WILL THE YEAR 2000 BE A THRESHOLD OF FEAR OR A DOORWAY OF HOPE?

As we approach the end of the current century and millennium, we feel the steady rising of a certain world-wide anxiety. The year 2000, which for older generations once symbolized some far-off future, is suddenly only five years away. Historically, when humanity has approached a year whose number is a round figure, there has been a psychological tendency to see it as a sign of atoning completion, as well as a possible cataclysmic termination of preexisting conditions.

As a good example, during the last years before the advent of the year A.D. 1000, all Christendom in medieval Europe was thrown into a panic by religious doomsday preachers who predicted that the end of the world was imminent. As a result, homes were abandoned, crops were left unharvested, and great mobs of the devout took refuge in churches or fled on pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Now that the year A.D. 2000 looms, we are beginning to see similar increases in cases of eschatophobia, a fear of the ending of all things, and the need to somehow escape an imagined inevitable destruction. This time around, however, the collective anxiety is being fueled by a curious mixture of fundamentalist evangelists, space brother messengers, tabloid psychics, so-called channelers with messianic complexes, and meta-fuzzy New Agers. Even a few astrologers have joined the apocalyptic bandwagon.

Part of today's anxieties concerning the year 2000 comes from misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding a number of famous well-publicized prophecies. By taking a more in-depth look at these predictions, we see what their real message for the future is all about.

I.

IS 2000 AN ARBITRARY YEAR, AN INVENTION OF OUR CALENDRAL SYSTEM, OR IS IT BASED ON AN ACTUAL PROPHETIC CYCLE OF TIME?

While there will be a lot of celebrating at midnight on New Year's December 31, 1999, technically speaking the next millennium itself will not start until a year later on January 1, 2001. This is because our Western calendral system, which is the most globally accepted system for recording the passage of years, is based on the anno Domini time count. Within such a system, in the transition from 1 B.C. (Before Christ) to A.D. 1 (anno Domini, Year of Our Lord), there was no zero year in between. This means that each succeeding century always begins with a year one and ends with a year zero (A.D. 1-100, 101-200...1801-1900, 1901-2000). Therefore, A.D. 2000 will really be the last year for the old millennium, and January 1, 2001 will mark the beginning of the next millennium.

Orthodox Christian scholars will tell you that this counting was calculated from the birth of Christ. Yet we now know from both historical and astronomical observations that Jesus of Nazareth was actually born in either 5 or 7 B.C. The usual explanation for this discrepancy is that a major miscalculation crept into the record-keeping during the early Christian era. Since we are off by several years on the event upon which our calendar is based, the birth of Christ, then the year 2000 becomes only significant as a numerical change, nothing more.

While this is the standard textbook version of history, by digging more deeply, we find an entirely different story. From classical sources we discover that the Greeks recognized what was called the Phoenix Cycle, derived from Egyptian legends of the Bennu bird that rose from its own ashes every 500 years. There are some indications this Cycle was linked with the Plutonic revolution of 247 years doubled. The Phoenix Cycle was considered to be so important that in the 1st century A.D. early Egyptian Christian mystics under Saint Mark combined forces with the Alexandrine Greeks to develop a calendral system that would be coordinated with the Phoenix Cycle's rhythm, past and future. It was not fully accepted into Europe until one cycle later in A.D. 525, when it was introduced by the Roman theologian and mathematician Dionysius Exiguus, who christianized the Cycle and was the first to apply to it the term anno Domini.

According to the Pythagorean/Neo Platonic Greeks and Egyptians, with each Phoenix culmination and for a hundred years on either side of it, it was prophesied that an influx of special souls would be incarnating, variously called savants, masters, teachers, messiahs, avatars, and bodhisattvas by different traditions, whose chosen work was to raise overall planetary consciousness.

Right on schedule, the 20th century, which marks the beginning of a new Phoenix Cycle (1900, 2100), has already seen the advent of numerous great minds and spirits Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anwar Sadat, Mother Theresa to name only a few. As we approach the peak of 2000 in the present cycle, many more are prophesied to arrive: the Hindu Kaki, the Buddhist Maitreya, the Iroquois return of Deganawida, the Mahdi or Imam to the Moslems, Kwan Yin to the Chinese, White Buffalo Woman to the Great Plains peoples, Viracocha to South America, the Messiah to the Jews, the White Burkhan to Central Asia and Merlin to the Celts.

