Last time we met up, we talked about the recent death of Hal Lindsey, who wrote The Late Great Planet Earth. The book made Lindsey a mint and guaranteed him a lucrative career in evangelical prophecy. In 1978, eight years after the publishing of that book, its movie version came out. Today, let’s examine this movie—and see how its so-called prophecies did 46 years later.

(This post first went live on Patreon on 1/7/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)

An overview: The Late Great Planet Earth (1978)

Hal Lindsey was 40 years old when his most famous book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was published in 1970. At the time, he didn’t have much of a career. He’d just quit a gig with Campus Crusade for Christ, likely to finish that book and find a publisher for it. But he’d already divorced and remarried, which might have made him a little too spicy to be hired for most evangelical pastor positions.

Luckily, a whole new kind of evangelical leadership had recently opened up. It proved to be perfect for mediocre evangelical white men with messy personal lives. It involved selling worried white evangelicals visions of future death and carnage—which they, as Jesus’ very own special favorites, would escape via the Rapture.

For the entire rest of his life, Hal Lindsey devoted himself to the selling of titillating Endtimes scares to this crowd. Though many High Christian evangelical scholars criticized him, his idiotic shoehorned prophecies, and his methods of interpreting the Bible, the laypeople—almost all Low Christian—ate it up with a spoon.

Eight years later, the movie version of The Late Great Planet Earth came out. For the most part, it rehashed the book. But it did so with a star-studded cast headed by Orson Welles (no doubt thinking of the money) and a bunch of guest speakers with wildly varying qualifications. It also included a number of skits, all featuring actors who clearly hadn’t done a lot of running and climbing while wearing long, archaic-looking, dress-like robes.

The background lore misused by The Late Great Planet Earth

Hal Lindsey didn’t come up with the entire “Seventy Weeks of Daniel” prophecy grift, but he certainly popularized it in a major way. I don’t know of any other Endtimes framework that is anywhere near it in popularity. It comes from Daniel 9:24-27, which scholars generally reckon to have been written around 167-163 BCE.

That’s roughly the period of the Jewish Maccabean revolt. At the time, Judea (including Jerusalem) formed part of the Seleucid Empire. The leader of that empire, King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175-164 BCE), began appointing Jewish leaders himself and accepting bribes for those positions. Judaism in general was starting to absorb many Hellenized ideas, so this shift wasn’t universally hated. However, one of Antiochus’ hand-picked leaders misinterpreted some political tension in Jerusalem and responded with military force. Things quickly got out of hand.

With that, Antiochus’ patience came to an end. He crushed the resistance in Jerusalem, outlawed the practice of Judaism, and forced Jewish temples to practice more Hellenized worship. Perhaps even worse, he required Jews to violate all kinds of religious laws by making them eat pork, work on the Sabbath, stop circumcising their boys, and more.

The Maccabean Revolt began in 167-166 BCE. Begun by Mattathias and then continued by his son Judas Maccabeus, it functioned as a rural guerilla campaign for a long time. Judas Maccabeus’ rebels burned down disloyal villages and destroyed pagan altars wherever they could. They attacked, drove away, and even killed Jews they viewed as too Hellenized. By 165-164 BCE, they’d won a number of small skirmishes and some larger battles.

→→ Chapters 1 and 7-12 of the Book of Daniel fit into the timeline right about here. ←←

Antiochus represses and tries to debase Judaism. His soldiers fight the rebels the ground. But he hasn’t died yet. Meanwhile, the Jewish rebels can likely taste their victory by now. Their sense of Jewish national and religious identity has taken solid form in their hearts. They are ready to finish this fight.

When we talk about the so-called prophecies in Daniel 9, keep this timeline in mind. Just as the Book of Revelation describes the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and Nero’s persecutions, chapters 7-12 of Daniel largely describe the coming victory of the Maccabeans over both the Seleucid Empire and the encroaching influence of Hellenism.

It’s funny to me that Christians have massively warped Daniel 9 to mean an allegorical Seventy Weeks. Once you know the background of the battle, it becomes obvious that its writer meant normal, actual 7-day weeks.

