END-TIME VISIONS

nd the religious fringe, examines the astonishing resistance to death that religious predictions of the world’s end have shown over the past two millennia, despite all refuting evidence. The timeliness of the topic shows in the recent cases of apocalyptic fervor, from Jonestown in 1978 to Heaven’s Gate in 1997, which Abanes reviews in his first chapter, and the current spate of end-time predictions, brought on by the approach of the year 2000, that he instances toward the end of his book in the work of such Christian alarmists as Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and Jack Van Impe. In between, Abanes surveys the history of apocalyptic worry, from the New Testament to Nostradamus, William Miller’s Millerites, white supremacism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The author applies the same method repeatedly: He cites a prediction, unravels its latent ambiguity, if any, and marshals all the facts that refute it. Though his touch is periodically light, the repetitive intensity of his refutations