The end is nigh, apparently.

[Sola]

We're doomed, DOOMED I tell you!

I was on FJ on my pad this morning when I noticed an ad at the top of the page. My desktop has an ad blocker so I don't normally see them, but my pad doesn't.

The ad was for the-end.com, warning us that 2008 was God's last warning and 2012 is the year the shit hits the fan...

Well of course I HAD to click it, which led me to a site full of prophesies by the self title prophet Ronald Weinland - yes he really does think that he is a prophet.

Oh my. What can I say? I'll give you some excerpts instead and let those do the talking.

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

Umm, ok.

The end-time has come. Hundreds of millions will die in the worst time of tribulation the world has ever known. You need to be informed so you can know how to respond.

Told you. We're doomed.

He has two books which you can download (free) if you so desire.

the-end.com/Download_Free_Book.asp

There are more witterings at his personal website:

ronaldweinland.com

And of course there is a church:

cog-pkg.org

Oh and just so you know that he is oh so reliable and absolutely must be believed, it looks like he is being busted for tax evasion http://ronaldweinland.info/falseprophet ... true-bill/

Enjoy.

[Maul the Koala]

Oh damn it. I still have a lot of debauchery to commit and I'm not sure I can get it done by May 27th. Time to start working overtime! Hookers, blackjack and blow anyone?

[Cran]

Oh no. All this endtime-prophecy gets me in a twist.

Why are Christians so fond of predicting the end f the world with dates, when the bible clearly states that nobody knows the day and the hour, only the father? So all speculation about this topic is null and void.

But as they do not study history, they can't learn from the mistakes - meaning, all the false prophecies telling the world will end soon, running rampant in Christian circles since 33 AD.

[darareaksmey]

Sounds like he is trying to pick up on Harold Camping's old fans.

[samurai_sarah]

Is he just trying to stick it to the Mayans? Like, my deity will end the world sooner than your calendar will?

Oh, well, last orders at the bar? Again...

[crassy]

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

Well this is unacceptable! True Blood doesn't start until June and Assassin's Creed III doesn't come out until October. I forbid the world to end until those two things have been completed.

Though I do have a particularly nasty exam on the 28th so I may or may not be ok with missing that.

[penguinagogo]

the end is nigh

highly nigh

[alysee]

Hmmm..the 27th isn't going to work for me. My best friends 25th birthday is the 29th and we'd both be pissed if we couldn't hang out...although if we're both going to hell we could always hang out!

[pomology]

Aw man. That's the day before I graduate from college! What a waste. All this work for nothing...

[Sola]

Oh damn it. I still have a lot of debauchery to commit and I'm not sure I can get it done by May 27th. Time to start working overtime! Hookers, blackjack and blow anyone?

I know, me too! I'm going to have to work hard to make sure I get all that debauchery in before 27th May. Looks like we will have a busy month; what with all the gay abortion parties that Tabby says we're having and now I've got to add in some perversions and drug taking too.

It's going to be a tough month. :lol:

[Grania]

I only ever get ads by telephone companys and insurances on fj. What am I doing wrong?

[ohpotteryourotter]

Ever noticed the end of the world always comes in May?

[Arielkay]

Time to run up your credit cards!

[mirele]

Sounds like he is trying to pick up on Harold Camping's old fans.

Actually, he's trying to pick up fans of the late Herbert W. Armstrong (founder of the Worldwide Church of God).

[margiebargie]

Lol. My inlaws love this stuff. I guess I can expect some end-of-world spam. They sit around and talk about the end and how they're going to prepare for it. I always shrug my shoulders and say "when you're numbers up, your numbers up". They hate that. I guess they'd like me to be more frightened.

My husband, unfortunately, has absorbed some of the silliness. He keeps talking about the Mayan calendar and how the "Maya" disappeared. I recently read "collapse" by jered diamond. According to that the Mayan population was decimated due to agricultural problems, war, disease. That theory is actually supported by, you know, evidence. Not as exciting as some cosmic flimflam I guess. I'm such a buzz kill.

[Artemis]

The thing is that sooner or later the world IS going to end. They just keep hoping they will be right!

So what dates do we have for Armageddon so far?

