When Hal Lindsay wrote his runaway smash best seller The Late Great Planet Earth in the early nineteen seventies - I tended to think that the staggering sales figures were driven more by a national pessimism than biblical realities (though Rev. Lindsay was convinced that his Bible and his newspaper predicted a certain global collapse - in the near term).

That was almost thirty years ago. I've heard the sequel is on the shelf. 

It wasn't the first time I'd heard or read a preacher who predicted that the Lord's tarry (that is - His wait to come back) was growing short. I remember those dispensational charts on the church wall, which not only illustrated the beginning of time - but also the end. We always seemed a lot closer to the end of that chart than the beginning.

And now there are a bunch of other hot selling books describing the "Last Days" in vivid detail.

In the Fifties we thought THE END might be those nuclear warheads launched from Soviet Russia in a simultaneous surprise first strike on all our major urban centers. I remember the bomb shelters. Or maybe it would be Hollywood, rich and powerful and infested with Communists, which would bring our Republic crashing down. In the Sixties, it certainly could be that generation of bazaar young people with long stringy hair and bell bottoms who brought political and social upheaval and liberation (sexual and otherwise) - and the outright frontal attack on all things sacred. Riots in the streets. Bombs and gunshots and National Guard troops and assassinations and riot gear. In the Seventies the culprits were global warming, the population bomb and the depletion of finite natural resources (basics like air, water, petroleum and endangered species) that threatened us all with extinction. The Eighties scenario was a variation on the theme - double digit interest rates, seventy percent tax brackets, runaway inflation and see-through (vacant) office buildings and high unemployment threatened economic collapse. Here we are in the Nineties - and if it isn't the two digit computer bug, it'll be terrorism in the form of either nuclear or conventional or biological weapons of mass destruction triggered by some sociopath who knows his way around the Internet.

So like, what are we doing watching the nightly news? Who cares? That monthly contribution to the retirement plan? What's the point?

Religious fanaticism has spawned your basic separatist radical movements throughout history. I suppose a retreat to some remote corner of the earth, isolated and self-sufficient, a life of balanced by a healthy dose of physical labor and then a heavy dose of contemplation - well it sometimes sounds like a welcome alternative to the rat race. But those guys preaching those fiery fringe sermons filled with half-truths, venom, vitriol and bad theology, well, they never really appealed to me.

Maybe it's just youthful denial - although it's getting harder and harder to accuse me of youthful anything. Common sense dictates: it's more likely you'll be thinking about eternity as a grandparent than as a teenager. I'd rather not think old.

In one of his more poignant monologues on parenting, Bill Cosby's son asks, "Why is Grandma nicer than Momma?"

"Of course Grandma's nicer," replies the Cos. "She's OLD. She's tryin' to get into heaven!"

But it happened on March 11, 1998. I was driving down the freeway. One simple radio report left me thinking hard. Thinking hard about The Grand Finale. I thought I could hear The Fat Lady singing.

It was the one time - so far - that in my conscious waking hours I contemplated that ultimate question - what if I knew the exact time and hour that my life would end? How would it change me? The way I spend my days? The way I think about the people around me? My home? My children? My wife? My work?

Oh, there have been those dreams - or would you say nightmares - when I am on board a doomed aircraft plummeting towards the earth, helpless, terrified, thinking, "well I guess this is what it's like to know you are going to die" and just at the moment we ram into the ground and vaporize, I wake up. Or those shark attacks. After the Great White rips my body apart in the surf, I struggle onto the beach, and take my last breath - the alarm goes off.

But this time I was quite conscious. This was not a dream. The source was credible. And the impact of it all was convincing: this time it just may very well be The End.

The report came from Don Imus. Before you write off the nation's favorite curmudgeon (yep, he's co-opted Andy Rooney for the top spot) check it out.

Dr. Brian Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts announced his findings at a press conference. He and a colleague had been tracking 1997 XF11, the asteroid discovered by Jim Scotti of the University of Arizona in Tucson in December of 1997. Their careful research, supported by computer modeling, sophisticated telescopes and complex mathematical formulas indicated that XF11, a huge far away asteroid, was on a collision course with planet earth.

Imus tossed it aside with a "humph" and went on to the next story.

But it got me. I was alone in the car. I began to think. What if…. Then "Naw."

But the denial didn't work. My mind went racing.

OK. These guys know the earth's orbit. They know the speed and direction of XF11. Between now and the time of impact, they will only get more accurate. The whole world will turn its focus from whatever else to this. Every computer, every scientist, every politician - all of them - will converge on this one.

And they will know. They will know the precise moment of impact. They will calculate the force in terms of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts combined. They will know the exact location of contact. They will know the circumference of the instantaneous wake of complete and utter annihilation. Charts and graphs will illustrate the phases to follow: earthquakes, the release of the earth's molten core into the atmosphere, firestorms, tsunamis (mammoth tidal waves), toxic smog. The radical end of climate as we know it - the introduction of global arctic winter. The end of photosynthesis. The sun disappears behind clouds of ash and soot.

Let's say that they determine the point of impact will be North America. Every living soul on the planet will be making plans to move to Siberia. En masse.

I was at cruising speed on the freeway. This would be a great movie script (cf. Deep Impact and Armegeddon), but this was a Harvard astrophysicist for crying out loud.

My mind moved from Apocalypse to something more personal. More immediate.

I began to think about my life and my family. And it all seemed new and different. The stuff I'd been thinking about five minutes before the Imus report became entirely irrelevant. I shook my head and wondered why in the world I had invested so much emotional capital in things that suddenly had no meaning whatsoever.

And then again I thought, naw. No way… Yes way?

Marsden's brash announcement to the press on March 11, 1998 flashed around the globe at the speed of light. The whole world of astronomy rushed to work on the astrophysicist's calculations.

I did not know it at the time, and, I suppose, neither did Imus. Dr. Marsden, while a Harvard man, did not follow protocol. Prior to this announcement to the press, he had been highly regarded by his colleagues in the academic and scientific community. Generally, such a finding would be submitted first to other scientists for verification.

The next morning, NASA officials announced that they found a flaw in Marsden's work. In one line of his mathematical calculations, Marsden relied on data produced in 1958 which had later proven to be erroneous. Oops.

XF11 will fly by, NASA concluded, but will harmlessly pass by the Earth at a safe distance nearly three times that of the Earth to the Moon. Whew.

I heard the report that next day - and breathed a sigh of relief. I knew it couldn't be true. Right.

So it wasn't the Fat Lady after all.

* * * * * *

Every leader lives with the ever-present possibility of doomsday. But an effective leader plans anyway. An effective leader considers the potential causes of failure - but views them as challenges. Not inevitable eventualities.

The end may very well be near. The global end. The corporate end. The personal end.

Seems like lots of folks these days are enamored with the idea that the close of the Millennium, now just sixty-eight days away, will somehow coincide with the close of the Universe.

I don't buy it. Come January of the year 2000, we'll be watchin' the SuperBowl. The Market will be up. The ATM will work just fine. People will be finishin' off the canned goods in the pantry, sippin' on bottled water and wonderin' what to do with all that cold cash locked up in the safe.

Our problems won't be much different then than they are now.

But while we are on the subject - let me make one more point.

Assuming you are reading this in the morning - about twelve to fifteen hours from now, the sun will have set just like last night, you'll turn out the lights - and one more day will be gone. Today will be history. Today will come to an end.

You've got people you love. You've got a business. People depend on you.