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On April 1, 2003, a team of theologians and Biblical scholars will issue an 1126-page, densely annotated report confirming what many have long suspected: that George Walker Bush is the Antichrist.

Toiling in secret under the auspices of Shroud of Turin University in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the panel began its investigation in February 2001, during the opening weeks of Mr. Bush's Presidency. Its 24 members visited archives in 36 countries, sifted through thousands of documents, analyzed scores of Biblical and noncanonical texts, and interviewed 378 individuals. The project was funded by the Apocalypse Now Foundation, a privately funded 501(c)3 organization that monitors manifestations of Scriptural prophecy.

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"It took two long, strenuous years to get our eschatological ducks lined up in a row," says Dr. Ezekiah Hootenbark, the project chairman, "but we now can say to a reasonable degree of professional certainty that President Bush is the Man of Sin whose pursuit of global domination will destroy the world."

"Once you know where Mr. Bush is coming from," adds panel member William Wickworth Wegwype, Associate Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, "you know precisely where he's going. Armageddon. And he's taking us along."

According to the New Testament Book of Revelation, the Battle of Armageddon is to be the final cataclysm in the Endtime struggle between good and evil, between true believers and the minions of the Antichrist. Armageddon will transform the world as we know it into smoking mulch, but the Antichrist and all his forces will be vanquished. This will cue the Second Coming of Christ, who will initiate a thousand-year epoch of peace, prosperity, clean personal habits, and Christian rock.

In recent years, Endtime prophecy has entered popular culture through films, Christian broadcasts, and bestsellers like Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, John F. Walvoord's Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East, and various books by Hal Lindsey.

The Antichrist concept, rooted in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, actually predates Christ. Most of what is known about this sinister, flip-side Messiah figure comes, however, from Revelation, written by John the Divine around 90 A.D., and from annotations in the Scofield Reference Bible (1909). With its complex, fevered images of seals, trumpets, heads, horns, vials, plagues, horsemen, and bottomless pits, Revelation defies synopsis. But a narrative emerges in Chapter 13. A Beast (the Antichrist) crawls up out of the sea, establishes a New World Order, and requires everyone to be marked with the number 666. As the world slides toward Armageddon, a conflict that destroys one-third of humanity breaks out along the Euphrates River; not long afterward, Babylon is "utterly burned with fire"-- a prelude to the final conflict.

"There are those who point out that George Walker Bush crawled out of East Texas, not the sea," says Dean Wegwype, "but let me remind you that his father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush, served in the US Navy. An aircraft carrier now bears his name. I might add that the Euphrates River and the site of ancient Babylon are in Iraq, a nation that our Chief Executive has targeted for demolition. Iraq appears to be the Babylon described in Revelation; Saddam Hussein is evidently Revelation's Whore of Babylon."

Speculation as to the Antichrist's identity has been intensifying since the 1980s. In the '90s, many evangelicals developed a Beast theory to explain why they found Bill Clinton beyond the pale. In 1999, Jerry Falwell stated that he thought the Antichrist must be a Jewish man now living in Israel, a statement that inflamed persistent rumors that the Antichrist had to be Ariel Sharon. In 2001, Dennis Keckie, 43, who manages a Chuck-E-Cheese franchise in Milwaukee, issued a press release stating that his "little horn, which waxed exceeding great" (an Antichrist attribute cited in Daniel 8:9), had earned him the prophetic title. A committee of Endtime experts dismissed his claim after viewing Keckie's horn and noting that it hardly waxed at all.

Whoever the Antichrist may be, one of his key foreordained actions is a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. According to prophetic documents, a precondition for the last act of the Endtime script is Israel's rebuilding of the Third Temple on the Mount-- also known as Haram al-Sharif, the spot where the Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven. The Antichrist, ostensibly a friend of Israel, will help facilitate the desecration of this Muslim site.

"The one ingredient missing is a red heifer," says Rabbi Shlomo Ben Besbes. According to the Book of Numbers, the ashes of an unblemished, rust-colored heifer must be used to purify all who enter the Temple. In recent years at least two apparently perfect red heifers have failed to pass rabbinical inspection.

But on the 1600-acre Bush ranch near Prairie Chapel, Texas, biotechnicians have produced an entire herd of genetically enhanced red cattle that meet the strictest kosher standards for sacrificial animals. A red heifer named Dottie Belle after Dorothy Walker Bush, Mr. Bush's grandmother, whom the heifer is said to resemble, has already been selected. At the appropriate time, Dottie Belle will be shipped to Israel and slaughtered, thereby making the Third Temple a certainty.

Additional support for the Hootenbark panel's conclusions comes from Bohemian Grove, the Sonoma County, California, retreat for rich, conservative power brokers. One source whose stays at the clothing-optional woodland hideaway have coincided with those of the President says, "I'm not free to describe what was taking place at the time, but circumstances led me to ask why on earth Mr. Bush would want 999 burned into the flesh of his left buttock. Then he and Mr. Cheney resumed an upright position, and I knew the brand was 666."

Dr. Didymus Pleck, who holds the Benny Hinn Chair of Biblical Exegesis at Oral Roberts University, dismisses such evidence. "It is unadulterated horse doo," says Dr. Pleck, an ordained Pentecostal minister. "The Antichrist is supposed to be a great, persuasive, charismatic leader-- and an apostate. Everyone knows that Mr. Bush is an ugly loutish, unpersuasive, creepy leader, and a good Christian."

"The Antichrist sweepstakes is no beauty pageant," Dean Wegwype retorts. "Candidates have included Hitler, Mussolini, Francisco Franco, John Foster Dulles, Bertrand Russell, Ho Chi Minh, Pee Wee Herman, Saddam Hussein, Gary Coleman, and Prince Charles."

"His looks aside," says Dr. Hootenbark, "the Antichrist must have unprecedented power and a steely sense of mission; Bush has both. He's supposed to have had some kind of head wound; listen to the President talk for two minutes and you know that's covered. The Antichrist must have a subhuman visage, be cognitively challenged, carry the Mark of the Beast, and smell like Waco. President Bush meets every one of these criteria."

"If anyone is temperamentally suited to be the Antichrist, it's George W. Bush," says Biblical researcher Jolene Frappé. "As a boy, he enjoyed sticking firecrackers into frogs and tossing them up to watch them explode. Now he's salivating at the prospect of doing the same to half the population of the Middle East. People know this. That's why they're calling his war effort Dubya Dubya III."

Bush has yet to deny the Hootenbark panel's finding. "The Bush family has been chosen by God to play a very special role," says White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer, "and they'll be the first to admit it."

At his March 6 press conference, when asked about his possible role in Endtime events, the President matter-of-factly replied, "I must go about my father's business."