c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is author of “Turn Toward the Wind” and publisher of Religion News Service.)

UNDATED _ For many people, all this talk about the millennium simply means a great excuse for a party. Others see it as a marketing opportunity. And the computer wizards among us find one more chance to point out that our computers could turn on us as soon as they recognize three zeroes.

But for those of us who grew up in conservative Protestant churches, talk about the millennium sends shivers up our spines. For the millennium, in our minds, will forever be associated with tribulation and the end times.

The millennium we learned about in our churches was not about the year 2000. Rather, it was the thousand years before or after the great tribulation predicted in the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

In my childhood church and thousands of others the millennium was a favorite topic of sermon series, complete with war, drama and a cataclysmic struggle between good and evil.

An elaborate timeline ran across the entire front of our sanctuary. On it were marked various events that would signal the end times and the emerging influence of the Antichrist.

During the turbulent 60s, it was not hard for our church leaders to pinpoint signs of the end in popular culture. Antiwar demonstrations, drugs, even the civil rights movement were interpreted and spotted on our timeline.

Since during the tribulation everyone would have to wear the mark of the beast _ or 666 _ we were warned against credit cards and were told never to give out our social security number. Census takers and meter readers were suspect. Every move toward creating data bases was resisted.

I don’t know whatever happened to my childhood pastor, but if he hadn’t already passed away, the advent of the Internet probably did him in once and for all.

Standards of behavior were strictly enforced in our church, so I was not allowed to dance or go to movies. But movies would have been tame after the predictions I heard of the tribulation: A river of blood will flow after the huge wars in Europe; there will be famine and infestations of insects; great agony will befall those who don’t believe.

And then there was the great theological debate between premillennialists and postmillennialists.

I’m not sure that I ever quite understood the finer points of this, but it did seem like one group thought everyone was going through the tough times before the millennium and the other group thought that being a believer excused you from the seven-year tribulation.

I listened to hours of these debates during my childhood and never did get it all straight. But being an optimist, I was hoping to hit the road before the trouble began.

What is so surprising to me about all this is what a profound influence these teachings had on my childhood, and how the mere mention of the word millennium brings the emotions back to me in a rush. I spent a good deal of my formative years scared to death about the future.

One of the recurring nightmares of my childhood was coming home from school only to find that my parents and all the people in my church had been taken up to heaven in the rapture _ the point when believers escaped the trials of the Earth and disappeared en masse.”But I do believe,”I would wake up shouting, wondering why I had been left behind with the pagans to face such horrible punishment.

(In all fairness, I should divulge that my other recurring nightmare was going to the doctor and having him tell me I was pregnant.”But I’ve never even kissed a boy!”I would wake up yelling on those occasions.)

Now that I have children of my own, we don’t spend a great deal of time talking about the end times. We seem to spend all of our energy making it through each day with some modicum of civility and some notion of righteousness.

And my boys have grown up thinking of the future in terms of Star Wars and Deep Space 9. They don’t fear the tribulation, but they do think that faith is as important today as it would be on the Millennium Falcon space ship.

True, my own theology has shifted a bit, and the church we attend doesn’t dwell on Revelation. But all in all, I am glad my children don’t jump every time they hear the word millennium.

It’s bad enough that when their mother arrives at church early and finds the parking lot empty she sometimes shouts,”But I do believe!”

MJP END BOURKE