May 27th?

December 21st?

Any others? I suppose it if does, at least those of us still alive at this moment get a ringside seat - so what I would like to know is who's bringing the popcorn?

[Burris]

It's fuckin' RANT TIME!

Fuck him, and fuck all the lying prognosticators who claim to know the mind of God and wish for the world to end.

Let me tell you a story:

The Marianas Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean, is deeper than Mount Everest is tall. For the first time in over 50 years, a man – the first ever to have made the journey alone – braved the unrelenting pressure of these amazing depths so that he might take 3D photographs in the basement of the world. With help from National Geographic, which plans to collaborate on a documentary about the Marianas Trench, well-known producer James Cameron risked his own life to record a part of the Earth – our only home - few people will ever see.

And there, 3500 feet below sea level, Cameron found life – life growing on a surface as alien as the moon. He claims to have felt detached from the rest of humanity – and indeed, he was. No matter what happened above during his time in the trench, it was highly unlikely to affect him while he remained so deep.

This happened about a month ago. When the story began appearing on sites such as this ond, the comment sections were hijacked by a bunch of trolls who bitched about how unfair it was that an atheist should explore that trench; that such an amazing opportunity weren't left for a more 'gawd-fearing' man. Never-mind that Cameron and National Geographic bankrolled this, or that Cameron actually designed the sub he used to explore the trench: Someone else deserved it more because they are willing to mouth platitudes about God. (So much for the capitalism some of these whitewashed tombs idolize).

Granted, most of us to not have access to the same resources as Cameron does, but that should in no way diminish our curiosity or place severe limits around what we can do – e.g., buying a microscope set – to learn more about the natural world.

The natural world! The world we were allegedly given charge over, that we might work the land and be good stewards of its bounty.

I am of the minority opinion, here: I think people who believe in God should fear it – not because it's malign, but merely because it's omnipotent. Imagine a being – and of course the atheists believe that's really all we're doing – that could dismantle the Earth, atom by atom, so quickly that humanity has yet to develop a measure for such a short span of time; and then reassemble the planet and all its inhabitants mid-spin. Or, to bring it closer to home, imagine a scenario where you're looking out your front window when – BAM – it simply...changes locations. Right before your eyes, and for no earthly reason, this window has now moved to another wall.

The God Christians believe in can do these things, and they'd be mere parlor tricks for a creature that may look all the way back in time, and forward as well, only to meet itself there (as literally the Alpha and the Omega) – a being so ancient that our universe is merely one of many it has made; that it has already seen, more than once, the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years it takes for a universe to die. And that it has seen many of these occurrences, perhaps, as some scientists believe, so that new universes might bud from the old.

Mark Whittle, a professor of cosmology at the University of Virginia, tried during one of his lectures to give students an idea of how big our existing universe is, and also to settle them on the idea of how quickly it's expanding -- literally falling outward as the result of dark matter's mysterious properties.

He told his students to imagine they were colossal giants, taking million light-year strides across the universe, hour by hour. According to him, no matter how far they walked at that speed, all they would find around them is a “mist of galaxies†with no end in sight.

He also said another thing: That our universe, at its youngest, was “ringing with sound†- actual sound “between a note and a noise†- loudly, but about 50 decibels below our range of hearing.

People who read the Bible both literally and figuratively might be wont to identify that sound – that single note, lasting 300 000 years – as a word. The Word that started it all.

That is the God of this world; of its deepest parts, where we were meant to explore and where life, improbable though it may seem, can thrive, having been given the necessary tools through 50 million years of adaptation.

The prophets of old were not fortune-tellers - at least not generally; they spoke not so much about the future but about the present age and the cruelty of it. They warned people to care for the weak, lest the strong be overcome by empires even stronger than their own. They warned the wealthy not to oppress the poor, lest the wealthy should be taken into captivity, as they were taken to Babylon while the poorest remained behind to till the land.

A modern prophet would never dare predict the end of this magnificent world - or, in the very least, he or she would never be so bold as to date it when the Bible is so clear on that very subject.

The world, yes this very one, and they'd see it destroyed over their petty, insignificant political squabbles.

Gnats! Liars!

