study of American Religion. If nothing happens by 2002 or so, the current movement will probably collapse, he says.

But Lindsey shows surprising staying power. At his home in Palos Verdes, he has a shelf full of books attacking his theories.

Now, he has said, “most of them are out of print.”