The end of the world is almost certainly not nigh. An apocalyptic battle to usher in the End of Days and the return of Jesus will most likely not get under way in Jerusalem tonight.
After all, it's surely just coincidence that the final day of the old millennium happens to be the final Friday of Ramadan. About 400,000 Muslims are expected to gather on Temple Mount this morning for prayers, while below them at Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall, hundreds of observant Jews will mass to welcome the Sabbath.
Given that the constant friction in an area holy to all faiths has provoked a series of clashes down the years - with dozens killed in violence as recently as 1997 - there could hardly be a more potent recipe, at a more appropriate spot, for eve-of-millennium apocalyptic confrontation. It must be coincidence, too, that stirred into the mix this year is a Jewish-Muslim dispute over construction work on a new mosque on Temple Mount, carried out by the area's Muslim trustees, to the dismay of the Israelis. Pure chance, as well, that this year Israel and the Palestinians are deeper than ever in secretive negotiations about the future of Jerusalem, to the fury of many Israeli right-wingers.
Not to worry, though: the talk of cultists and extremists and terrorists planning millennial violence is clearly being exaggerated, hyped up by the sensationalist world media. It just has to be another eerie coincidence that on Wednesday Israeli police, on a routine security check of those heading on to the Temple Mount, intercepted a young Israeli Arab who happened to be carrying an Uzi sub-machinegun and substantial stocks of ammunition.
The man explained that he had chanced upon the gun and the bullets, and that using them was the last thing on his mind. Who could doubt him? Even though, it now turns out, the man has been stopped in the past and found to be illegally holding a weapon.
And it is surely police heavy-handedness, rather than the genuine presence of a security threat, that has seen about 20 mostly American and British people deported by the Israeli authorities in recent weeks, Christian fundamentalists picked up by police on the Mount of Olives, apparent eccentrics convinced that they were about to witness the return of Jesus.
These in addition to members of an American-based cult, the Concerned Christians, who were deported earlier in the year, having converged on Jerusalem because their leader had predicted the imminent arrival of the End of Days.
From the Mount of Olives last night, the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount shone in the moonlight, a gentle breeze stirred the trees in the Muslim cemetery directly beneath the Old City walls, and the twin bricked-up arches of the Golden Gate - through which Jesus, it is said, will reenter Jerusalem - stood out in a palegreen spotlight. All was quiet and calm, the only noise coming from the line of cars on the road through the Kidron Valley below.
Then a car sped up from another ancient cemetery in front of this reporter, and the driver, a young Palestinian, got out to share the view. "There were five Japanese people here a few days ago," he remarked idly, "with bombs and stuff. I told the police about them. It's the end of the world tomorrow, you know."