And how The Late Great Planet Earth misuses the Book of Revelation

Generally speaking, scholars usually date the Book of Revelation in the Bible to about 81-96 CE. But other scholars suspect that some parts of Revelation were written earlier and refer to the reign of Nero (r. 54-68 CE). They’re likely correct. In some very key ways, Revelation alludes to Nero and various real events that occurred between 60-90 CE:

  • The “Whore of Babylon,” a woman sitting on the Seven Hills of Rome, can be seen in exactly that pose on a brass coin from 71 CE (during Emperor Vespasian’s rule).
  • Verses 8:8-9 might even refer to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
  • The all-important Number of the Beast, 666, is a Hebrew code for “Nero.”
  • Revelation 17 likely refers to five fallen Roman emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero, with “the one who is” being Vespasian (r. 69-79 CE). The one “has not yet come” may well be Nero again because…
  • … After Nero died, many people at the time were sure he’d return to life. In fact, between 69-88 CE several pretenders claimed to be him in resurrected form. The last of these, who arose in Parthia in 88 CE and enjoyed great favor there, almost caused a war.

As well, Revelation uses fantastical allegorical language to describe how the Second Temple, which had been so grandly restored after the Maccabean revolt, finally got destroyed in 70 CE by Roman military forces. Those forces would occupy Jerusalem and Judea until 132 CE.

As is usual for Christians’ interpretation of “prophecies,” every single verse in Revelation (and Daniel, for that matter) that they think is a fulfilled prophecy was almost certainly written after the events described, not before. With that methodology, I’d make a fortune predicting events that took place in the 1990s and 2000s!

How the overall prophecy structure of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel works

Hal Lindsey takes for granted that Daniel 9 describes seventy allegorical weeks. In this framework, each “week” lasts 7 years. Here’s the diagram Endtimes conspiracy theorists like to use:

the prophecy of the 70 weeks of daniel, best diagram ever
The best damn diagram ever made.

Modern prophecy hucksters often recreate this diagram to look less like something cribbed out of a Victorian childbirthing manual, but this is still the overall template they use. They think Daniel foresees Earth’s final destruction 70 weeks after the rebuilding of Jerusalem. But in 30 CE, Yahweh stopped the countdown at Week 69. Week 70 hasn’t started yet. The world floats in a weird grace period wherein Christians need to convert everyone they possibly can.

Daniel doesn’t talk about this gap because Yahweh didn’t tell him there would be one. But there totally is. This “dispensation,” to use the Christianese, will totally end Any Day Now™, at which point Week 70 begins again. Once it does, Earth has seven years left. During that seven years, prophecy hucksters promise a world war (which they call Armageddon), plagues, famine, unprecedented natural disasters, and more. But somewhere in there, Jesus will whisk all his favorites to Heaven—which Christians call the Rapture.

And now, how Hal Lindsey used that prophecy framework to create The Late Great Planet Earth

To create a Seventy Weeks of Daniel Endtimes prediction, prophecy hucksters like Hal Lindsey just figure out ways to shoehorn modern headlines into both Daniel and the Book of Revelation. They think doing this makes the prophecies seem more real—and more pressing to their marks.

First and foremost, the prediction set needs an Antichrist. Revelation talks about that person, and it’s super-scary. So any Seventy Days prediction needs one. (They all ignore that Revelation was talking about Nero, who—again—many feared would return from the dead to cause more mayhem!)

So a prophecy huckster in the late 1930s might assume Adolf Hitler would be the Antichrist, while one in the 2000s assumes the Antichrist will obviously be Saddam Hussein, and one in 2010 thinks it has got to be Barack Obama. (But not a single modern Seventy Weeks conspiracy theorist appears to notice how closely Donald Trump fits the descriptions.)

The Seventy Weeks framework requires the filling-in of various other blanks besides the identity of the Antichrist. These include:

  • Who the Whore of Babylon is this time around
  • The locations of the major players like Gog and Magog
  • Which recent natural disasters presage the end
  • What the “Mark of the Beast” will look like (it changes every few decades according to what new tech has come out lately—simple tattoos, bar code tattoos, microchips, ApplePay, etc.)
  • Names of who and what all the other allegorical figures, things, and places are

As a film made in 1978, The Late Great Planet Earth draws upon the scary headlines of its time to create imagery and messaging consistent with the headlines at the time. This process creates a prediction set consistent with the Earth’s last week starting Any Day Now™.

But first, the film begins with a scene of middle-aged vaguely-Near-Eastern guys in archaic-looking robes chasing an old dude.

The non sequiturs begin in The Late Great Planet Earth

At first, I wasn’t sure who the crowd was chasing, or why they were chasing him. But I did see that they were carrying rocks in their hands. The old dude ran all the way up a stone embankment, falling from it to his death. Most of the guys chasing him tired out along the way, so they met him at the bottom to throw their rocks at him and pile them on his body.

