ood evening, dear reader. 
 

My name is Ignatius Donnelly; politician, failed but visionary land speculator, attorney, orator, farmer, historian, scientist, idealist, congressman, poet and novelist, affectionate husband and father, a man of generally liberal and sentimental disposition. I was born in the year 1831 and departed this planet in what can only be regarded as prophetic timing on January 1, 1901, the first day of the twentieth century. I have the pleasure and honor of rejoining you here (you will note my rather ghostly form) at the approach of the hundredth anniversary of my passing and the great dawning of a new millennium. I intend to provide you with an evening of religion, history, and prophecy which I believe you will find entertaining and pertinent to your most intimate and contemporary concerns -- many of them I should say are precisely those that filled my mind a century ago. Moreover I propose to embellish these insights of the traditional sort with the best and latest of your marvelous scientific findings on such diverse topics as climatic change, both ancient and modern; emergent and frightening health concerns (including those two great world epidemics of your age, AIDS and Lyme's disease); and physics, both global and astral. What I have to say to you this evening will affect the planning of your careers, the management of your investments, the creation and reordering of your family and spiritual life.