Refiner’s Fire: The Doomsday Chic

Recently in a special showing at the Director’s Guild in Hollywood, I saw Hal Lindsey’s newest media effort, The Late Great Planet Earth (produced by the Peterson company, Hollywood). The film, after his book of the same name, is a combination of Thief in the Night, Future Shock, Consumer Byline, and War of the Worlds. The cast is not impressive (nor extensive). The film focuses on garden shots of Hal Lindsey and extensive narration by Orson Welles, whose very tone of voice adds importance to the film.

And movie critique must speak to two separate issues: form and content. In regard to the first, the film is a good but by no means great documentary. Director Robert Amran has managed to integrate an acceptable dramatic performance (in the beginning) with assorted newsreel film clips and cameo shots of Lindsey, Welles, and a host of “important” spokesmen. The list reads like an advisory board to Futurist magazine or membership list of the Club of Rome (indeed, club president Dr. A. Peccei is the first to be interviewed). George Walk and Norman Borlaug (Nobel Prize Winners), Emile Benoit (Columbia University economist), Desmond Morris (author of The Naked Ape), Paul Ehrlick, William Paddock, and several others from such schools as M.I.T. join astrologers and Babetta the Witch in foretelling the future of the race.

The movie opens with a chase scene in which a supposed Hebrew prophet is pursued and finally stoned to death by a small band of irate Jewish townsfolk. In the next shot Orson Welles picks up the decomposed skull of the prophet and announces that “Such was the fate of any Hebrew prophets whose predictions were proven to be false.” Briefly alluding to true biblical prophets such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekial, Amos, and Jesus, Welles concludes that “although many may not agree with them, their message cannot be disregarded.” Then one of the weaker segments of the film follows: a dramatic reenactment of the Revelation to St. John. In a clumsy attempt at surrealism, the delirious apostle stumbles half-crazed around Patmos Island where the ocean turns blood red and the fish die. At one point he awakens on a sandy beach with some strange bedfellows, whose lattex flesh and festering sores reminded me of the special effects in Godzilla Meets the Sammarai Warrier. As if his imagination was not already sufficiently overactive, poor John even sees the face of the Son of God—who looks like singer Larry Norman—in the sky. The most disgusting scene is one in which John stumbles onto the Queen of Babylon perched in the branches of a tree drinking a goblet of blood; she lets the blood drool out of her mouth.

The remainder of the film, done in documentary style, is better. But the last five minutes of the movie—a “crystal montage” to the soundtrack of “The Hallelujah Chorus”—is visually and acoustically weak. Something stronger is needed to follow the lengthy Armageddon sequence of nuclear destruction. Even the otherwise sympathetic audience applauded anemically at that point.

The second, and in this case, more important, consideration is that of content. The film is biased and manipulative, lacks integrity, and is potentially dangerous.

I expected the film to be slanted toward Lindsey’s dispensational pre-millenialism. But other eschatalogical viewpoints do not get so much as the tip of Lindsey’s hat. Further, the implication in the film is that to believe the Bible is to believe that what John saw were twentieth-century war machines, nuclear missiles and explosives, armed Chinese, Russian, and Arabian troops, and IBM computers, which he described as brilliant lights, strange monsters, and apocalyptic horsemen. In other words, no pre-nuclear age could possibly have understood the symbolism of the Apocalypse. Stating that “70 per cent of the biblical prophecies have already come to pass,” Orson Welles proposes that “if the events in Revelation are truly prophetic, the remainder are to be fulfilled in our lifetime.” This, of course, is not new to Lindsey’s eschatalogical scheme, which understands the “this generation” of Matthew 24 to be approximately forty years, beginning with the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1947 and confirmed by the Six-Day War in 1967. Lindsey’s timetable therefore calls for the end of the world sometime between 1984 and the year 2,000, another twenty-five years at the most.

Further, the film is highly manipulative. Two segments juxtapose a series of highly pessimistic “intelligent” opinions with a series of plain, uncultured, man-on-the-street interviews, the inference being that most average people are unaware and unconcerned, while only the pessimistic are really informed. In another segment, the Kennedys, Kissinger, Carter, Reagan, Kosygin, Brown, and others are suggested as possible candidates for the office of anti-Christ; names and numerical equivalency are fed into computers in a sophisticated computerized numerology, of which Bullinger would be proud, in order to decide who might be the 666 man of Revelation 13:18. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King illustrate the feasibility of the anti-Christ dying from a “mortal head wound,” only to be resurrected from the dead shortly afterwards. Biblical signs of the times are found in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes that measure over seven on the Richter Scale. The anticipated “Jupiter effect” in 1982 is suggested as a fulfillment of Luke 21. Overpopulation, world famine, and plagues are a fulfillment of Revelation 6. Zechariah’s vision of men’s tongues disintegrating in their mouths and their eyes disintegrating in their sockets is at last correctly understood as the result of nuclear war. Hailstones are interpreted as bombs, flashes of lightning as missiles. ICBMs fulfill the prophecies of John and the 200-million-strong army of China those of Revelation. Environmental pollution is a fulfillment of Isaiah 24:5 and 6. Skin cancer, cloning, and the killer bees of Brazil are also irrefutable signs of fulfilled prophecy and the end-times. Such proof-texting of current events is propaganda, as is Welles’s rhetorical questions, which give the impression that the analogies are true, whether or not they actually are.