If the Phoenix Cycle is valid to any degree, then the year 2000 may have some significance after all. And with so many important people predicted to yet appear, it doesn't sound like the world is going to end. Instead, it may be just beginning.

II.

IS THE YEAR 2000 THE START OF THE PROMISED MILLENNIUM IN BIBLICAL PROPHECY?

The concept of the Millennium or a thousand years of peace is derived from Saint John's Book of Revelations. Based on 2 Peter 3:8 which says that Every day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day, some fundamentalist Bible scholars believe that the seven days of creation given in the beginning of Genesis were symbolic of a duration of seven millennia for the world.

In applying what they accept as the Archbishop Ussher calculation date of circa 4000 B.C. for the creation, many fundamentalists believe that by A.D. 2000 a total of six thousand years or six days will have already passed, and that the next thousand years beyond will be the Seventh Millennium, equivalent to the seventh or Sabbath day of rest. Thus, the Millennium of the Latter Day is almost upon us.

What this comes down to, however, is that these calculations are based upon the chronologies of the Hebrew Old Testament, and the Jews today have a very different traditional calendral system from the Christians. For Jews, 1994 is the year 5754/5755 A.M. (anno mundi, Year of the World). Therefore, the Jewish year of 6001, and the advent of the Sabbath Millennium, will not officially come until the year A.D. 2240.

However, going back to what we discovered previously, we may note that there is not only a Plutonic revolution pulse of about 250 years and a Phoenix Cycle pulse of 500 years, but also a millennial pulse of about a thousand years. What this larger pulse symbolizes is a swing between the extremes of spirituality and materialism, with one or the other cresting at the change of each millennium.

Looking back only two millennia ago, at the inauguration of the Christian era, the pendulum had swung toward abject materialism. Accompanying it, typified by the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire, and the first seeds of the Toltecs and Aztecs in the Americas, was an obsession with power, conquest, wealth, and slavery.

In sharp contrast, moving ahead to A.D. 1000, spiritual pursuits were once again the predominant preoccupation, characterized by the rise of the Church in Europe, Islam in Africa, Buddhism and Confucianism in the East, and the Sun religions of the Pacific and the Americas.

A millennium later brings us to our current shift. The pendulum has clearly swung again toward materialism. Yet now it has been taken to new forms and extremes via our obsession with science, technology, progress, commercialism, and exploitation. Yet if the pendulum maintains its rhythm, we can expect the next thousand years to see the dawning of another Age of Religion, only hopefully this time it will be in the truer sense of its original meaning, re-ligio, to reconnect.

If there is to be a millennium of peace, perhaps this is the one.

III.

ARE THERE ANY BIBLICAL PROPHECIES THAT PREDICT THE END OF THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000?

Definitely not, although you wouldn't know it by listening to today's televangelists. Actually, they have chosen the year 2000 and just about every other date, both before and after, as the end-time or apocalypse.

Both the Old and New Testament texts mention such time frames as 2,300 days, 42 months, 70 weeks, 1,260 days, and time, times and dividing of times. Attempts at creating prophetic periods out of these have been as varied as the number of interpreters. However, the last century and a half of Bible prophecy has been a resounding flop beginning with William Miller's widespread preaching throughout New England that the Second Coming of Christ was to occur in 1844 and on up to Oakland, California's radio minister Harold Camping's recent announcement for the same event to happen on September 7, 1994. A new calculation, this one published by M. J. Agee in his book, Signs of the End Times, now places the Last Day for May 31, 2008.

As these erroneous prophecies continue, we are reminded of what happened to an English preacher, William Partridge, who in 1695 distributed a religious tract prophesying that the world was about to end in 1697. In 1698 he released another tract, this one claiming that the world had indeed ended in 1697 but that no one had cared to take notice.

The truth is, when we delve deeply into the purpose behind Biblical prophecy, we become aware that its highly symbolic language was really meant to be fulfilled not once but several times. The prophecies were designed to be a-historical, outside actual time and space. They can be read in any era, and because they deal with the more cyclic rather than progressive nature of the human collective consciousness, their messages are always relevant. In other words, the world is continually ending, the Divine Spirit is constantly moving behind global affairs, and the promise of a New Earth is forever present, waiting for humanity to awaken to its possibilities.

IV.

HAVEN'T THE HINDUS PREDICTED THE DAWNING OF AN AGE OF LIGHT FOR THE YEAR 2000?

