The End of Days is Near!
I first became aware of this worlds impending doom from my friend Greg in college. It was through him that I learned that the world was going to end on September 23rd 1994. He heard it through preacher and radio mogul Harold Camping. Of course that day has now passed and we are all still here. Camping has a new book predicting some other date, but he is no longer fooling my friend Greg.
Greg has seen the error of his ways and now no longer believes that he world is coming to an end when Camping has predicted. Now Greg insists that no one can know the time or the date, but that the world is still going to come to an end… soon! In fact, if you talk to a large number of fundamentalist Christians, many will tell you that the End of Days is near. The signs are all around us. More earthquakes and hurricanes have been going on lately. The Middle East is at war just as the Bible predicted. Christians are being persecuted too. Jesus said that would happen right before the end. But the most obvious sign of all is the moral decay of society. America is the Sodom and Gomorrah of our time. All of these signs point to the obvious conclusion that the End of Days, the Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, and any other name you want to call it is right around the corner.
Here is a little something that these Christians don’t seem to know. Back in the year 2500 BCE, people were also claiming that the end was near and Revelations hadn’t even been written yet. The reason there was a mass hysteria back then was because there was a series of violent weather, lots of wars and decease, Believers in some other man/god were being persecuted, and of course the moral decay of society.
Just 500 years later, a small cult of Jews was convinced that the end of the world was coming soon too. One of the leaders even claimed that everyone who was “saved” would be bodily brought up to a magic paradise forever. One anonymous author wrote “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34). Yes, the early Christians thought that the End of Days was going to happen soon! I’m not mathematician, but 2000 years seems like more than a single generation to me.
Since that time, large numbers Christians in every generation have claimed that the End of Days was near and that they were probably the last generation. Why would they believe that? There is almost always a series of violent weather, lots of wars and decease, claiming persecution despite being the majority religion, and of course the moral decay of society.
Filed under: death, End of Days, Preaching, prophecies, Religion
