The End Is Nearish: Fundamentalists and End Times Obsessions

Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World
Michael Baigent
HarperOne

Michael Baignet is often referred to as a “speculative historian.” The term usually applies to those who indulge in “alternate history”—as in, “What if the Allies had actually fallen to the Third Reich?” In Baignet’s case, however, it means “religio-conspiracy theorist.” Over the course of his long career, Baignet and his frequent co-hack, Richard Leigh, have argued that Jesus faked his own execution and married Mary Magdelene; that their bloodline eventually merged with that of the Merovingian Dynasty; and that the Vatican concealed the existence of two letters written by Jesus himself.

If the above seems familiar, it’s because some of these “theories” were used in a little cult novel you may have heard of, “The Da Vinci Code.” In fact, after Dan Brown’s book became an outrageous success, Baignet and Leigh sued Random House for copyright infringement. They lost. And in the U.K., when you lose such a suit, you have to pay everybody’s legal bills—which were about £3M.

None of this, to be fair, has much to do with Baignet latest book, “Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World.” Here, for once, Baignet seems to be avoiding his own ludicrous hypotheses. Instead he presents the ludicrous hypotheses of others—in this case, the End Times obsessions of fundamentalists. In this often quite interesting book, Baignet outlines the apocalyptic scenarios preached by fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Moslems.

Each of these scenarios share certain characteristics: a messianic figure, a theocratic state, and a preoccupation with violence.  For the Jews, it’s the advent of the Messiah, who will rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and end the diaspora. But this won’t be easy, considering that there are a lot of Moslems in Israel, and that the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque are situated atop the Temple Mount.  Nevertheless, Jewish fundamentalists believe that they can “hasten the end,” as the saying goes, by destroying these structures and sending the Moslems packing.

Christian fundamentalists follow their interpretation of Revelations, wherein the true believers are “raptured,” or simultaneously “taken up” to hang out with Jesus Christ. From their heavenly perch, they then get to watch Jesus return to Earth and lead a final battle—Armageddon—against the forces of the Anti-Christ.  Most evangelicals believe that when this will happen is out of their hands.  But “Reconstructionists” believe that Jesus will not return until Christianity has conquered the globe.  And they hope to start by conquering America.

Fundamentalist Muslims (both Sunni and Shiite) also look forward to a final battle between a Messianic figure and a kind of Anti-Christ. In their version, the Mahdi, or “rightly-guide-one” will appear (with Jesus!) to destroy the “Great Deceiver,” the Dajjal. Fundamentalist Muslims have an earthly goal as well: “a great worldwide state under the control of a caliph, a descendant of Mohammed, ruling by means of Koranic law, sharia.”  And of course they want to destroy Israel, and some of them want to destroy the Jews entirely.

Baignet’s summaries of these chilling beliefs are readable and concise, making “Racing Toward Armageddon” a solid introduction to fundamentalist ideology. But what’s weird is that Baignet seems terribly surprised by it all. He writes as if religious extremism were a new phenomenon, one that few have noticed, despite the fact that the mainstream media has been discussing extremism for years.

I also found it strange that Baignet has done almost no first-hand research. There’s only one exchange that comes close to an interview; for everything else he relied on other people’s books, like Gershom Gorenberg’s “End of Days” or David Cook’s “Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature.”   This may be why Baignet gets a few things wrong. He irked this reader by habitually referring to the Western Wall in Jerusalem as the “Wailing Wall.” And he proclaims that “Jewish fundamentalists…do not think of a battle to come.” But a final war, called the War of Gog and Magog, is a part of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic eschatology.  Baignet also seems surprised by how much contemporary Islamic eschatology borrows from the writings of evangelicals like Hal Lindsey and John Hagee. But the apocalyptic scenarios of all three religions have been borrowing from each other for millennia—Gog and Magog being a prime example.

So then what does Baignet add to the conversation? Not much, really. There are some vaguely portentous warnings: “Ideas have power, and we often underestimate that power until it is too late.” And his conclusion is an equally vague essay against a “superficial and shallow approach to spirituality.” Baignet’s only trick, really, has been to summarize what others have written and put it between two covers.  Thus, while I wouldn’t warn anyone away from his book, I’d only recommend it to someone who doesn’t know anything about fundamentalist eschatology.

To my own surprise, I even had a problem with Baignet’s secular-humanist-alarmist-mode. While terrorism is of course a real concern, the thesis of “Racing Toward Armageddon” is that fundamentalism may destroy us all.  I find this difficult to imagine. Especially after examining the Middle East timeline that Baignet provides.  The first entry is 4000 B.C., or the “Era of the garden of Eden [sic] with Adam and Eve according to biblical chronology.” The last entry is 2006, when John Hagee founded Christians United for Israel.

A six-millenia-long timeline does not suggest that we’re racing toward anything.