Is The End Of The World Near?

zenzoneforum.com

The self-proclaimed Doomsday prophet Harold Camping had predicted a May 21, 2011 date to be the End of the World when 200 million people will Rapture and the earth will be struck with series of violent natural disasters. Believers abandoned their careers and sold all their earthly belongings in preparation.

According to Camping, the prediction of the date was calculated using references in the Bible, particularly Genesis Genesis 7:4 (“Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth”) and 2 Peter 3:8 (“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”).

According to Camping, “God’s wrath was supposed to begin in New Zealand and then race across the globe, leaving millions of bodies wherever the clock struck 6 p.m. But the hours ticked by, and New Zealand survived. Time zone by time zone, the apocalypse failed to materialize.”

It’s worth noting that Camping made a similar prediction in 1994, which received little publicity. This time, however, the story headlined across newspapers around the globe because we are witnessing unparalleled wars and rumors of wars. The Middle East is in meltdown, Western nations are collapsing due to massive debt crises and the entire globe is being pummeled in an unprecedented wave of natural disasters.

The idea of an “the end of the world” no longer seems so far fetched in light of what we see happening today, but we still have to look to the Bible for our answers. Matthew 25:13 states that we cannot know the exact day or hour of Christ’s return—only the Father knows that. However, this doesn’t mean we can ignore the sign of the times.

In Matthew 24:3, Christ’s disciples asked Him for signs of His coming and of the “end of the world”— or the end of the rule of man. The disciples understood this as Christ returning and establishing the Kingdom of God on this Earth, headquartered in Jerusalem. Of course they didn’t have all the details, so they asked for signs of His return.