I remember reading this in the early 1980s as a recent teenager hot on the heels after finishing The Late Great Planet Earth -- a prophetic prequel to Countdown to Armageddon written in the '70s -- and being hooked by the conspiratorial tone and dire predictions of gloom and doom and apocalypse that were unequivocably certain to occur no later than December 31, 1989, just as the 1970s were certain to be the decade of the Rapture and Armageddon Lindsey had initially predicted would transpire in his first book of contrived "prophecy."

When it comes to prophecy, Hal Lindsey's got nothing on Vegas. He's no different than the Jehovah's Witnesses and their infamous Second Coming shlock, with his false end-of-the-world edicts.

Nevertheless, The 1980s, Countdown to Armageddon, was a good, even fascinating read ... for a fourteen year old dweeb hooked on fantasy at the time (the Thomas Covenant trilogy by Stephen R. Donaldson) but in hindsight, looking back with adult eyes, I'm a bit more than dismayed by Lindsey's -- a reported "reputable" Christian evangelist with his own television audience -- repeated untrue predictions.

It's one thing to be a megolomaniacal nut job and form some U.F.O. cult and herd a horde of gullbile human-bovines out to the desert ranch (sans all their possesions) for the almighty alien's arrival and the glorious impending transformation to a higher plane of spiritual consciousness; but even as bad and sad as that conscienceless con job is, it's far worse, I think, when you're a supposed man of God with flocks of old folks under your "care," tuned into their TV sets, to completely misinterpret the Book of Daniel or Revelation and imbue prophetic meanings into contemporary happenings in Israel or Russia or wherever, as if those books of antiquity were speaking directly to the latest world crisis, when in fact they were speaking symbolically to events in their own ancient times, Mow-ron! Inexcusable. But at least he sold lots of books and made some good money.

I could get all snarky and claim that Hal Lindsey's fatuous books on "end times" and The National Enquirer bear a striking resemblance, but I'd hate to insult The National Enquirer like that. ( )