Waiting for Armageddon

Baptism by fire - and then some: Evangelical faction awaits ‘Armageddon’

January 29, 2010|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

It’s as if we’ve been dropped into a substratum of Bizarro World: Who are these people who see every negative Mideast political development as a positive, who can barely contain their joy when the world’s powder keg creeps closer to detonation, and who glower at the thought of peace?

They’re the millions of Christian evangelical millennialists who expect the Rapture any day now, and the documentary “Waiting for Armageddon’’ wants us to meet them and know them for the cultural force they certainly intend to be. Written and directed by the triumvirate of Kate Davis, David Heilbroner, and Franco Sacchi, the film opens at the Coolidge today and preaches to the (un)converted with a quiet, worried sanity that could have used more force. See it anyway, just to remind yourself how many people are actively wishing for the End of Days.

According to millennial theology, when the events supposedly foretold in Revelation, Daniel, et al. come to pass, believers will be swept up by God, leaving everyone else to fight it out, just like in the “Left Behind’’ novels and video games. One millennialist interviewed here plans to watch the carnage from the clouds: “There is an ultimate final battle. It’ll be fun to watch.’’

“Waiting for Armageddon’’ is a testament to the power of delusional certitude, but it knows too much to dismiss end-timers out of hand. Because biblical prophecy locates the showdown in Israel, a.k.a. “God’s timepiece,’’ the filmmakers circle around the Christians who circle around the Holy Land, leading tours of the country they assume God will deliver unto them. They need Jews to replace the Islamic Dome of the Rock with a rebuilt Temple, and Muslims to provoke Armageddon in response, and if those groups want to find Jesus in the bargain, well, they’ll get to go to the Christians’ heaven, too.

The filmmakers interview a Temple Mount rabbi and a devout Muslim who dryly indicate they’d rather not and who each reaffirm, in case you weren’t sure, that their faith is the only correct one. At such times, “Waiting for Armageddon’’ offers a portrait of the affability of blind fanaticism.