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2012 The End of The World
2012 The End of The World
2012 The End of The World
of the
World (Yet Again)?
well recall that in the lead-up to 2000, chaos was predicted to envelop our
computerized and electrified civilization. It was called Y2K: a simple flaw
in computer software design was supposed to bring about the end of the
civilized world. Power stations, telecommunications, bank accounts,
billing processes were all supposed to grind to a halt or be thrown into a
state of chaos.
But it never happened. Instead, the end of 1999 and the beginning of
2000 is best remembered for the stupendous displays of fireworks in
principal cities of the world, many of them televised and shared with
viewers in all nations. The specter of doomsday was a phantom.
A decade later, where are we? Wars are being fought in Iraq and
Afghanistan using sophisticated computerized weaponry. A languishing
global economy is desperately trying to revive itself. The Internet is an
indispensable part of life for the majority in the Western world and even
for a considerable number of individuals in the developing world. And we
are being told about another approaching doomsday.
If we are to believe the latest hype, December 21 or 23, 2012, is when the
world will really come to a climactic end. This time the fear has been
sparked by an interpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar, furthered by
World?)
Still, the Mayan calendar is not the only source of current apocalyptic
angst. The words of Nostradamus also figure heavily into the latest
prognostications. In fact, an Internet search on Nostradamus 2012 yields
nearly 1.5 million hits. Nostradamus wrote on religious themes; indeed,
the 2012 theme has become a phenomenon for the New Age movement
and thus a religious event.
But the 16th-century seers writings, recorded in quatrains, or poetry in
four-line format, are flexible enough to support any of several apocalyptic
scenarios that are being put forward today. One Web site that provides
resources and background material for those interested in 2012 offers this
evaluation of Nostradamus: He is best known for his book Les
Propheties. . . . Many of his prophecies dealt with disaster such as plagues,
earthquakes, wars, floods and the coming of three antichrists. However his
predictions are vague and people tend to apply his words to many
situations.
DOOMSDAYS PULL
So why are so many drawn in, or at least intrigued, by apocalyptic hype
every time a new theory emerges? Average people of all descriptions tend
to be at least somewhat interested in speculating about future events and
the possible demise of civilization as we know it. Banking on this
inclination, Slate magazine (August 7, 2009) offered a chance to choose
your own apocalypse. Offering 144 scenarios, they asked readers to weigh
in on how the greatest of the worlds great powers, America, would most
likely fall.
And lets be realistic: not all end-time scenarios are completely far-fetched.
For example, one of the phenomena that have been linked to 2012 is a
polar shift, and astronomers say that this could certainly occur in the
foreseeable future. But with our current knowledge, such an event cant be
linked to any specific date; nor, more importantly, does it portend
disaster (see Turning the World Upside Down). With regard to the
economy, calamity could occur at any time, before or after December
2012, if a rash action by the government of some major power triggers a
collapse of the global financial system. But we can only speculate about the
timing or even the results.
In a way, the 2012 hype is only the very tip of an iceberg, in that interest
in the end is not a new phenomenon. For Western civilization, the roots
lie deep in Judeo-Christian aspects of eschatologythe study of the end
or the last. For millennia, writers and sages have foretold the end of the
world, and the Bible contains some of the oldest and best known of these
accounts.
The end of the world, as depicted in The Great Day of His Wrath by English painter John Martin
(17891854).
The writings of the Jewish people bear witness to the frailty of human
judgment in such matters. In the late Second Temple Period, beginning
shortly before the start of the current era, numerous groups scoured the
Scriptures seeking to understand the timing of the Messiahs coming, and
thus the end of the age, based on prophecies recorded in Daniel.
Roger T. Beckwith, who wrote Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and
Christian: Biblical, Intertestamental and Patristic Studies, sets out the
scenarios developed during that time and recorded in various extra-biblical
writings. The potential timing of the event ranged from 10 B.C.E. to 240
C.E., a span of perhaps seven or eight generations. All the predictions
focused on the same prophecyDaniel 9, commonly referred to as the 70weeks prophecybut they used different dates for the starting point. Not
surprisingly, therefore, they reached different dates for the conclusion,
when the Messiah would appear to deliver the nation.
