Opinion

Prophets Of Doom

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Humans across the world have had a stressful time these last 12 months, dealing with the pandemic, and all the economic and social upheaval that has resulted. And these are signs that the world is doomed, according to some religious leaders.

At End Times Prophecy Watch, you can find the latest breaking news, related to the upcoming end of the world. When I reviewed this news, it seems much of it concerns the Covid pandemic.

But are we really heading pell-mell for Hell? I think so. At least eventually—that’s for sure. It seems the prophets of doom have always been right in message, just wrong in timing. Every age has been the end-times, according to doomsayers of every age. So of course, they’ve all had bad timing, with the possible exception of our modern doomsayers.

These days, doomsayers are predicting the demise of the human race from causes such as the following:

The Castle Bravo nuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll, was one of many signs used by doomsayers in the 1950s, to foretell our extinction by nuclear war.

The Covid pandemic

Global warming

A new ice age

Thermonuclear warfare

Overpopulation

Tyrannical governments

Moral degeneration (apparently a threat to humanity in every age)

5G

Genetic engineering

Zombies

These are just some of the scary signs of our end-times. That Armageddon is nigh at hand. So the question is, are the modern doomsayers right this time, or are they wrong? Will we survive, or will we all perish?

I think they are right. We will all die. Sooner or later. Each in our own time. For the end of the world happens to everybody, eventually. But will we all die at once? Is the human race itself doomed?

Who knows? I can’t predict the future, so I sure can’t tell anyone. I guess it’s easy enough to imagine that any of the above-listed threats could do the human race in. In fact it’s so easy to imagine, many Hollywood writers have already cashed in on these possibilities.

But I do know this. I have seen people at the bottom of the barrel of despair. They’ve seemed to be hopeless cases, sad sacks, real heavy-goers. The end of the world was upon them. And yet they have somehow found their way up and out. They have survived one breath at a time, and stepped one foot at a time through long wilderness journeys, eventually emerging into the open air of sunlight.

And so I know that human beings are smart enough to figure things out. They can convert despair into hope, and transfigure doom into deliverance. And if they’re smart enough to save themselves from disaster, then they can collectively save the world, also. In fact, the world has been saved by such people time and time again, generation after generation. Our presence in this world is living proof of that.

And so I say to the prophets of doom, don’t be fooled by the madness of humans. Have faith in their genius for survival. The end of the world is probably not near, and probably never has been near. This world of humans, or whatever we evolve into, may survive for another 5 billion years, until it is finally swallowed up by the red giant of a dying sun.

And that is when the prophets of doom will finally get their timing right.

Categories: Opinion

58 replies »

  1. “The end is nigh” has been shouted so many times by so many people who use fear to their own advantage to exploit others that is has pretty much lost its meaning, for me at least. Not downplaying climate change and all that, mind you…that shit is real. Just fed up with the fearmongers. An acquaintance is so caught up with fear of the collapse of the human world she has invested in a scheme to set up an off-grid commune in a remote northern community, to retreat to when the world ends. Sheesh.

    Deb

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  2. I think that the end of humanity will be much less dramatic; I think we will evolve into something else. There are no more homo erectus but they didn’t just all die out, they became something else that something else eventually became us.

    Either that or we will finally figure out how to upload our consciousness into robots. I am hoping for that one.

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  3. Prophets for profits are not the most reliable, and it must be really “awkward” to publicly forecast the end of the world .. and then still be alive when the time passes but then, we are so used to political forecasts that never materialize so I guess we’re immune to it all. 🙂

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  5. You forgot A.I., asteroid impact, scientists creating a black hole, or self-replicating nano-machines that turn us all into gray goo. BTW: The CDC used to have a “Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness” page, but they had to take it down after it generated too much Internet traffic and crashed the site. (You can still find it archived elsewhere.)

    I think “end times” is kind of a Western cultural thing. Eastern tradition seems more along the lines of inevitable reinvention: Hindu cycles, Buddhist reincarnation, or Taoist seeking of re-balance. Consequently, Western cultures (including those in the East) see change as “the end”, while Eastern cultures tend more to accept the inevitability that the future will simply be different.

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    • I guess there’s all kinds of things that can take us down.

      According to my incomplete understanding of Buddhism, there are some Buddhists who believe in different Buddha Eras. For instance, they say we’re currently in the era of Siddhartha Gautama. But when his era ends, there will be all kinds of Armageddon-like turmoil, until a new Buddha comes along.

      And of course, there have always been those Buddhists leaders who point to present-day “signs” and claim we are nearing the end of the current Buddha’s era. So it seems to me that “end time” belief, or eschatology, is universal, and not just confined to the Western hemisphere.

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      • You’re thinking of the idea of the “Maitreya” Buddha, a next Buddha who appears when the dharma is forgotten. I’m not really sure what it predicts as happening before that time. I think Japanese Nichiren Buddhism shares some of the same ideas in its sutras. Nichiren is a Mahayana practice, so I don’t really know where the idea of a sequence of Buddhas originated… if it’s something old, adopted from Indian Yogic traditions, or developed within some Mahayana sects.

        “End times” does seem to infiltrate much human thinking, even where you wouldn’t expect it. “Aum Shinrikyo”, the group that relased sarin gas in Japanese subways 1995, was a Japanese doomsday cult… though I don’t really know what they believed. But most of the doomsday type cults I’ve heard of in Asia are in predominantly Christian or Muslim countries, like South Korea or Malaysia and Indonesia. The largest Buddhist temple in Thailand, Wat Phra Dhammakaya, is definitely the center of a cult. But they don’t seem to have any end times or doomsday messages of which I’m aware.

        China has a horrific history with regard to Christian cults, accounting for at least 30-million deaths during the The Taiping Rebellion… one of the reasons the government comes down so hard on religious groups. “The Church of Almighty God”, no less, has been a nuisance in China since the 90s. They instigated riots in China in 2012 since the world was ending anyway (Mayan Prophesy), kidnap people from other cults, and have been known to beat people to death for refusing to be proselytized. It’s leaders have been living in New York since the world not ending in 2000.

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        • Well one thing is for sure. There are religious nuts everywhere, and they are sometimes dangerous. The Christian cults in China seem very dangerous. 30 million people killed, in the name of promoting Christ. Jesus!

          I think I’d convert if it was that or being beaten to death. But then I’d figure out how to get the hell out of that religion as quickly and safely as possible.

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