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What has made you skeptical of Biblical prophecy regarding the end of the world?

Overload, mostly. Crying wolf played a big part, too. It adds up to too many declarations with absolute certainty about identifying the End Times that never panned out, then were completely ignored so more declarations of the end times could be declared with absolute certainty.

Up until about the fourth grade, Emmanuel taught Bible much in the same way as Sunday school. It was bible stories with a moral lesson. Around about the time a student hits nine or ten years old, bible class got much deeper. You started hearing about the end Times and what will bring it about. All the man will behave as he did in the time of Noah, major natural disasters, wars and rumors of wars--that sort of thing. Teachers and school administrators could not help but comment on the likelihood the news of the day reflected biblical prophecy coming true.

My first exposure to End times theology occurred in 1986-87. This is when Quaddafi was doing his thing, Chernobyl was a huge disaster, Iraq and Iran were going at it, the soviet union was in Afghanistan, televangelists were involved in one financial or sex scandal right after another, no one knew quite what to make of AIDS, global warming was an issue, Ethiopia was still starving, etc. There was a new potential antichrist popping up every week destined to conquer a planet reeling under moral collapse and war, famine, and pestilence. What ten year old could argue, knowing what he knew up until that point?

What really blew things out of the water was the period from 1988-1991. The Armenian earthquake, the San Francisco earthquake, and then Hurricane Hugo all came in quick succession. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the end times adherents at Emanuel declared them precursors to a war with Babylon that was going to spell the beginning of the end. Rumors flew that Saddam Hussein considered himself the reincarnation of king Nebachadnezzar, the Babylonian king for whom the prophet Daniel had interpreted an apocalyptic dream of a statue made of descending quality of building materials which supposedly represent degenerating periods of time until the end of the world. In other words, they freaked. So did we students. It got worse when Iraq attacked Israel with Scuds. It got even worse when bush 41 declared a New World Order. Then…well, it all died off.

The war ended. Israel survived intact. The Soviet Union collapsed. The end times adherents starting looking for other boogey men. Maybe the united nations would gain more power in this New World Order. Perez de Cuellar did not strike me as the Antichrist type. Kurt Waldheim was a much nastier man, and he did have Antichrist written on him, either. Even the more conspiracy minded about bush 41’s role in the End times were relieved at his defeat in 1992. Unfortunately, he was defeated by bill Clinton, who was not the antichrist, either, but darn close as far as they were concerned.

Maybe it is because I was getting older or because I was becoming a big history buff with more perspective on how larger, far more disastrous conflicts had been viewed incorrectly as the beginning of the end by Christians since the days of Rome, but I lost interest in labeling current events as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. It was a pointless endeavor. Post Emanuel, I discovered a whole other theory the book of revelations was a coded message that did not prophecy the end of the world after all. I never consider that before. Consider Revelations has a curse of anyone who misinterprets it, I do not consider it now, either. As the dean of Regent University School of law advised us once, always avoid two things: the Federal Tax Code and the prophetic books of the Bible. I have taken his advise to heart.

I have often mentioned those old days of being inundated by End Times theology because they have left a lingering impression on me some twenty years later. I am still fascinated by stuff like Nostradamus, millennial anxiety, the Mayan calendar, Harold camping’s rapture predictions, and dystopian science fiction, among other related things. U do not take any of it serious as I did in my more impressionable youth. My philosophy now is whatever happens, happens.