Orson Welles tells us that the old guy was a false prophet. See, the ancient Hebrews were so intent on making sure prophets really spoke for Yahweh that if one turned out not to be, they murdered him. And they could tell a false prophet from a real one because real ones weren’t ever wrong. Thus, prophets’ predictions had to be correct 100% of the time, or else they faced death.

Further, Welles tells us that the Hebrews were generally a tiny, inconsequential society that didn’t create, build, or innovate much. Instead, they created prophecies. And apparently they did so with the intention of those prophecies guiding humans for millenia to come.

Therefore, Daniel’s chapter 9 prediction and Revelation absolutely, positively must be about future events that correlate directly to modern headlines and will totally and for sure happen Any Day Now™.

The predictions made by the Bible’s mythic characters do not equal modern evangelicals’ interpretations of those predictions. Nor do occasional semi-correctly-described historical events in the Bible correlate to its total trustworthiness as a prophecy guide. To assume otherwise is to create a non sequitur. In other words, a conclusion that doesn’t actually follow the premise.

What’s funny is that later on, Welles will reveal that past prophecy hucksters made all kinds of false predictions about the Endtimes without being killed. In fact, I can’t recall a single Seventy Weeks false prophet getting murdered over prematurely setting an Endtimes date. Whoever wrote the script for this dreck pissed all over Hal Lindsey’s feet there. (I hope it was intentional.)

The fake experts weigh in

Hal Lindsey appears throughout the film to suggest modern events that might fit into the vague prophecies in the Bible. Then, he draws in people he suggests are experts in their field to confirm that his suggestions are completely sound.

Very often, these are not actually experts in their field. One is credited at 53 minutes simply as “Babetta,” who is apparently a “witch.” Another, Erin Cameron (54 minutes), at least was once a popular astrologer in Los Angeles, but she’s hardly an expert in anything pertinent.

Worse, though, the film introduces us at 1:03:00 to one expert, “Peter Hamilton,” billed as a “Computer Security Expert.” Hamilton hems and haws his way through some word salad about bank account numbers about as comfortably as I once made my way through the waters of a cove filled with jellyfish:

The computer works on numbers. We already have a number. I’m sure you do. I have a number in my bank. I think that we have other numbers. Numbers on our passports and so on. I think eventually we will have one overall number. Perhaps it’ll be the first part of the numerical code which will identify us. We will be known eventually by these numbers. [About 1:03:00 into the film]

This guy’s babbling doesn’t mean anything at all. He’s actually wrong about computers being the reason for bank identification numbers. Banks had those long before computers! So I wasn’t too surprised to look him up and find out he’s not an expert in anythingexcept perhaps for writing space opera-style science fiction.

And the other supposed experts in The Late Great Planet Earth

He isn’t the only non-expert the film uses. Here’s a partial list of names from it.

  • George Wald, who is billed as “Scientist, Nobel Prize Winner,” speaks about nuclear war, the ozone layer, and the end of the world (in 2000, apparently) at about 26, 40, and 46 minutes in. He got his prize in 1967 for studying retina pigments and the effects of vitamin A on sight. As far as I can tell, he has no expertise regarding any aspect of nuclear war.
  • Joe Waggoner (41 minutes in), “U.S. Congressman.” He’s here to tell us about the traits he envisions in the Antichrist. He certainly was a Congressman between 1961-1979. Interestingly, he was a Democrat, though very clearly a very conservative one. Also, in 1976 he got popped for soliciting sex from undercover policewomen. Afterward, he won re-election, but opted not to run again.
  • William Paddock (52 minutes), co-author of Famine 1975, a 1967 book predicting worldwide famine by 1975. Notably, the book suggested the United States stop sending food aid to “hopeless countries” like India and Egypt. Also notably, its premises were later found to be incorrect. As far as I can tell, this guy has no qualifications whatsoever in the fields of famine or national humanitarian policies.
  • Paul Ehrlich (35 minutes in), who made similar predictions of doom and starvation. His predictions also turned out to be false. (Source for Ehrlich and Paddock.)
  • Albert Rosenfeld, author of The Second Genesis, shows up to scare everyone into thinking genetic meddling is evil and dangerous. A reviewer of his sounded professionally unimpressed, saying Rosenfeld adds nothing to the already-swamped field of similar alarmist works. I’d have to agree.
  • Aurelio Peccei (at 26 minutes in), leader of The Club of Rome, a philanthropic group that produced The Limits to Growth. The introduction of the work admits that its own conclusions are “far-reaching.” The entire Club itself has been sharply criticized. One book lumps Ehrlich and the Club together, calling them self-congratulatory fantasists.
  • John Gribbin (32 minutes in), co-author of The Jupiter Effect. This one made me laugh so hard. He predicted cataclysm in 1982 when the planets of our Solar System all lined up. The lineup did occur, as it very occasionally does, but nothing weird happened. In April 1982, Gribbin and his co-author claimed the lineup’s disaster had occurred—two years earlier with the eruption of Mount St. Helens. By 1999, he’d completely disavowed the entire notion.
  • Tal Brooke (55 minutes), noted as the author of The Lord of the Air. The book’s actual title is Sai Baba: Lord of the Air. Released in 1970, it concerns Brooke’s time as a follower of the religious leader Sai Baba—and how he later dedicated his life to getting the word out about Sai Baba’s sexual abusiveness and his group’s cultish nature. But he’s here now to discuss Sai Baba’s messianic claims.

