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Unless you live on a remote Montana homestead and generate your own electricity (in which case you have nothing to worry about), you've heard about the Y2K bug. When the digital clocks on billions of computers roll over from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00 on December 31, 1999, Western civilization could cease to exist. Power will cut off, groceries vanish from store shelves, banks go broke. Nuclear warheads might automatically launch themselves from unstable Middle Eastern dictatorships. In fact, God's wrath will finally descend upon our evil civilization, and we know the exact day (and minute, and second) it will arrive. "Dust Y2K," declares one best-selling Christian author, "and you will find the fingerprints of God all over it. This is not the first time God has interrupted the plans of man. The first time He confused language. This time He is going to confuse technology."
According to Gary North, the Reconstructionist historian who has become Christianity's loudest Y2K doomsayer, this is "the biggest problem that the modern world has ever faced." North's opinion is shared by Hal Lindsey (Facing Millennium Midnight), Michael Hyatt (The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos), Steve Farrar (Spiritual Survival During the Y2K Crisis), Grant Jeffrey (The Millennium Meltdown), and a score of other evangelical prophets. Y2K is bigger than World War II, the Bomb, the Cold War, Ebola, Chinese nuclear capabilities, or sunspots. Y2K is the strongest contender for TEOTWAWKI ("The End of the World As We Know It") since Jerusalem fell to the Romans in a.d. 70.
By an odd coincidence, none of these doomsayers is a programmer.
"I have no expertise in computers," writes Steve Farrar. "My training is in Bible and in theology." Gary North's disclaimer is similar: "I'm not a programmer. My Ph.D. is in history." Michael Hyatt, who has written two bestselling Y2K tomes and maintains an alarming Y2K Preparation Web site, is a book publishing executive with a B.A. in philosophy. Grant Jeffrey is a prophecy maven and ex-financial planner. Hal Lindsey needs no introduction.
Whatever the probabilities of the world's ending in January may be (and they may, realistically, be high; I am not here attempting to calculate the odds), such widespread and all-consuming interest on the part of Christians who have no technical expertise suggests that the Y2K threat sounds some deep and powerful resonance with evangelical thought.
Why has this computer glitch so fired the Christian imagination?
Once upon a time, folks sat out on their front porches and swapped stories as the sun set. Children sprawled on the floor in front of the fire, reading books full of complex sentences and high ideals. Families spent quality time together—poring over McGuffey's Readers, making hand-cranked ice cream, milking the cows, reading Shakespeare by firelight. Local people depended on each other for help. Public opinion kept moral standards high. Schools taught real math and grammar.
After the computers crash, this world may be born again.
At Gary North's Web site, the mother of all Y2K Web sites (even Time online provides a link to North), a simple theme repeats itself again and again: Prepare for a return to the nineteenth century. "If most mainframe computers in 2000 read 2000 as 1900," North writes, "then it soon will be 1900, economically speaking." Any occupation that did not exist at this century's turn, North warns, will not exist after the next; therefore, learn a trade and be prepared to use your hands. All journalists, he adds with ill-concealed glee and a surprising disregard for history, will soon be unemployed.
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