Tick, tick, tick. Every moment of every day they say, the countdown toward millennium goes on. It's as if a giant clock is ticking us slowly, inexorably, to the brink of a precipice. Then—THUD!—we'll fall over the edge. The twenty-first century will begin. This beginning, some say, could be the end of everything. Yet others disagree. They say the new century could be the start of something stupendous.
One thing is certain, though. There's plenty of hype about the year 2000. Hype about gloom and doom and Apocalypse and heaven suddenly dropping down to earth. Hype that some people are calling "millennium fever." See "Top 10 Trends '96," The Trends Journal, Vol. V, No. 1, pp. 3-4 .
Where did all this talk about the millennium start? In many cases, it's a takeoff on Bible prophecy, a misreading of its spiritual meaning. People point fearfully to the book of Revelation, for instance, in an effort to interpret the symbolic vision about how God will take care of Jesus' followers forever. See Rev., chaps. 20-22 . This vision describes a thousand-year period —a millennium—when everything is peaceful. Satan is "bound," and the "saints" (the followers of Christ) rule on the earth.
