IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!! Really???

By Todd Tillinghast

We live in desperate days.  These are uncertain times.  But are they really uncertain?  Or are we uncertain?  I can’t watch my beloved History Chanel without seeing a morbid program about the premonitions of Nostradamus or the Mayan’s belief that the world will end on December 21, 2012.  Doomsday prophets and headline evangelists point to every catastrophe as a sign of imminent demise!!!  But is it really so? 

There is certainly no doubt that things in the world are bad, maybe even worse than at other times in History.  But do we really believe that what we are going through is unique?  People living in the dark ages when Europe was decimated by the Bubonic Plague must have surely thought that they were living in a time more desperate than any other.  They must have believed that the world was going to end as well.  

Catastrophes and natural disasters have been occurring since the dawn of history on a fairly regular and consistent basis.  Stories of Tsunamis’ and erupting volcanoes both claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands have peppered historical accounts for thousands of years.  Certainly there have been times like our own when the disasters have occurred closer together or more frequently.  Are our current circumstances significant or just part of a normal ebb and flow?  

Let’s briefly look at this obsession that some have with the Mayan calendar.  Now there is no question that the ancient’s, whether of Egypt stock or the indigenous of the Americas were intelligent.  In fact, it may be argued that they were more intelligent than we are.  When we want info we just download it from the internet. These guys were creating the patterns and constructs for this information for the first time.  However, as intelligent as they may have been, they were also very superstitious and fearful.  Their fear of the wrath of their gods most certainly trumped their logic.  Why are we taking advice about the end of life as we know it from a people who poisoned their only water supply with the bodies of those sacrificed to appease their gods?  

And to touch on that most heated of arguments (pun intended) Global Warming.  Is it really happening or not?  Many in the environmentalist community and the media would have us believe that it is a foregone conclusion.  The first thing we need to realize in discussing this concept is that there is a great deal of disagreement in the scientific community concerning Global warming.  They say that record high temperatures prove that global warming is a genuine threat.  Living in Panama I am tempted to agree with them.  However, many places other than Panama are enduring blizzard conditions for several weeks on end.  Many of these locations are further south than normal for these wintery tirades.  It was like only 32 °F at the Daytona Five Hundred for crying out loud!!! 

When I read in Isaiah 40:12 that God has held all the oceans of the world in the palm of His hand and that He Measures the universe with the Span of His hand which would be the distance from His thumb to His pinky I am reassured of two things; God is completely in control of everything and there is nothing I can do about it.  So even if the world is going to end tomorrow there wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop it anyway. So why worry about it?  Not that I don’t but there still isn’t any point!!!

I have a feeling though that we as humans have been down this road before.  Man’s literature throughout the ages is replete with this obsession with doomsday.  Maybe it is an exercise in cathartic release of the fear and realization of how puny we really are in the big scheme of things.  Or maybe we have a death wish and are secretly self destructive.  It is probably a combination of both of these things mixed with some of that good ole Mayan superstition.  We would do well to consider why we should trust our ability to correctly interpret the signs of the times any more than the myriad of those who have gone before us who have missed the mark over and over and over again.  Guess what we’re still here!!!