The End of the World....Yes, there once was a time when I believed in the Apocalypse, a fiery war. the heavens opening up, and Satan and his legions pitched in a battle with the Archangel at the end, when the world as we now know it would come screaming to a halt.
2000....Doomsday!
Back then, when I was a believer, the End of the World was going to happen in the year 2000. All the prophecies were vaguely written, to be sure, but the "soothsayers" of the various religions had a pretty good gauge on when it was to materialize. What better time than to have the Y2K Krisis....signaling the inevitable collapse of man's (yeah, verily, even woman's) sinful ways on this rock. Oh yes, I believed (when I was young), fervently believed in the end of all things ... not in a rapture as such, but certainly in an apocalypse. Even though I wanted to ascend to heaven, I also wanted to see the forces of evil duking it out with the heavenly superheroes, I wanted to see pillars of smoke, cities rendered asunder, bodies of the dead (wicked and sinful, to be sure, but unfortunately, not zombies) scattered in the streets....In short, I wanted to see a really good movie!
The movie 2012 cops out all over the place, with its preachy Christian themes and the Mayan/Incan hook that they (not the Jesus churches) predicted the end. Still, the movie has been registering some seismic waves in society.
2012, or ????
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 41% of Americans now think the apocalypse will occur by or before 2050...i.e., that Jesus will return. Evangelical Christians are more likely than other mainline Christian religions to believe in the Second Coming (60% vs. about 1/3 for mainline Protestants and Catholics). It appears education is a factor....among Americans, only 19% with a college education believe the second coming will happen by 2050, vs 59% with a high school education or less. And regional factors are also at work....a majority of Southerners believe this, whereas believers in the rest of the country are in a minority.
Maybe It Is 2012 After All....
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