[ElphabaGalinda]

Did it say what time the world would end on May 27? Because I have tickets to see Rent that day with my sister and no way am I missing that.

I'm really looking forward to hearing what this so called prophet says on May 28 when the world hasn't ended.

[Sweetpea1]

Yippee. I have time for a party - a BIG party.

[sassyNoz47]

It's giving me the option now of which add I want to see. One is the end of the world 2012.. the other is how to get a on-line degree of ministry. Really??? The last is about watch this be a witness?

When I was a teen we had neighbors that went to a church in town that was able to convince everyone at the church the world would end that yr I think in April. The church members went so far as to selling thier houses and giving all the money to the church gave everything else away and everyone from the church after selling homes stayed in the basement of the church. Well the end didn't come and a whole lot of people were homeless. I couldn't believe the neighbors fell for it . No idea what ever happened to them.

[mirele]

Jesus has been coming back for almost as long as he's been gone. Some scholars believe Paul thought Jesus was going to return in his lifetime, as in "Very Soon Now, y'hear?"

13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4)

1 Thessalonians is considered (for the most part) an authentic writing of Paul's and, likely the first New Testament document written (usually dated to 52 CE or thereabouts).

I do not think Paul or any of the other New Testament writers had a conception in their heads that 2000 years would pass and Jesus would not have returned. They really did think Jesus was going to come back soon. It's only as time passed that the statements about making do until he comes started creeping into the later New Testament letters. I could go into a whole disquisition into this, but I'd have to dig out the books and I have to sign off so I can do some paying work. I'm thinking some FJites have this information at the tips of their fingers and can write on it voluminously (at least I'm hoping so).

[Sola]

It's fuckin' RANT TIME!

Fuck him, and fuck all the lying prognosticators who claim to know the mind of God and wish for the world to end.

Let me tell you a story:

The Marianas Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean, is deeper than Mount Everest is tall. For the first time in over 50 years, a man – the first ever to have made the journey alone – braved the unrelenting pressure of these amazing depths so that he might take 3D photographs in the basement of the world. With help from National Geographic, which plans to collaborate on a documentary about the Marianas Trench, well-known producer James Cameron risked his own life to record a part of the Earth – our only home - few people will ever see.

And there, 3500 feet below sea level, Cameron found life – life growing on a surface as alien as the moon. He claims to have felt detached from the rest of humanity – and indeed, he was. No matter what happened above during his time in the trench, it was highly unlikely to affect him while he remained so deep.

Completely off topic but coincidentally, just five minutes ago I finished reading an article on this very subject in the BBC's Science Focus magazine. It was on about how Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard were the only two people who had managed to get right to the very bottom of the Marianas Trench in the 1960s and how now there are several teams involved in designing a craft capable of withstanding the pressure. The article I read was a couple of months out of date so I didn't realise that Cameron had succeeded recently. I'll have to take a look at Nat Geo.

But yeah, bringing it back on topic. There have been 'prophets' (or should that be Profits) who have fleeced people dry over the so called second coming since the day after Jesus was bloody well crucified. And there is never any shortage of sheeple to be fleeced either.

[deelaem]

Don't these godbags ever get tired of being wrong?

[PBrooke]

Thankfully I'm not really surrounded by people who put any stock into the Mayan thing, though it's long been a joke in my household - "Of course the world isn't going to end in 2000, it's going to end in 2012. Everyone knows that." But seriously, don't any of these people remember the hub-bub over the year 2000? The people who stockpiled stuff? Heck, we even had the Y2K bug, something that even sounded plausible as a way to cause major destruction exactly as the clock flipped over past midnight. And, of course, nothing happened.

[ladypuglover]

Nope, can't do it in May, sorry. I have my Marine nephew and his son coming in for a visit before he is deployed again, I have my 3rd son's graduation and party, I have my in-laws coming to torment the hell out of me, my niece is coming up, gotta get #3 ready for camp where he works, My wedding Anniversary is the day after and have to get the 2 younger ones into summer mode of swim lessons, sports, summer camps and so forth. I also need to get the dogs their shots, summer meds and groomed.

Nope, I'm too busy in May so they have to pick another time. How about the the middle of Never?