The Apocalypse-is-just-around-the-corner business has been operating on full throttle for the past 30 years. Hal Lindsay’s book “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” explained correlations between contemporary phenomenon and biblical prophecies and was one of the best selling books of the 1970s.

In the past decade, the “Left Behind” series of novels have combined details from the Book of Revelations with Tom Clancy-like pulp fiction. End Times hysteria also has films of varying quality, from the grade Z adaptation of “Left Behind” starring Kirk Cameron, to the 1991 thriller “The Rapture” starring Mimi Rodgers and David Duchovny.

Now NBC gets into the racket with “Revelations” (8 p.m., NBC), a seriously creepy thriller starring Bill Pullman as Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Richard Massey. He’s a celebrated man of science who has just undertaken the ghastly task of tracking down the infamous Satanist Isaiah Haden (Michael Massee) who ritually murdered Massey’s daughter.

If that weren’t strange enough, poor Massey becomes entangled in a mystical mystery when a young girl, declared brain dead after being struck by lightning, begins “talking” and scrawling crude drawings with a curious resemblance to those of the doctor’s dead daughter.

The brain-dead girl becomes the subject of a battle between a religious group and secular scientists who would declare her dead and harvest her organs. At the head of the faithful is Sister Josepha Montifiore (Natascha McElhone), who it can be certain will serve as the spiritual Ying to Massey’s empirical yang during the course of this six-hour ordeal.

And while all of this is happening, a mysterious child is found floating in the sea off the coast of Greece. Is he a baby castaway? Or a portent of miracles sent from Heaven and Hell? I’ll never tell.

Tonight’s other highlights

• Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (7 p.m., CBS): an interview with an Italian journalist shot by American soldiers in Iraq.
• Vaughn goes seriously freelance on “Alias” (8 p.m., ABC).
• Murder at a posh hotel on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).
• A philandering lawyer hops her last bed on “Law & Order” (9 p.m., NBC).