If one goes by the traditional method that Hindus use to figure their Yuga cycles, yes, there is an Age of Light coming, but not as soon as A.D. 2000. In Hindu literature, the Great Cycle or Maha Yuga is thought to total 4,320,000 years. Within it is the Satya or Krita (Light) Yuga of 1,728,000 years, the Treta (Three Fire) Yuga of 1,296,000 years, the Dvapara (Doubt and Uncertainty) Yuga of 864,000 years, and the Kali (Darkness) Yuga of 432,000 years. The ratio of Yuga duration is thus 4:3:2:1 totaling the 4,320,000 years of Maha Yuga. The Age of Light is the longest Yuga and the Age of Darkness the shortest.

Hindu teachers believe we are currently in Kali Yuga, but exactly where in it is a debatable question. Within each Yuga are a number of sub-periods, and their beginnings and endings vary, depending on which Hindu sage you follow. One set of calculations, for example, puts the Dawn of the present phase of the Kali Yuga at 3606 B.C., the Middle at 582 B.C., the Twilight at A.D. 1939, and the End at A.D. 2442. Other sages have correlated the beginning of the Kali Yuga itself with the start of the Hindu calendral system in 3102 B.C., which means we still have 427,000 years to go. Thus the year 2000 falls somewhat short.

V.

DOES THE ASTROLOGICAL AGE OF AQUARIUS BEGIN IN THE YEAR 2000?

This is definitely a sticky topic. If you get two astrologers together, they will give you three different dates as to when they think the Age of Aquarius begins. Some published estimates have ranged anywhere from 1835 to 2597. Most astrologers see the underlying problem to be defining exactly where one zodiacal sign ends and the next one begins.

However, an alternative way to determine when a new astrological age begins is to focus on how much the precession of the equinoxes has traveled beyond astrology's original Babylonian settings. Today's astrological calculations are done not by how the heavens actually appear, but rather as they were more than four thousand years ago. Because the precession has taken the equinox points slowly backwards, the gap between the astrology and astronomy of celestial events has gradually widened. Thus for sometime the difference between the astrological and astronomical calculations has been off by one full zodiacal sign. However, just recently, from 1990 on, the two calculations are beginning to be off by two signs. With astrology having been born near the start of the Age of Aries, one sign off would have designated the advent of the Age of Pisces, and now two signs off heralds that the Age of Aquarius has already come.

VI.

WHAT HAVE THE HOPIS, MAYANS, AND OTHER NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLES FORESEEN ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000?

Both the Hopis and Mayans recognize that we are approaching the end of a World Age. But the former, however, offer no time limits, while the latter have a calendar system whose grand Thirteen Baktun cycle will end either on December 24, 2011 or June 6, 2012 (depending on your method of calculation). In both cases, however, the Hopi and Mayan elders do not prophesy that everything will come to an end. Rather, this is a time of transition from one World Age into another. The message they give concerns our making a choice of how we enter the future ahead. Our moving through with either resistance or acceptance will determine whether the transition will happen with cataclysmic changes or gradual peace and tranquillity. The same theme can be found reflected in the prophecies of many other Native American visionaries from Black Elk to Sun Bear.

This concept that we can make choices concerning our future destinies is one found not only in Native American prophecies but is really an essential ingredient in all true prophetic pronouncements. True prophecy is meant to be a reflection on the hidden natures and motivations of human behavior, both individually and collectively, as well as the future options based on the human ability to make a choice. True prophecy is thus more than merely a forecast. Its purpose is to provide the lesson that is to be learned from a potential future prognostication so that, if possible, the lesson is accepted and processed beforehand. Thus the course of the future can actually be changed, and a different pathway of prophesied events can be manifested into reality.

In this context, the period of time between now and the year 2012, with 2000 as the benchmark, appears to be shaping up into a decisive time period when important choices will be made and when any number of timelines for the future are possible. True prophecy is our guide to determine what those different timelines are and how we can make the right choices.

VII.

WHAT ABOUT EDGAR CAYCE'S WARNINGS OF EARTH CHANGES FOR THE YEAR 2000?

Before his death in 1945, Virginia Beach psychic Edgar Cayce, one of America's most famous seers, gave several trance readings in which he foresaw a series of catastrophic earthquakes and eruptions to plague the world from 1958 to 1998. While we have had a number of significant tremors and volcanic activities over the past 40 years, very little has so far taken place on the scale that Cayce predicted. However, since we still have three more years to go, we are not out of the woods yet.

