The End Is Nigh!

Have you seen the predictions for the New Year? My goodness! Doom and gloom abounds! Even allowing for the innate pessimism of a revivalist preacher, it has been a year of nearly unprecedented human tragedy and natural disasters.

We started last year with the tsunami tragedy and this seemed to be a preview of things to come: Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, wars, and floods of Biblical proportions have kept the doomsayers busy.

But Perhaps more tragic than what nature did to humanity is what humanity did to humans. In the Darfur region of Sudan, an estimated 180,000 souls with the 'wrong' ethnic background were slaughtered. And in Africa and even throughout developed nations such as America, 85 million humans were going hungry. Russian, Ukrainian and Belarus children who’ve been victims of trafficking often end up either escaping or being dumped in Moldova or Romania, traumatised and damaged beyond imagination. Their short lives have been so horrific they are unable to even assimilate where they came from.

This year a number of Biblical scholars have aligned with scientists to present some rather disconcerting predictions. Apparently, there's a lump of something, which has been labelled as planet 'X', which some scientists claim to have briefly seen, that may be on a possible collision course with our friendly planet. And according to a number of learned Biblical scholars, scientifically balanced software such as 'Torah4 U' and 'Bible Codes 2000' have found cryptic evidence of accurate ancient caveats that proclaim the most appalling catastrophic events will begin this year and increase over the next 5 years. When you look at some of the evidence, it can leave you scratching your head with amazement. A group called Exodus 2006 has even created intricate diagrams to prove of their predictions.

Civil liberty has had a rough patch as well. We've heard about the discovery of illegal wiretapping of Americans, and probably lots of other folks who aren't, and there has been tacit government acknowledgement that one of the most powerful nations on earth is not above kidnapping people off the streets of another country and carting them off to less savoury nations where they may be subjected to music from the Spice Girls, or even worse.

We learned about secret prisons and the mistreatment of prisoners. And we have had an extremely distasteful lesson on how to obfuscate the truth with semantics when caught in the act of nefarious government-sanctioned activities. The Merriam Webster dictionary describes semantics as 'the language used in political propaganda to achieve a desired effect on an audience, especially through the use of words with novel or dual meanings.' Too right!

Most of the predictions are banal or intelligible only to those who interpret them. One website, and I'm loathe to even share its name out of concern that someone will read its predictions and begin packing their bags, predicts that August 3 will be a 'blood drenched day.' But it goes on to suggest that this is merely a glimpse of the disaster that will befall humanity in 2010. One psychic asserts that a massive asteroid will hit our planet this year. If she's correct, well, she has every right to stand up and shout 'I told you so.' Unfortunately, there won't be anyone around to hear her. Oh yes, and a number of sites suggest with mathematical certainty that the draft will be reinstated in America. Really?

According to a turbo-charged global-atmospheric computer at Colorado University, 2006 will be no picnic. It predicts 17 tropical storms, 9 hurricanes - five of them major with winds exceeding 185km per hour. And who was it that refused to sign a pact to limit global warming?

Since the beginning of time there has been an ample chorus of voices proclaiming the imminent arrival of the end of the world. And people have watched with fascination for signs and wonders and portents.

It has always been so, hence Jesus took special pains to remind us in the Gospels that we already have what we're looking for so anxiously: 'The reign of God is already in your midst,' He says. Look no further.

The Holy Spirit already dwells within every one of us, only waiting for us to open our hearts and our lives to the Spirit's healing and guidance. Life could take on a very different shape now, if we could bring ourselves to doing that with confidence and trust. That is the challenge that confronts us repeatedly across the whole span of our lives: To trust in the Holy Spirit's presence, to open our hearts, and to keep them open. That task will never be complete in this life, but for some it has not yet begun.

May we not ever find ourselves in such sorry company.