(See also: The fake experts of Christianity.)

Sidebar 1: Oops, how embarrassing

At exactly one hour in, the film features Robert Nisbet, billed as “Sociologist/Columbia University.” In fact, he was also a professor at various prestigious universities. Dude’s legit. Here’s what he has to say, and I do find it rather chilling:

I find a rising sense in this country of the imminence of some kind of military political authoritarianism. And I myself give it a good deal of belief. [Hal Lindsey interrupts with an interlude.]

If fascism ever comes to the United States, it’ll be called Americanism. And I think that if we are going to have a fascist totalitarian type of government or ruler in this country, he is going to be someone who exemplifies almost perfectly what we think of as the traditional American character. He’s going to have elements of the rural in him—but he’s not going to be in any sense a hick. He’s going to be deeply populist in the sense that he will have to have a feeling of empathy. He will have to have a sense of attachment to the people to genuinely like them, and for them to respond to him. He’s going to have to be an individual who knows the military, likes the military, and is capable of using it. [Hal Lindsey interrupts again.]

Immediately after the first two sentences and again after the quote itself, Lindsey swoops in to imply that Nisbet is totally talking about the Antichrist of the Seventy Weeks prophecy. But I genuinely don’t think Nisbet would be on board with this bullshit.

The hilarious search for the Antichrist in The Late Great Planet Earth

At 1:02:00 right after Nisbet’s clip, Lindsey declares:

I believe this person the Bible calls the Antichrist, this great world dictator, is probably alive right now. He’s probably going about his business unaware of his future fatal role in the history and destiny of mankind.

Obviously, conspiracy theorists want to know just who that man is. So at 1:05:00, we get this cringe clip of a guy typing names into a “Cabal/One – Gametria Program” on a PC. They’re looking for a man’s name that works out to “666” in Hebrew code. Here’s its input screen:

The guy using the program tries a number of names:

Then, Lindsey admits that nobody will have any idea who the Antichrist will be till he is magically resurrected from the dead:

We do not know whether the prophecy refers to the Antichrist’s real name, his assumed name, or even his title. No one will really know who he is until he receives a mortal wound from which he will appear to be raised from the dead.

FFS, this is talking about Nero. We already knew that. By the 1830s, scholars had already figured it out:

If the Greek spelling of Nero Caesar (Neron Kaisar) is transliterated into Hebrew (nrwn qsr), the numerical equivalent is 666—although it should be remembered that this number was not represented as a figure but as letters of the alphabet or written in full. In other words, the “number of the beast” was not expressed as “666” (indeed, discrete Arabic numerals would not be invented for another five hundred years) but by the phrase hexakosioi hexekonta hex or the numerical values of the Greek letters themselves, chi (600), xi (60), and stigma (6).

But it only works if “Nero Caesar” is transliterated a certain way into Hebrew letters. As that link tells us, the “666” number works on other symbolic levels too—and all of it points straight to Nero.

Along with the Antichrist, Lindsey speculates pointlessly about which multi-national groups will form a league of ten nations that he thinks will show up before Armageddon. Since 1978, I think they’ve settled on the UN being their candidate.

Sidebar 2: The real actual experts they accidentally featured

Around 41 minutes in, the film features George Kistiakowsky, billed as “Atomic Scientist/Harvard University.” This guy’s legit. In addition, he served President Dwight Eisenhower as an official Science Advisor. (George Rathgens, showing up at 42:00 to talk about nuclear proliferation and noted as a “Prof. of Political Science/M.I.T.,” was Kistiakowsky’s sometime assistant, apparently.)

