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Main article: End time
Many millenarian Christian theologians and laymen, such as American televangelist Pat Robertson, include a dominant religious element to New World Order conspiracy theory based on prophecies about the “end time” in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel, the Olivet discourse found in the Synoptic Gospels, and the Book of Revelation. They assert that human and demonic agents of the Devil are involved in a primordial conspiracy to deceive humanity into accepting a satanic world theocracy that has the Unholy Trinity – Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet – at the core of an imperial cult. In many theories, the False Prophet will either be the last pope of the Catholic Church (groomed and installed by a Jesuit conspiracy) or a charismatic leader in the New Age movement, while the Antichrist will either be the president of the European Union or the secretary-general of the United Nations.
The Late, Great Planet Earth, a 1970 book co-authored by Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, is a popular treatment of such literalist, premillennial, dispensational Christian eschatology. With its unprecedented popularity, the book set the stage for both greater awareness of end time scenarios in the last decades of the 20th century, and the growth industry in Christian popular eschatological works such as Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of novels.
Preterist Christian skeptics of the End Time conspiracy theory argue that some or all of the biblical prophecies concerning the end time refer literally or metaphorically to events which already happened in the first century after Jesus’ birth. In their view, the “end time” concept refers to the end of the covenant between God and Israel, rather than the end of time, or the end of planet Earth. They argue that prophecies about the Rapture, the defiling of the Temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Antichrist, the Number of the Beast, the Tribulation, the Second Coming, and the Last Judgment were fulfilled at or about the year 70 when the Roman general (and future Emperor) Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, putting a permanent stop to the daily animal sacrifices.
According to such skeptics, many passages in the New Testament indicate with apparent certainty that the second coming of Christ, and the end time predicted in the Bible were to take place within the lifetimes of Jesus’ disciples rather than millennia later: Matt. 10:23, Matt. 16:28, Matt. 24:34, Matt. 26:64, Rom. 13:11-12, 1 Cor. 7:29-31, 1 Cor. 10:11, Phil. 4:5, James 5:8-9, 1 Pet. 4:7, 1 Jn. 2:18.