Even when the seer's forebodings have been fulfilled, they have occurred with unexpected results. One of Cayce's readings warned that South America will be shaken from one end to the other. The scenario of such a mega-quake has conjured up terrible visions of mass cataclysmic destruction. Yet on June 9, 1994 an 8.6 Richter earth movement took place below northern Bolivia that shook an area from the southern tip of Argentina to Toronto in Canada. Cayce's prediction was not only fulfilled but it was exceeded, since the tremor shook two continents instead of one. Yet, because the quake occurred at a depth of 395 miles below the surface, the damage, which was centered in La Paz, was relatively minor, and all that was really disturbed were several hundred seismograph needles jiggling up and down the Pacific Coast over a very wide area.

Perhaps, if Cayce's other prophecies of earth changes are yet to happen, they may manifest in the same subdued manner. The year 2000, rather than being feared as a time of major geological destruction, could instead be approached as a time of planetary peace.

VIII.

DIDN'T NOSTRADAMUS PREDICT THE END OF THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000?

It is unfortunate that many people today have the notion that the famed sixteenth century French seer was a prognosticator of doom and gloom, since the majority of modern books, tabloid articles, television specials, and movie videos made about his prophecies have focused primarily on his more dire forebodings. The truth is, Nostradamus also gave quite a number of very positive predictions about the year 2000 and beyond.

In essence, what Nostradamus did in his prophetic messages was to set a mirror before us, showing us the different pathways we can take that already exist within us. Which of his prophecies we choose to fulfill remains up to us.

Here are a few samples of his verses for the years 1999 to 2001:

Saturn moving from Sagittarius through Aquarius (1988 to 1994),

Will be at the high point of its exaltation (a time when choices need to be made), After that comes epidemics, famine, death by military action (war), When the century and millennium will find their renewal (2001). 1,16.

The year 1999, July,

Through the sky will travel a great King of terror, He will be the King of the Mongols (Genghis Khan) returned, Against everyone, he will inflict Mars (war) to his advantage. X, 72.

Now contrast these predictions with the events foretold in the next two verses, for the exact same time frame:

All things shall be set into a new order of the ages, The new century and millennium (2001) will see an opening to a new way, Those who have hidden behind masks of lofty power will be utterly changed, Few will be found who shall remain in leadership. 11,10.

Mars and Jupiter conjoined,

In Cancer (next occurrence, June 2002), an end to all forms of warfare will be realized, A new King will be anointed (enlightened, or born), One who will bring Peace to the Earth for a very long time. Vl, 24.

It would appear that the French prophet was giving us a choice of someone who will help us enter the new millennium, one who will be either a taskmaster or a teacher, a King of Terror or a King of Peace. However, even the prediction that the King of Terror, the Mongol Genghis Khan, will soon return may not be as bad as it looks. At this writing, Chicago commodities broker Maury Kravitz has announced he believes he has found the location of Genghis Khan's lost tomb and is preparing a multimillion-dollar expedition to travel to Outer Mongolia to unbury the remains of the thirteenth century warrior. Could this be what Nostradamus really meant by the Khan's return?

According to the French seer, the year 2000 will not see the end of the world; instead, it may exemplify either a time of trouble or a time of transformation, depending upon how we wish to enter the millennium. After that, Nostradamus prophetic visions actually forecast events for the 21st, 23rd, 32nd, 54th, and 86th centuries.

IX.

ISN'T THERE A PROPHETIC TIMELINE INSIDE THE GREAT PYRAMID THAT ENDS IN THE YEAR 2000?

Ever since two centuries ago when Sir Isaac Newton took a special interest in the sacred geometry of the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt and speculated that its inner labyrinth of tunnels and chambers was a prophecy calendar in stone, there have been a host of scholars who have attempted to elaborate on this idea by cracking the Pyramid's prophetic code. The basic theory of what has come to be known as pyramidology is that if you mark off one pyramid inch (a value inherent within the structure) as representing one year, and measure along a baseline that extends from the Pyramid casing stone exterior and runs parallel to the Ascending Passage, the Grand Gallery, the Antechamber, and King's Chamber, you can discover that the Pyramid's stonework design points out significant spiritual events in the history of humanity, past and future.