At 27 and 52 minutes in, as well, Lindsey also features Norm Borlaug, who I can absolutely guarantee would not be on board with Seventy Weeks huckstering. Borlaug has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager. I’m in utter awe of the man. He pioneered the Green Revolution, a major breakthrough in selective plant breeding for bigger harvests of crops like corn. And then somehow, he convinced rural farmers in semi-developed parts of Mexico to try out his ideas.

He knew that these improvements weren’t the entire answer to hunger, however. Though he was intensely Christian, I don’t think that he meant to imply the alternative was glomming onto Endtimes bullshit.

More than billion people are alive today just because of him. And a lot more forested land might remain whole as well.

So I suspect that if Borlaug had realized exactly what Hal Lindsey was doing in this film, he might have had some harsh words for a nutjob using the twin specters of famine and starvation as PROOF YES PROOF that the Endtimes are coming Any Day Now™. I’m actually angry that this film dared to bring on an actual hero of the human race to prop up its charlatan’s terrible ideas and false predictions.

This film’s creators have this great man talking about how horrible famine is because it props up Lindsey’s predictions that the Endtimes will feature famines the likes of which we have never seen on Earth. I have no words.

But I’m about to have even fewer.

Cue the random clips of real death, disasters, and war

In between predictions, Hal Lindsey narrates over random clips of death, disaster, and war.

Well, sort of war. For the most part, the “war” scenes are just military exercises—as Mr. Captain pointed out, nobody with 1978 recording tech was waiting at the exact site of a missile hit! (“That would be the worst job ever,” he laughed.)

But we get treated to scenes of starving Indian and African people, mobs in unnamed cities fighting the police, and disasters of all kinds. At one point, I got angry at its lavish attention given to the suffering people it showed onscreen. These people suffered actual real losses. They lost family members, maybe even their own children, along with their possessions and homes and livelihoods. Those starving kids probably died—but if not, they limped into adulthood with serious health issues that’d affect them all their lives.

What kind of evil, heartless sociopath uses real suffering to prop up his grift? I guess we need look no further than Hal Lindsey.

Filler, humor, and fearmongering in The Late Great Planet Earth

The last 10-15 minutes of the movie is largely filler and fearmongering to get this film limping all the way to 90 minutes. Orson Welles tells us that Revelation foretold the rise of China (nope) and Russia (lolnope), along with quite a specific claim about the former:

In a detailed and graphic description, John (of Patmos) tells us that in the Endtimes, the Chinese will bring an army of 200 million men across the Euphrates River and into the Middle East.

No, John sure the hell does not tell us that. He’s too busy finding clams for dinner.

And dealing with mystery women showing up on his island out of nowhere with gold chalices.

And escaping some very weird houseguests:

So here, I’d like to give honorable mention to the film’s unintentionally humorous bits:

ORSON WELLES, for “NUKE-you-lurr” and “Book of Revelations.” I genuinely hope he did both on purpose.

HAL LINDSEY, for “Anniechrist.” No way was this on purpose, but it’s fitting that a huckster who makes so many false predictions also always slurs his way through the most important figure in the entire Endtimes short of Yahweh/Jesus.

HAL LINDSEY’S GOLD STAR OF DAVID PENDANT. I expect any Endtimes prophecy huckster to also suffer from evangelicalism’s Israel boner, and Lindsey does not disappoint me there!

THE DUDES IN THE SAND. Let’s hope they wore very good undies.

Score and final takeaway of The Late Great Planet Earth

THE TAKEAWAY:
IMDB.COM lists only one “Trivia” point for The Late Great Planet Earth: “Cheese factor is high with this one.” Alas, this turkey could only hope to achieve the level of cheese. It’s a shameless cash-in on Hal Lindsey’s equally failtastic book, adding nothing whatsoever to even the sparse conversation that could exist in the field of eschatology. Orson Welles and a handful of real experts elevate Lindsey’s terrible prose, but our failed prophet can’t resist interrupting them to interject his bullshit over their more-reasoned words.

SCORE:
0/10 if considered on its own terms
8/10 if you watch with knowledgeable friends and good booze and are prepared to say “Nope, it sure isn’t/won’t be/doesn’t” a lot

Surprisingly-good bits: Norm Borlaug’s and Robert Nisbet’s clips. Our watch party also liked the last 5-10 minutes’ nature shots. They were very relaxing and interesting, especially the lava flows and fields of flowers.

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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