THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510180415
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
A 300 billion-pound meteor slams into the Pacific Ocean, triggering earthquakes and tidal waves. Millions perish. The president commits suicide on national television, setting the stage for world takeover by a Satanic leader.
And that's just the start of ``The End of the Age,'' religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's new novel, which appears this week in bookstores across the nation. Figuring out where to put it on the shelves won't be easy: At $21.99, the book delivers an unusual mix of apocalyptic fiction, surrealism and Christian prophecy.
Robertson, who has been promoting the book for weeks on his news and spiritual show, ``The 700 Club,'' calls it a ``fascinating tale'' - and a visionary's warning.
``There is a profound understanding of what's going to happen to our world,'' Robertson wrote in response to questions from The Virginian-Pilot. ``We are facing some potential tragedy. We're also facing the greatest opportunity in the history of the world to evangelize in these last days.''
Robertson wrote the novel in 30 days this summer and did not use a ghostwriter, as he has with some past books, said Gene Kapp, Robertson's spokesman and vice president of media relations for the Christian Broadcasting Network. Kapp said Robertson did not have time to be interviewed about his novel, but he supplied Robertson's written answers.
Although ``The End of the Age'' is set around the year 2000, Robertson says he is not forecasting the exact date of a world-destroying catastrophe as prefigured in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Revelation.
``I think predictions of the second coming, that kind of thing, are not in order,'' he wrote. ``I mean, Jesus told us nobody knows the day or the hour. But He also told us to be prepared.''
The approach of the millennium is fueling popular interest in doomsday theories and literature around the nation. The novel's publisher, a Dallas-based division of Thomas Nelson Inc., is banking on that interest and Robertson's stature to drive sales upward - perhaps to rival Robertson's 1991 best-seller, ``The New World Order.''
The novel's first printing is 175,000 copies, large even for a book marketed in both general and religious bookstores. Donors to Robertson's relief organization, Operation Blessing, got an early peek: For $100 contribution, they received a free copy.
The novel fits in with Robertson's plans for his network ministry, which this fall kicked off a five-year campaign to bring the Gospel message to international audiences through a combination of television, films, pamphlets and door-to-door evangelizing. Robertson aims to convert 500 million people to Christianity by the year 2000.
Robertson expects his novel will serve as a ``wake-up call'' for Christians to spread the Gospel, and spur for non-Christians to hurry and seek salvation.``The End of the Age has a clear message to unbelievers,'' Robertson wrote. ``It says: God is offering you an opportunity to come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ.''
It's not likely that the novel will have much appeal to non-Christians, or even to people in mainline Protestant denominations, religion experts say.
``Mainstream Protestants tend not to be into this stuff, apocalypse, at all,'' said David Hein, chairman of the religion department at Hood College in Frederick, Md., who has written about apocalyptic literature.``They see it as poetry, mythology - something to derive meaning from, but not as allegory.''
But for Pentecostals and many evangelicals, who are the bedrock of Robertson's constituency, there is a strong belief that ``we are living in the very last days and the end is coming soon,'' said Vinson Synan, dean of the Divinity School at Regent University, where Robertson is chancellor.
Evangelical interest in the apocalypse dates back to the 1830s, when two ministers in England, John Nelson Darby and Edward Irving, started teaching faith-based healing and the ``rapture'' - the belief that past and present Christians will meet the Lord in the heavens and be spared years of tribulation under an Antichrist's ruthless reign, Synan said.
But there is much debate in evangelical circles over the fate of the faithful during the end times, Synan noted. While some argue that Christians will escape the worldwide suffering, others - including Robertson in recent years - have said that Christians won't avoid terrible persecution before Christ returns, he said.
For those who take the latter view, the Christian response is to seek to convert society.
In Robertson's novel, a small group of survivors become part of the Christian Resistance, an underground movement which fights to restore order and lead the world out of Satanic darkness. At the novel's conclusion, they are lifted upward to a shimmering spacecraft called the New Jerusalem, the home of God.
While Robertson has been crystal clear about his belief in Christ's return, religion experts say it is difficult to evaluate whether his novel's scenario is to be understood primarily as fiction or as prophecy.
Many said they were surprised that Robertson, who has a national profile in politics and business, did not write a preface to the novel, which could provide context and combat the novel's misuse by apocalyptic cults. Instead, the first chapter is preceded by a page with a single quote from the Gospel of Matthew: ``This is how it will be at the end of the age.''
``With something like that - particularly a quote from Matthew - it sounds like he is presenting it as prophecy,'' said Craig Wansink, associate professor of biblical studies at Virginia Wesleyan University. ``Without a preface, my fear is that people will take it as analogous to Scripture or as a second Revelation.''
Others suggest that Robertson's chief purpose in his novel is to present a vision that provokes Christians to re-examine their lifestyles, and live in a way that keeps them always prepared for the world's end. ``I've heard him say that this is a possible scenario,'' said Synan. ``He does not say that this is the only way.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
A 300-billion-pound meteor triggers apocalyptic events near 2000.
by CNB