The whole exercise disappeared within mainstream Judaisms, however,
when Hadrian banned Jews from Jerusalem following the Bar Kochba
revolt in 132135 C.E. That revolt was actually motivated in large part by
Messianic expectations and claims. But with Jerusalem no longer accessible
to Jews, the fulfillment of the prophecy as then understood appeared to
lose context. How could it be fulfilled when Jerusalem had been taken
from them?
Apart from Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Jewish study, attempts to
chart the coming of the Messiah are now largely lost. It is not that Jews
dont believe in it anymore, but their belief is tempered by an appreciation
that they cant establish the timing of the event. This has not prevented
some Jews from claiming Messiahship themselves (for example, Sabbatai
Zevi, 16261676) or, now that Jerusalem is again the center of the Jewish
world, attempting to precipitate events to bring about the appearance of
the Messiah.
Most Jews, of course, rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Those who did
follow Him came to understand after His death that He would return to
the earth at some future time. But He warned His followers not to be
caught in debates over the timing of His second coming. Matthew and
Mark recorded Jesus words in their Gospels, to the effect that no human
being could know the day or time of His return. Jesus continued by
showing His disciples what was important as they waited: they were to
focus on honoring God and treating one another with godly respect and
with a sense of responsibility for each other (Matthew 24:3651; 25:146;
Mark 13:3237). This reinforced concepts previously established by the
prophets, as noted by Asburys Bill Arnold.
Sadly the lesson has been learned by too few of those who have claimed to
be Christs followers. Some at the time of the Protestant Reformation,
discarding Roman Catholic notions of the church as the kingdom of God,
and possibly learning from certain Jewish kabbalists, set the scene in
Western society by once again fixing dates for the end of the world. From
the late 16th century onward, many Christians, especially those of Puritan
or Calvinistic leanings, have actively sought to establish that date. It need
hardly be pointed out that all attempts so far have failed miserably.
Regular readers of Vision will appreciate that we accept the Bible as the
Word of God. Accordingly we understand that an end-time apocalyptic
event will happen in the future, and that it will heal the rupture that
occurred between the Creator God and His creation. The timing of that
event is not given to human understanding, but the responsibility of
people who await it is clearly spelled out.
History shows, however, that humanity wants to know the particulars of
the event on its own terms, without considering the demands placed on us
by our Creator. To such people, the Bible issues a warning: it will occur at
a time when they least expect it (Matthew 24:44; Mark 13:33).
Come December 2012, the proclaimed end will most likely turn out to be
just like all the other ends of the world that people have predicted over the
centuries. Meanwhile, arent our energy and attention better devoted to
caring for what we have been given and to treating one another as we
would treat ourselves and as God treats us?
PETER NATHAN
SELECTED REFERENCES:
1 Edward Adams, The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the
New Testament and Its World (2007). 2 Bill T. Arnold, Old Testament
Eschatology and the Rise of Apocalypticism in The Oxford Handbook of
Eschatology, edited by Jerry L. Walls (2008). 3 Roger T. Beckwith, Calendar
Mayan Mayhem:
Is 2012 the End of the
World
2012 is the ultimate disaster movie embodying (or disembodying) the best
of Emmerichs penchant for destruction. According to Marc Weigert, the
films coproducer and visual effects supervisor, One of the biggest
challenges is the sheer number of different types of disasters that happen in
the film: earthquakes, fissures opening in the ground, several cities are
destroyed, floods, huge volcanic eruptions. And each one of these had to
be designed. We had to do research and development for things that had
never been done before.
Movies do have the capacity to encapsulate great themes and generate deep
conversation. According to cowriter Harald Kloser, the challenge and
opportunity of a restart, a rebirth of culture (as the Maya believed) is
intriguing, especially during difficult times. Things are going wrong,
society isnt working anymore, and the planet starts over. Some people get
a second chance to start a new culture, a new society, a new civilization.
according to the Maya, because that is when the 13th baktun will be
complete.
John Major Jenkins, independent researcher of all things Maya adds, For
early Mesoamerican skywatchers, the slow approach of the winter solstice
sun to the Sacred Tree [the dark rift] was seen as a critical process, the
culmination of which was surely worthy of being called 13.0.0.0.0, the end
of a World Age. The channel would then be open through the winter
solstice doorway, up the Sacred Tree, the Xibalba be, to the center of the
churning heavens, the Heart of Sky.
themselves werent listening. They apparently did not let this hope of a
rebirth stop them from self-destruction. Diamond offers a sobering twostroke description to the historic Maya extinction: warfare and drought.
