We have heard apocalyptic promises from the Union of Concerned Scientists, some parts of the environmental movement, and Heaven's Gate. That is the great problem of the apocalypse for non-believers. We already have a glimmering about the apocalypse's pull, but what many people fail to recognize is that there is a significant push into apocalyptic belief as well, and that comes from everybody else. Apocalypse is never literally about the end of the world, even when it says it is, for even in those scenarios life on the planet continues. This is a capsule history of the twentieth century.
Millenarian belief is never, or never only, a thing of the fringe.
This evil is always present to some degree, and so the believer can always find justification for outrage. The world provides the push into apocalyptic belief. When life becomes especially risky, when survival itself seems to be in question, then the prophets, who have been among us all along, emerge from the gloom like stars at dusk, and their promise of life in a perfected world assumes a powerful attraction. That all of these ended their careers in violence says more about the nature of prominence in a violent world than it does about millenarianism itself, for most of these movements are quite peaceful and sputter out after, at most, a few years of intense activity.