cydonia

I hope not. From my upbringing, in the back of my mind, after hearing about SARS and monkey pox, or whatever it is called now, something that runs through my head is, "it's happening. Tribulation and Rapture are going to happen. Saddam Hussein is the anti-christ. All the prophecies are being fulfilled." I don't really believe this anymore, but it wasn't so long ago when I would have freaked out big time over this.

I asked my dad what he thought, he's a pretty liberal christian and says the good lord hasn't checked in with him yet, and he has other things to worry about than the end of the world.

Not to make fun of these diseases, this is serious stuff and it's sad when anyone unexpectedly dies from anything. I'm just curious if anyone has heard from religious folks that these are the signs of the end times and how you may have responded or would have responded.

If I were trying to save your soul based on what we see in the news, what would you tell me?

I also wonder if these diseases seem so scary just in themselves, or if the media feeds into the story and gives it more importance than it "deserves"(serious as it may be).

emotional

There's one and only one explanation for these diseases, and it's the same explanation as for how complex life-forms like us came to be: evolution. "End times" have nothing to do with it.

Abel Stable

I personally haven't encountered anyone telling me this, but they sure are out there. Turn on TBN and wait for Jack Van Impe's 30 mins of nonsensical ramblings that show "Yes! Yes! Ohhh he's coming soon!". Or you could just check out the RaptureReady boards, but be prepared to start sobbing for humanity.

Of course there's a lot of awful stuff going on in the world, but overall I think things are better off now than they've been in the past. The human race still has a long way to go (I don't believe any sort of utopia is possible) but IMHO it feels like we're moving in the right direction. At least I hope so. It is easy to magnify contemporary problems of the world & blow them out of proportion. Cumulatively SARS, AIDS, & Ebola still haven't killed as many people as the Black Plague did in only 20 years.

Also I think there's a good deal of truth to that old adage: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

So even if there was an Apocalypse to anticipate, then I see nothing extraordinary or special going on now as an indicator.

christ-on-a-stick

Hi cydonia - Well, for starters, this isn't exactly the first time in history that "new" diseases have killed/injured large numbers of the human population... think "The Black Death" - Bubonic Plague, smallpox, polio - hell, good ole influenza kills more people every year than these newfangled diseases. Obviously those scourges didn't signal the end times... why should we think any differently now? Without a doubt.

Certainly there is a "scare factor" in that these diseases are (apparently) *new*, and as in the case of SARS we don't know exactly how to treat it/halt its spread, so that uncertainty naturally breeds a certain amount of fear. However, (IMO) the media has hugely "hyped" both (SARS and monkeypox) simply because it makes good press/tv.

Religious nutjobs have been carrying on about the "End Times" forever. Heh... the fundy church I grew up in had one of their large outer walls (facing a public intersection) painted with a mural captioned by the words "Jesus is Coming... SOON!" for about 25 years (from 1974 to 1999). In '99 they changed it to some other corny phrase ("... Living Water" or something over a babbling brook/waterfall scene). Now let's see... why did they decide to do that? Maybe because after 25 YEARS of loudly proclaiming "soon, SOON!" they were starting to look a little silly?

I often wonder how long it will take with none of these prophesied things happening before the "next generation" starts to question the whole notion.

cydonia

That reminds me of what my formerly fundy sister once told me after she got married, "we want to have a family, but the lord is coming soon and we don't want to bring a baby into the world" or something very similar. She's now remarried and has a one year old boy.

I would think after 25 years you would feel strange about having that sign up! But people still believe if it isn't now, it's at least next week.

Calzaer

No, it's not a sign of the end times.

It's a sign that Iraq really DID have biological weapons!

Ispikes

THe reason people can say these thing is because

1. These things (war, disease, powerful dangerous leaders etc) have always happened and always will happen
2. The "prophecies" are so vauge

Spaz

Definitely the vagueness of the stuff that makes it applicable to just about any time. When jesus returns, people will be disagreeing and dying! Repent!

BigBlue2

The world ended on 1/1/2000. It's just that everyone was too hung over to notice.

openeyes

From Abel Stable:I happened to watch a few minutes of Mr Van Impe tonight, just to see what he had to say, and I have to agree with that nonsensical rambling part. I couldn't tell what point he was trying to make in anything! I couldn't tell if he believes in the Rapture or thinks those Rapture-Ready types are "misinterpreting". I suppose I could send in $24.95 for his Rapture video. . .

I'm middle-aged and people have been saying the end is near all my life. The world always seems to be a mess someplace. Throwing up our hands and saying there's not much we can do because the end is near is bad thinking in my view. Base action on other factors.