The End of The World

THE END OF THE WORLD JUST BEGUN

People of different religions (and none) have invested major efforts in predicting when and how the end of the world will happen. Within Christianity, many of these were based on various interpretations of passages from two books in the Christian scriptures (New Testament): Daniel and Revelation.

This website lists many dozens of prophecies that predicted the end of the world would occur at various dates in our past. They all have one factor in common: all of them have completely failed. Many people believe that predictions of the end happening in our future will not materialize either. However, others firmly believe that the end will come, and will come soon.

In recent years, the date of 2012-DEC-21, a winter solstice, has received a great deal of attention as the prime candidate for "TEOTWAWKI" (The End Of The World As We Know It). Many books have been written in support of this idea. They are easy to spot in the bookstore or online because their title usually contains the number "2012." You can go to a kiosk in a Borders bookstore in the U.S. or Chapters in Canada and do a search for 2012. If you shop at Barnes & Noble you might have to wait in line for an employee to look it up for you; for some reason B&N doesn't have self-help kiosks.

We seem to be observing the buildup to a mild cultural panic similar to that experienced as the end of millenium approached ot 2001-JAN-1. If we may be permitted a prophecy of our own, we expect that 2012 will end much like many other years, with the usual number of natural and human-created disasters. A few years later, some predictions about the end of the world circa 2020 may well surface. Some folks just have to keep the population's fear level high. A culture in fear is much easier to control.