The film lacks integrity because of its basic presupposition: the world must end within one generation from the birth of the state of Israel. Any opinion of world affairs that does not dovetail with this prophecy is dismissed. Certainly not all scientists, economists, or researchers agree with the negativism expressed by the Club of Rome. I would even venture to say that for every expert or Nobel Prize Winner interviewed in the film, you could find as knowledgeable an expert on the opposite side. William Paddock is illustrative of this unrestrained pessimism when he says in the film that “People must die, there is just no way to stop it.” Such an opinion must not go unchallenged. Granted, Paddock is right, if Western culture continues to adopt a lifeboat ethic with regard to its responsibility for the rest of the world. But it is not inevitable. Redistribution of food, technology, and wealth could halt the presently escalating starvation syndrome. Statistics and opinions are cited so rapidly that there is no time to evaluate the views presented. The result is likely to be an involuntary acceptance of what the film says.

The Late Great Planet Earth, then, is a potentially dangerous film. It identifies computer banks, peace pacts, ten-nation confederacies, and nuclear warheads with Scripture; the two are so intertwined as to be inextricable for the common man.

Of greater concern, however, is the despair that the viewer feels after the film is over. If we have only twenty-five years at the most before we utterly destroy ourselves, what is the point in going on?

Such a voice of despair cannot be the battle cry of the church. Doomsdayism is blind to the social side of the Gospel and the real presence of the Kingdom of God in this age as well as in the next. Biblical prophecy and apocalypticism must be understood separately. The apocalytic vision is vague; biblical prophecy was invariably specific and open-ended: repentance or judgment, blessing as well as curse. There is always a mercy clause, an “if my people will.” Prophecy cannot become a crutch to keep us from taking corporate responsibility for God’s creation.

Finally, the film portrays Jesus merely as one of the biblical prophets who predicted the end of the world, which gives the impression that that was his primary goal. And few viewers will guess that the concluding crystal montage with the Hallelujah Chorus symbolizes the “glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Gary Wilburn has the master of Christian Studies degree from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He is contributing editor to the “Wittenberg Door.”

Jesse Winchester: Can’t Stand Up Alone

Jesse Winchester’s life and work have never been simple. He has a unique background, and because of it he is able to use his talent to write fascinating folk songs. His music deals with an amazing breadth of human experience. His career began in Montreal when he played music in clubs to survive. He had left Tennessee in 1967 to avoid the Vietnam draft. His career was stifled because his draft evasion precluded any tour of the United States. The situation is now reversed. After being granted amnesty by President Carter, a grateful Jesse Winchester began a long U. S. tour this spring. Jesse’s status as expatriate has brought him increased publicity. Now, one of the most fascinating singer-song writers of the seventies is gaining a portion of the national spotlight.

Few artists in the popular music world are as appreciative of the life that God has granted them as is Jesse Winchester. “Let the Rough Side Drag” is one of Jesse’s playful and celebrative songs with a cheerful country tempo:

It’s a good thing, that the air is free

Such a good thing, that a man can see

What a good thing, that the Lord above is God

It’s a good thing, to be young and strong

Such a good thing, we’re not all forlorn

What a good thing, that making love is fun

Let the rough side drag

Let the smooth side show

As you pull that load

Everywhere you go

In the cryptic “Quiet About It,” Jesse begins to parade his faith in a personal God, only to bring that parade to an abrupt halt:

Yes I am lost, but he is leading me home

He’s my companion when my friends are up and gone

But still I get lonely

Sometimes I doubt

I want to do right

And only wrong gets out

And when I feel this way

I burst and I want to shout

But trust me Lord to be quiet about it.

He shies away from speaking about spiritual belief and commitment. (“Those things are hard for me to talk about,” he told me.) The only spiritual credential he revealed in an interview was that his grandfather was once the Episcopal bishop of Chicago. Yet on his new album, Jesse sings about his spiritual struggles in a way worthy of any Christian:

Oh Lord when your jeweler’s eye

Peers into my soul

Oh Lord I am overcome with shame

Take me Lord and purify

Heal me with the Word

Oh I beg a gift, I dare not claim

Although this song, titled “Songbird,” does not express a freeing faith in Jesus, it does imply a basic fear of the Lord. As the Scripture teaches, this fear is the beginning of wisdom. Jesse employs his elementary wisdom when he acknowledges the splendor of creation in songs like “Yankee Lady” and “Mississippi You’re On My Mind.” Jesse seems to know much truth, yet personal commitment to Christ does not appear foremost.

I asked him if he looked forward to completing his tour. Jesse replied with so hesitant a “yes” that I wondered if his heart agreed with his words. He is not especially confident in his abilities. In concert Jesse regularly sings a hymn written by Martha Carson. The lyrics apply to his and most people’s situation:

… my burden has got so heavy

Till I can’t stand up alone

I must lay my head on one strong shoulder

‘Cause I can’t stand up alone.

SCOTT W. CURTIS

Scott W. Curtis is arts and entertainment editor of the “Vermont Cynic.”

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