Forget 6-6-06: Every Day Is Doomsday
June 6, 2006 — -- Doomsday is coming, again and again and again.
Today is the sixth day of the sixth month in the year 2006 -- and as superstitious people are well aware, "666" is a number that signifies the mark of the Antichrist and the coming of the Apocalypse, according to the Book of Revelation.
Hollywood, of course, is taking advantage of the curious date to release a remake of "The Omen," in which parents discover that their adopted child is really the devil.
The original, starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, is a horror classic. In the new version, filmmakers are happily using the calendar to put the fright into people.
"There has never been a more salient time to remind people that evil is neither a concept nor a theory," said John Moore, director of "Flight of the Phoenix" and "Behind Enemy Lines."
"It has a human face and it empowers itself through human actions. The true nature of evil has never been more apparent," he said. "In just the past four years alone, the world has been hit with devastating events -- political, natural and man-made. One can't help but notice a certain momentum."
Oh my gosh! First a tsunami, now a remake. Run for the hills!
Of course, there has never been a shortage of bleak predictions that the end is near. Over the last 20 years, a long list of biblical prophesy groups, UFO believers, and Satanists, among others, have all foreseen the Earth's imminent and abrupt demise.
"Funny, these far-flung groups don't agree on much, but they do believe the world is about to end," said paranormal investigator James Randi, who held a big "End of the World" party in 1999 to mark the date that the 16th century prophet Nostradamus pegged as doomsday.
"The most interesting thing about these end-time predictions is that the same groups just revise their date for doomsday and never explain why their first prediction turned out to be wrong."
If Earth survives June 6, it still may end soon, depending on whom you believe.
Some students of biblical prophesy peg 2008 as a key year in the Apocalypse watch. That year is considered critical because it marks the first generation -- 40 years -- since the Jews returned to Israel.
