The Endless End-Of-The-World Debate

Mayan Calendar Spurs End-Of-The-World Debate : NPR

See! Like I pointed out a little while ago, there are a bunch of new-agers AND, I might add, some Christians who really buy into this stuff. This is but the latest in a long list.

Robert Jungk writes,

"There is, of course, a very real ecological crisis, but corporate and government public relations seem to have successfully numbed public concern. Without the Cold War and the Soviet Union, there is no Evil Empire, no Antichrist, no immediate threat of annihilation. The terrible eruptions of bloody local conflicts do not seem likely to widen into Armageddons; even the Middle East conflict, without the added heat of superpower ideological rivalry, has receded to the status of just another brutal, local idiocy, in spite of the efforts of zealots to make it something more."

He goes on to record the many people in contemporary literature who have written about apocalypse. He concludes,

"In a multitude of texts, genres, and disciplines, then--and this introduction is far from having named all of them--apocalyptic and postapocalyptic sensibilities have helped define the twentieth century. This has indeed been a century full of visions we would like to forget, but which we have nevertheless relentlessly recorded, analyzed, and amplified with uneasy pleasure."

Richard Weinland, prophet of the Church of God, writes, "The year 2008 was pivotal for the end-time as it was the final year of witness/testimony that God has given to mankind for the past 6,000 years.

"Once the Second, Third, and Fourth Trumpet have sounded, the United States will collapse as a world power. When the Fifth Trumpet sounds, WWIII will be ushered upon the scene and will cause the death of billions. Then on the last day of this great tribulation Jesus Christ will return and intervene to stop mankind from destroying himself."

Weinland is not by any measure a Christian teacher in the historical sense of that word. He does not believe in the Trinity nor in the divinity of Jesus. He knows nothing of the Gospel. My point then is simple: apocalyptic prophecies, end-of-the-world teaching, writing and thinking have been alive and well all through the twentieth century. They continue in the twenty-first.

Many winds continue to blow. Those not formed and guided by the Spirit at work in the Word of God can and will be driven like flotsam on the sea. Fears will overtake us or doubt will drive us toward agnosticism and unbelief.

Jesus said of these times, ""Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ, and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24).