LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Student Future-Visions Presentation 2007

Monday, 4 June: Future-vision presenter: Patty Coleman

The Third Millennium A Novel

Paul Meier

Summary: A guardian angel, Michael, is sent to guide a family, the Feinbergs, through the final years of human history. The Feinbergs face angels, demons and natural disasters as their faith is stretched to the breaking point as they struggle to survive the end times.

Meier, Paul. The Third Millennium A Novel. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993.

Excerpt from Introduction

            MEMO: To the Archives of the hosts of Heaven

            RE: The Final Decade of the Second Millennium

            FROM: Michael, Guardian Angel

Issues have been raised about the fate and final years of planet Earth. A desire has been expressed for study of the circumstances that brought about the ultimate shifts in history and society preceding the third millennium A.D. Therefore, I have undertaken to report the major events of the 1990s (as human beings measure what they call time.)

Questions will be raised about my capacity to file this report prior to the occurrence of the actual events. Please be aware that the heavenly Father granted me the unusual privilege of leaping into the future to the year 2001 to complete my personal assignment during this last period.

As a personal guardian angel (G.A.), I have for thousands of years been given responsibility for various human beings, generally of Jewish origin. My work through the centuries has given unique insight into the character and problems of the human race. Of course, I have battled with principalities and powers of overwhelming proportions while completing my work. Therefore, I am also eminently qualified to understand the problems of evil and deception that have constantly been at work distorting the human situation.

During the 1990s, my assignment was the family of Dr. Larry Feinberg. The Feinbergs were a nonpracticing Jewish family living by the ocean in Newport Beach, California, United States of America. The area is almost identical in latitude of that of the Holy Land. The story of Larry, Sharon, and their two children, Ben and Ruth, will explain the upheavals of the last days of travail.

We will begin midpoint in the decade at the point that the family began to recognize that history was shifting like the plates of the earth over the San Andreas Fault. As we shall see, it was an astonishing time!

This period of explosion and fraud, technical discovery and overwhelming chaos, is surely worthy of angelic scrutiny. The entire globe became as a woman in the last throes of labor. From the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of spirit guides, crystals, and white witches and the distribution of condoms in the public schools, each year passed like the crescendo of a hard rock band increasing in volume to ear-splitting proportions!

Consideration of this period begins on what humans call New Year’s Day, 1995, and continues to the end of the year 2000. As we look in on the secret world of my special charges, the truth will be evident.

Topics for discussion:

1.      Why would the angel Michael make this text more believable? (Rev. 12:7) What would be an advantage to having an angel tell the story?

2.     Do the ideas presented in the excerpt mirror the ideas in Revelation? How close does an apocalyptic story need to follow the events in revelation to hold its audience?

3.     Why is there such an obsession with the Jews and the Holy Land among apocalypse-lovers?