You might have noticed that May 21 came and went without anything too unusual happening. Likewise October 22 dawned in similar fashion to October 21. These two days were predicted by Harold Camping to be the end of the world (it is not clear to me what he actually predicted for these two days, but you get the drift). Camping is not the first to make such predictions, nor will he be the last. And as the year 2012 approaches (the end of the Mayan calendar), there will be yet more conversation about the world coming to an end.
Photo credit: Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., via Flickr
I will not rehearse the history of Christians predicting the end of the world. I will not engage in a critique of the Left Behind series. An explanation of pre-, a-, and postmillennialism will have to wait for another time. What I do want to point out is that for a certain kind of Christian (of which I include myself), talk of “rapture†and even the phrase “Second Coming†provokes a kind of embarrassment. I assume that people hear that kind of talk and assume unkind things about the speaker, especially questioning their intelligence. As one who REALLY wants to be thought of as intelligent, I do not enter into those discussions. “I’m not like those folk who believe Jesus is returning next week.â€
You might then imagine how I felt when I discovered that the season of Advent was a time to consider Jesus’ return! [Read more…] about Advent: Embarrassed by Hope?