Unfortunately, because much of early pyramidology's speculations were predicated on narrow perceptions of Biblical prophecy, many of the attempts at predictions using the Great Pyramid's internal geometry were dismal failures, with the result that detractors of the theory sarcastically labeled proponents as pyram-idiots.

Today, the best and most accurate layout of the Pyramid's prophetic message has been interpreted by Peter Lemesurier in his book The Great Pyramid Decoded. Unlike his predecessors who made the mistake of assuming that all prophecy ended in the year 2000, Lemesurier has found that elements of the Pyramid's timeline extend all the way to the 83rd century.

Closer to our present day, the next event in the timeline is delineated by where the limestone floor in the Antechamber ends, and the Aswan granite floor, composed of a high quantity of quartz crystal, begins, which leads directly into the King's Chamber. Lemesurier predicts that this changeover from a dead to an energy-living stone can only signify a major quantum leap in the spiritual development of future humanity. In our calendar, this is to begin on February 21, 1999. This may indeed be a prediction of the end of the world as we know it. Yet at the same time the indication is that within each one of us something very different is also about to be born.

In correlation with the prophecy inside the Great Pyramid, the nearby enigmatic statue of the Sphinx may hold its own symbology of past and future events. Before the Sphinx was carved into its present configuration, its earlier form, according to ancient Egyptian and Coptic traditions, was that it had the front paws of a lion, the back paws and tail of a bull, and the face of a human. Furthermore, along its sides, where today one can see the remains of stone incendiary boxes, fires were lit at night to give the Sphinx the appearance of having the flaming wings of an eagle.

Lion. Bull. Human. Eagle. We have here not only the four beings before the throne of the divine as described in the Books of Ezekiel and the Revelation, but we also have here the four fixed signs of the zodiac, Leo, Taurus, Aquarius, and Scorpio.

Most significantly, in the precession of the equinoxes, the distant Age of Leo 12,000 years ago saw the burial of the Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx's front paws, as described in Egyptian, Hermetic, classical, Coptic, and medieval Arabic chronicles. Recent archeological and geologic surveys conducted by John Anthony West and Robert Schoch have demonstrated that the the Sphinx does indeed date to such a remote period.

It is striking to note in Nostradamus prediction for A.D. 9000 and in the Pyramid's timeline ending in the 83rd century that all fall within the Age of Scorpio. Once again, the year 2000 does not appear to be an ending but instead a stepping-stone to greater transformations yet to come.

X.

CAN WE BELIEVE MODERN PSYCHICS AND SEERS WHO PREDICT THE WORLD WILL END IN THE YEAR 2000?

Within the last few years a number of self-proclaimed psychics and visionaries have suddenly sprung up, making headlines with predictions about imminent major earthquakes in California and other similar doom-and-gloom forecasts, many that are supposedly to take place on or before 2000. The chief problem with these predictions is that they offer only a half truth concerning the future. Prophecies about potential disasters are often presented as if the future is only single-tracked and that the coming catastrophes are going to happen no matter what. Thus, all we can hope for is to somehow survive and try to live in the destroyed world that will follow. Limited to such dismal prospects, it is no wonder the subject of the future generates so much fear.

In reality, however, the true future is not single-tracked but is instead multitracked. There is a far wider spectrum of possibilities of what can happen from which we can choose to fulfill. If we desire it and actively work toward it as an achievable collective goal, a future can be manifested without any violent or disastrous prophecies having to take place. In fact, there are far more upswing options available to us than there are downside options. Therefore, those who claim that catastrophic events must inevitably happen are, in truth, robbing us of our inherent power to change the course of things to come by building our own scenario for a very different future.

In the final analysis, while it is still important to be aware of the existence of various doom-and-gloom prophecies, we do not have to get caught up in them as our only future alternative. Such prophecies are not an end unto themselves but are a means toward a greater goal. A prophecy of doom and destruction that is actually fulfilled is a prophecy that has failed. It has failed because it did not get its listeners to change themselves and avert the destruction.

It is time to accept the real message behind the prophecies for the year 2000 and to make the coming years of the new millennium a veritable doorway into a new world. We already have everything it will take to make it happen. All that is needed now is the clear vision, the clairvoyance, to see it and to become it. True prophecy can show us the way.

Reprinted from the Mountain Astrologer with the permission of the author.

(c)1994 Joseph Robert Jochmans