In Bloomington, Indiana on December 5, 1999, Byron C. Bangert addressed the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church about "the end of the world as we know it". Cataclysmic events were what would mark a "divine rescue operation" that would save the world from "going to Hell in a handbasket". Bangert drew much of his sermon from the Gospel according to St. Mark as well as writings from the books of Matthew and Luke. He noted how Jesus Christ had predicted "suffering such as has not been from the beginning of the creation....[and] after that suffering the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from Heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken..." In short, Bangert claimed, "the whole cosmos will be thrown into pandemonium and distress. Then, and only then, the Son of Man will come to gather the elect from the ends of the Earth".
Bangert's speech went on as he surmised, "I suspect that there would be a lot more apocalyptic talk and fear.....if it felt more like our world was abut to dissolve into unrelenting disease or unrestrained violence or unbridled chaos. Here we stand on the threshold of a new millenium....and there is little that seems to trouble us more....than possibly minor disruptions caused by the Y2K computer bug. The closest we get to thinking or feeling that maybe there is something really bad that could happen to us all is when we go to the movies".
He ended his sermon with a plea to his congregation: "In this season of Advent, pray for the end of the world as we know it. Pray for the end of violence and greed, wars and rumors of war, of famine and disease run riot, of false remedies and false gods, of hatred and betrayal within families and across our divisions of race and creed and clan. Pray that no one may claim special privilege due to ancestry or religious practice, and that no one will take advantage by means of official status or social power, and that those who have more than enough will give to those who need. Pray that all will have a place at the table, whether it be the table where decisions are made, or the table where meals are shared. Pray for the end of the world as we know it. As Jesus taught us to pray: God's Kingdom come! May all flesh see God's salvation! AMEN!"

Whew!!
This prophetic sermon was delivered four years prior to George W. Bush leading America into the most illegal, unjustified, unconstitutional, immoral 'war' in the history of the United States. If any three men at the threshold of the 21st century were to be reincarnate of the 20th century's Satanists, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld would most certainly be the three with "666" etched into their foreheads underneath their receeding hairlines. This evilist trio had proven to be the most morally reprehensible malefactors since the days of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. U.S. soldiers had been conned into believing they were sacrificing their lives to bring democracy to Iraq when, instead, they were fighting to enhance the profits of firms like McDonnell-Douglass; Lockheed-Martin; Sikorsky; and those two newcomers to the Pentagon's war trough: the Carlyle Group and Halliburton, both of whom ahd direct ties to the Bush-Cheney White House. American taxpayers had been led to believe their tax dollars were being invested to achieve peace in the Middle East, when - in fact - our troops were put in harm's way so that Exxon-Mobil and other members of the 'Big Oil' coalition could harvest those rich fields of cheap, easily-accessible OIL and continue feeding America's addiction to the black gold that had made oilmen like Bush and Cheney fabulously wealthy. A gullible, contemptible, incompetent, lazy, arrogant, cowardly, corrupt Republican-led U.S. Congress was told that the U.S. needed to abolish 'weapons of mass destruction' from Iraq, then turned its back as the Bush-Cheney satiation for power and wealth disregarded the U.S. Constitution, ignored the UN Charter, and mocked the rules of the Geneva Convention. A new Democratic-led Congress, that - in its lust for power - promised an end to the 'war' in Iraq impotently stood by during its first year in office and did little to try and stop the sanguineous carnage.
Halliburton continued to accept government contracts to construct fourteen new, permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq without the bothersome need to submit a bid. The Carlyle Group gorged itself with billions of American dollars as it provided vaguely-identified 'services' to the Pentagon. Billions of taxpayer dollars had slipped through the cracks without anyone even seeming to be alarmed; one planeload full of American currency was 'lost' and nobody even went looking for it in 2005. The bile of fraud, waste, corruption, thievery, lies, distortions, abuse, mismanagement and mass murder didn't seem to annoy anyone, not even those who had taken solemn oaths to protect and defend the people of the United States of America.
If this bastardly series of outlandish events had been a movie, its titled would have been "The Devil's Advocate - II" and Al Pacino's character would have had to been played by