INSIGHTS

I don’t know what you have planned for February 9 between 10 and 11 a.m., but here’s something you might want to pencil in. At that hour, according to some astronomers, Halley’s Comet will make its closest ap-proach to the sun. That fact is of particular interest to the folks at the Grace of Jesus Christ Crusade, who regularly favor me with pamphlets warning of a Rapture Alert and asking where I will spend Eternity. (I’ll settle for a nice condo in the hills near Carmel, California, if we can work it out.)

Anyway, the coming of the comet set the Crusaders to thinking, and-you’ve probably guessed it by now-we’re talking Signs of Doomsday and of Christ’s Return! Comet Attacks Tyrants! Herald of the World’s End!

(If you’re reading this after February 9 and things still look un-raptured, the apocalypse crowd has missed it again. It’ll be rainy, bleak February for a whole month, you’ll need to pay the electric bill, and baseball is still two months off.)

Do you scoff at the Signs of Doomsday? That’s because you haven’t received your official Herald of Doomsday newsletter. You don’t realize that in addition to Halley’s return, we have another little problem on our hands this time: Planetary Conjunction. Yep. PC-“the meeting of heavenly bodies in the same latitude or right ascension.” Let no one think this means Heather Locklear and Victoria Principal working out in the same spa. No, we mean the type of Planetary Conjunction that is “marked by abnormal weather changes, revolutions and war.” A few times in every millenium. a P.C. is followed by a visit from Halley’s Comet, and when that happens, it’s Katy. bar the door.

These folks have it figured out. Even without the P.C., the problems from the comet alone are going to be awful. Don’t just take their word for it. Look at History, or at least the handy history lesson provided in (heir pamphlet. Start with 1066, when Harold King of England spotted Halley’s Comet, which was not Halley’s Comet, really, since Halfey wouldn’t be born until 1656 and wouldn’t have the comet named after him until 1757. when he’d been dead for years. Anyway, Harold figured the comet was a portent of disaster for him, while William the Conquerer, a positive thinker, just knew that the appearance of this Fiery Harbinger meant he was on a roll. The rest is History 101. Sure enough, a few months later Harold dies in battle and William adds England to his list of conquests. Same deal in 1456, when the Turks and the Christians had locked horns at the Battle of Belgrade. Here comes the comet, with its tail pointed toward the Turks. Remember who won? Me neither, but my Herald of Doomsday pamphlet says it was the Christians, so I guess that sly comet was pointing toward the Turks so as to show who was going to lose, rather than doing it as you might expect and pointing to the winner. These Fiery Harbingers do things their own way.

This Parade of Undeniable Portents just goes on and on. America, 1607: Comet time, and sure enough, American colonists take it on the chin from Indians and diseases. Jump to 1835, and with the comet again blazing in the skies, the hapless Manchu government loses Hong Kong to someone (the pamphlet doesn’t say who) during the Opium Wars. Lost it. the whole thing, and that comet up there again! You call that a coincidence? The proofs pile up as we near the present. During the comet’s last swing through here in 1910, Mexico had a revolution, the Ch’ing Dynasty got overthrown, Albania declared its independence (I know that sounds like a good thing, but it’s in the disaster list) and Mark Twain, who was only 75, made a joke about the comet-and died. Then, four years later, still reeling from the comet’s last visit, the world found itself plunged into the War to End All Wars That Didn’t, and just four years-four short years-after that, Czar Nicholas and his family were wiped out by Bolsheviks. (Yes, that was in 1918, but the pamphlet doesn’t mention a statute of limitations on comet-induced evil.)

You get the picture, don’t you? Bad things happen just before, during and maybe four. six or eight years after the appearance of Halley’s Comet. Maybe longer. I don’t want to hear any godless secular humanist gun controllers trot out the usual baloney about all times being times of crisis and mankind being too quick to attach cosmic importance to our own little lives. Quote me no quotes from John Updike (“In bins of textbooks holocausts lie stacked”) or Lewis Mumford (“The human condition is always desperate”) or whoever. This is History and Science and Religion, not the usual run-of-the-mill revelation stuff about 666 and the seven heads and 10 horns of the Beast that are really the 10 members of the European Common Market or the nine Supreme Court justices or the front four of the Los Angeles Raiders, who after all do wear silver (Mammon) and black (Darkness, as in Prince of).

Yes, Halley’s Comet is bad news. But according to the Crusade pamphlet, Hal ley’s by itself is nothing compared to the mess you get when you toss in a Planetary Conjunction. Again, the proof is there. We had a P.C. in A.D. 371, and three years later Halley’s blazed in the skies; a terrible drought hit Asia and the Huns swept into Europe. All this led in short order to “the fall of the Roman Empire in substance.” Makes you think.

Flash forward a mere 1,611 years for more evidence. Planetary Conjunction, 1982. Disasters around that time: The Falklands War. Iran-Iraq War. Mrs. Gandhi killed. Benito Aquino killed. Famine in Ethiopia. Three Soviet rulers, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, shuffle off this mortal coil, just like that. And now, with things already sliding precipitously down the tubes, wouldn’t you know it: Halley’s Cornel is back again.

Is there, then, no hope? Well, maybe a little. I hate to end on a down note. We may take some comfort in knowing that the Crusade pamphlet, though rigorously scientific and written in the best Breathless Voice of Doom style, is not a complete list of the tragedies of our time-and therein may lie our hope. Perhaps even these zealous busy-bodies can be wrong. I have scrutinized this Chronicle of Catastrophe and can find no mention of the following:

1. The election of Phil Gramm to the Senate on the very same day that Jesse Helms was reelected to the Senate. 2. The outrageously lucky touchdown pass from Joe Montana to Dwight Clark in the 1981 NFC Championship game, which began the decline of the Dallas Cowboys, once America’s Team. 3. The cancellation of “Taxi.” 4. The virtual disappearance of Olympia Light beer from the Dallas area.

If the Crusade people missed these calam ities, they might be wrong about the Impend ing Doom. If they’ve miscalculated, see you next month. If they’re right, look me up next time you’re in Carmel.