Good News From Outer Space By

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

Gilray, a major character in the book, is convinced that God will send a messenger to arrive on earth on January 1, 2000 in a spaceship. Using television, the smooth preaching Gilray manages to herd the followers in like cattle by the thousands. The words roll off of his tongue like honey and his followers are easily convinced that the perilous times of their last days have come Gilray’s prophecies are given light in the following quote: “They have been fulfilled. That’s how we know we’re in the Last days. The Bible predicts that certain events will happen: the Jews will return to Israel-they have been there since 1948. A burning star named ‘Wormwood’ will fall upon the earth and poison the waters, killing many men-in 2985 a meltdown occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union. ‘Chernobyl,’ in Russian means ‘Wormwood.’ The Roman Empire will be re-instituted in a ten-headed beast-in 1997 the ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

themselves, who would visit humanity in flying saucers. This clearly relates to the book because of Gilray’s belief that he had been chosen to do God's work. Another cult leader of our own society strikingly similar to Gilray and his beliefs was Marshall Herff Applewhite. Just like the Reverend in “Good News from Outer Space”, he also believed in a messenger who would arrive in a spaceship to deliver salvation. However, a slight difference between the two was the fact that Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, specifically believed that the approach of comet Hale-Bopp was an indication of the arrival of God’s spacecraft. In the end, Applewhite lead his ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: