The Beast Computer of Brussels: An American Invention That Conquered the World
In 1972, the American Pentecostal preacher David Wilkerson produced a fifty-minute film, The Rapture, depicting "the return of Jesus Christ." Subtly alluding to the apocalyptic "mark of the beast" (Revelation 13:16-18), the film featured a gigantic computer called "the Beast...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2024
|
| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2024, Volume: 92, Issue: 2, Pages: 251-275 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In 1972, the American Pentecostal preacher David Wilkerson produced a fifty-minute film, The Rapture, depicting "the return of Jesus Christ." Subtly alluding to the apocalyptic "mark of the beast" (Revelation 13:16-18), the film featured a gigantic computer called "the Beast." Located in Brussels, the Beast controlled global commerce by tracking every human on earth with numbers "invisibly ‘laser’ tatooed on the forehead or the back of the hand." Within months of the film’s release, American Evangelical Protestant networks were reporting the existence of the beast computer as an actual fact and spread the story worldwide. By the 1980s, Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, skeptical of the European Community, eagerly integrated the beast computer into their own eschatologies. The legend demonstrates the dynamism of the American evangelical imagination, which created this flexible symbol of globalization and technology, as well as the power of the global networks that disseminated it. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfae071 |