These too are descriptive of our time.
While some archaeologists view the Maya as gentle and peaceful, Diamond
contends that we now know that the Maya warfare was intense, chronic,
and unresolvable, because limitation of food supply and transportation
made it impossible for any Maya principality to unite the whole region in
an empire, in the way that the Aztecs and Incas united Central Mexico and
the Andes, respectively. Complicating matters, says Diamond, around
760 C.E. there began the worst drought in the last 7,000 years, peaking
around the year 800 C.E., and suspiciously associated with the Classic
collapse.
It is interesting that today we focus great interest on a failed civilizations
calendar. Did the Maya believe that their survival to December 2012 was
inevitable, somehow predestined, a part of the greater cosmic scheme?
That the people who foresaw this date as significant failed to survive to see
its fulfillment is ironic. Were they really giving the rest of us an important
clue?
Maybe in some way they were. If one draws from the story that the Maya
disappeared out-of-time so to speak, then Diamonds conclusion as to
the cause reverberates today. We have to wonder, he writes, why the
kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious
problems [resource wars and water shortages] undermining their society.
Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of
enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with
each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all
those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya
kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they
perceived them.
In their book The Dominant Animal, Paul and Anne Ehrlich provide the
follow-up to Diamonds discussion. They hope to discover the societal
levers that could lift the focus from short-term wants to long-term
necessities. Having a better sense of how customs change, they conclude, is
at the heart of resolving todays human predicament, the threat posed by
the great weight of human numbers coupled with our unprecedented
technological capacity.
The penalties for continued ignorance, malfeasance, and folly among
opinion makers and the leaders of societyindeed, all of ushave
escalated enormously, and now those penalties may have global rather than
merely local or regional consequences. We have utterly changed our world;
now well have to see if we can change our ways.
While end-time biblical passages are often dismissed for their obscure
meaning, they too are often updated and given modern contexts. For
instance, the apostle Johns startling first-century vision of locusts like
horses prepared for battle their faces were like human faces, their hair like
womens hair, and their teeth like lions teeth, breastplates of iron and the
sound of their wings like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing
into battle, (Revelation 9:79) is often today reimaged as helicopter
gunships or similar modern instruments of warfare.
The good that will come from the horrific collapse that is the final
fulfillment of these propheciesa restoration of all things, a refurbished
Earth, and an opportunity for all humans to know their potential as
children of God (Revelation 21)is often overlooked. But this message of
a new beginning has become more compelling as the conditions of the
world and human relationships have continued to deteriorate over the
millennia. A time of rebirth, as the Maya cosmically conjured and the
Bible assures is the ultimate plan of God, will lift humankind past the
crisis of our own making.
As philosophers, religionists and scientists have recognized, we need to
change our way of living. If the term Homo sapiens remains the
designation for a mechanical genius and a spiritual imbecile, the fate of the
species is sealed, said the late University of Calgary geologist,
Peter Gretener. After the agricultural and industrial-scientific revolutions,
it is now time for the Human Revolution.
Although we will bring ourselves to the brink of destruction, the Bible
promises that our Creator will preserve us. A revolution is on the horizon;
while we can see the necessity of it, we are powerless to make it happen
and forever unaware of its timing. Nevertheless, we can individually seek
and apply the ways of God which are timeless and available to all who seek
them out. DAN CLOER
Turning the
World UpsideDown
The type of electromagnetic manipulation weve been seeing could cause
a polar reversal.
I assume were talking about a reversal of the magnetic poles, Adler said.
I wish that were so, Gamay interjected. However, we may be facing a
geologic polar reversal where the earths crust actually moves over its core.
Im not a geologist, Adler said, but that sounds like a recipe for a
catastrophe.
Actually, Gamay said with a smile as bleak as it was lovely, we may be
talking about doomsday. Clive Cussler, Polar Shift
n Clive Cusslers sensational 2005 novel, the author imagined the end of
sudden and catastrophic polar shift may claim scientific backing, but it
would be more apt to say that in this case the science and the fiction are
poles apart. /DAN CLOER