The number of these fundamentalist – or evangelicals -- is large enough to influence governmental policy in the United States. It has been estimated that about 20% of the Americans are evangelicals (according to one survey, 33% of the Republican Party voters). Their great influence also stems from the fact that George Bush himself is a born-again Christian.

This Christian belief in the end of the world is centered on the idea of Rapture, when born-again Christians will be lifted out of their clothes and meet Christ in the sky. This will happen unexpectedly, and people will suddenly rise from wherever they are -- while they are walking, or driving, or in their living rooms -- into the heavens. (One can only hope that the disappearance of drivers and pilots will not lead to horrendous accidents.) Once in paradise, they will sit to the right of God, watching the non-believers being tormented by boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the seven years of Tribulation that will follow, which will culminate in a nuclear war with the Antichrist at the Armageddon. The ones who are left behind will have a second chance to go to heaven at the end of the Tribulation if they follow Jesus during the seven years.

Any of the current political leaders is seen as Antichrist, as was Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi war. Even the Wal-Mart Corporation is a candidate, because it has started to radio-tag its stock, which is seen as the Mark of the Beast.

The period of these wars is supposed to be 2003-2012, with the faithful convinced of this by several signs: Israel's occupation of the rest of the biblical lands and the US's occupation of Iraq.

After the Antichrist has been vanquished and everyone on earth has accepted Christianity (which is why it is very urgent to convert the idol-worshipers in Asia now), Christ will begin his thousand-year reign on Earth. When this millennial reign comes to a close, history will end and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

The infidels may laugh at this, but the influence of this vision on the recent world events is evident. No doubt, not everyone in the Bush administration believes in it, but those motivated by the need to control oil or create a democracy in the Middle East to counter terrorism in the future, find their short-term goals in agreement with the evangelicals.

The evangelicals are also pushing very strongly for conversion in the non-Christian nations because it is essential for the Rapture to happen. Some Christian groups, like the Mormons, do not only wish to convert the non-believers, but also their deceased ancestors. Saving the already dead earns extra brownie points.

Cosmologists' View of the End of the World

In contrast to the Christian view of the world, with its romance of disappearing people, war and pestilence, science has a rather dismal scenario for the future. In about five billion years from now, the Sun will begin to run out of fuel. As the core runs out of hydrogen and then helium, it will contract and the outer layers will expand, cool and become less bright. The Sun will become a giant red star and its atmosphere will envelope the Earth, consuming it in fiery death. During the time of the destruction of the Earth, the size of the Sun will be several times larger than normal, and poetically, one might call it the fire of several Suns.

Beyond this, the Sun will eventually evolve into a red supergiant as it exhausts the helium in its core, and its outer envelope will extend out towards the Jupiter. It will now begin to lose mass in a powerful wind. Eventually, all but a hot core of carbon imbedded in a nebula of expelled gas will remain. Radiation from this hot core will ionize the nebula, producing a `planetary nebula', much like the nebulas seen around the remnants of other stars. The carbon core will eventually cool and become a white dwarf, the dense dim remnant of a once bright star.

The Hindu View

The Hindu view of the end of the world is also boring compared to the Christian one. I have seen an essentially identical account in the Mahabharata and `Yoga Vasishtha', and I take it that the same account is to be found in the Puranas as well. Here is Vyasa describing the end in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva, Chapter 233):

When the time comes for universal dissolution [a few billion years in the future], a dozen Suns begin to burn. All things mobile and immobile on Earth first disappear merging into the elements, making it shorn of trees and plants, looking naked like a tortoise shell.

Then water takes up the attribute of earth element -- that is, the earth element becomes fluid. With mighty billows and roars, it pervades space. Next, water is transformed into heat. Dazzling flames of fire now conceal the Sun, and space itself begins to burn in a vast conflagration.

Next, heat is transformed to wind, which becomes greatly agitated. In its attribute of sound, it begins to traverse upwards and downwards and transversely in all ten directions.

Next, wind is transformed into space, with its attribute of unheard or unuttered sound. Finally, space withdraws into Mind.

The chain continues a bit further until merging into the Consciousness, which is the ground-stuff of reality.

There is logical reasoning that underlies the Hindu view. But it is too complicated to be given here. The reader might like to examine the texts directly to discover this reasoning. For a background to the cosmology behind the Hindu view and its parallels with scientific ideas, see my new book The Architecture of Knowledge (CSC, 2004).

The cosmologists' or the Hindu visions of the end could never have any mass appeal. More short-term scientific scenarios such as that of global warming do have a strong constituency around the world.

I expect the evangelical fervour about Rapture to continue for several years until 2012 or so, when the believers, like the lonely prophets in the west who announce the end of the world every winter at street-corners and go back home disappointed as the New Year dawns, would withdraw from the public space they occupy now. That is, unless one of them does trigger the nuclear war they are awaiting in the battle of Armageddon.

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