News of Elizabeth Clare Prophet's death sent me tripping back two decades, to the summer of 1989, when the news media descended on Paradise Valley, Montana, to wait out the biggest religion non-story of all time–the end of the world.

Let us pause for a moment of silence–to remember one prophet and prepare for 2012 and the next outbreak of doomsday fever.  

Prophet, the charismatic leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant, died October 15 in Bozeman, Montana. In the late 1980s, her volatile mix of divine prophecy, New Age mysticism and right-wing political fervor–combined with wars and rumors of war–inspired hundreds of her followers to head for the hills near Yellowstone National Park, where they stockpiled weapons, constructed huge underground bomb shelters and inspired Time magazine, tabloid TV and the rest of us to come see the show.  

Her church, founded in 1958 by her late husband, Mark Prophet, borrowed heavily from the century-old ideas of Theosophy and the 50-year-old "Mighty I Am" movement of Guy and Edna Ballard. Mark and Elizabeth also saw themselves as the mysterious "two witnesses" mentioned the apocalyptic pages of the Book of Revelation. Following Mark's death, Elizabeth became, in her humble opinion, the only living messenger of the "ascended masters."

Prophet prophesied that Oct. 2, 1989 would mark the beginning of an eleven-year period of turmoil– but those who survived would see the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Nothing particularly interesting happened on that day. The reporters left, followed several years later by many of her followers. Just before the turn of the millennium, Prophet announced that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and she quickly disappeared from public view.  

But wait! Maybe she was onto something. I just had a revelation that 1989+11+11+ 1= 2012. Anyone with their ear to the ground and their eye on the Mesoamerican Long Court calendar knows that Planet Earth and its human inhabitants will embark on a new era of cosmic harmony beginning Dec. 21, 2012. It's a date has been kicking around the since the Harmonic Convergence non-event back in 1987, so we better pay attention this time around.

There will, of course, be some darkness before the dawn, but any New Age worth its salt needs a little tribulation to get things rolling.   

Fortunately, we won't have to wait two years to see these prophesied disasters.  Next month, Sony Pictures will release the movie 2012, with the tag line "We were warned." The studio has gone out of its way to blur the line between fact and fantasy, news and entertainment, by setting up a fake think-tank and news service to promote the movie.

So what's the lesson in all this? Don't let doomsday sensationalism completely dominate the story, including the mundane-but-always-important question of historical and theological context. That may not be easy to do when a church is collecting guns and building bomb shelters, but we can't understand the Church Universal and Triumphant without addressing its roots in the Theosophy movement and pointing out that there is nothing new about the New Age. Readers also need to put this Prophet in the context of countless other prophets who've opened the Book of Revelation and found themselves in its pages. That way, we leave the reader both less frightened and more informed.

Don Lattin is a veteran religion reporter. He is the author of Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge and the forthcoming book, The Harvard Pschedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age in America. He can be reached through his web site.