We dodged an apocalyptic bullet a few days ago. The number of years of Jesus’ life and the number of times the Bible mentions “Elohim” (the other name for God) are both 33. Count 33 days from the date of the solar eclipse, and you get September 23! There you go—end of the world.

You want a second opinion? No problem: the eclipse was on the 21st of August, hurricane Harvey began on the 25th, and flooding started on the 26th. Use those numbers to point to Luke 21:25–26:

There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

How much more evidence do you want that the End will come last week? You just can’t argue with science—though you can certainly argue with numerology, wishful thinking, and whatever other nonsense is behind this argument.

Time to bring in an expert

End times prediction is strangely attractive to some apologists (I’ve written more here and here). It’s a shiny thing to a baby. Ray Comfort has made a movie about our own imminent end (“Noah and the Last Days”), and it has that je ne sais quoi that only Ray can provide. Or maybe it’s WTF.

Ray gives ten New Testament passages that make clear that we’re in the end times. “The end of the age is happening now,” he says. Let’s take a look to see if we can see it as clearly as Ray can.

He begins with 2 Peter 2:1–3:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

Yes, there are lots of false prophets in our time—Hal Lindsey vaguely predicted the end in 2000, Harold Camping in 2011, Ronald Weinland in 2013, John Hagee in 2015, and there have been others. But don’t imagine that naively idiotic prophecies are a recent thing. There’s the Great Disappointment of 1844. And the many failed predictions by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is no sign of the end. These Christian doomsday prophets have always been with us.

And now Ray Comfort is yet another prophet. Give us a specific date, Ray, so we know when to add you to the false prophets list. But be careful: the passage you just gave us says that God will judge these liars like he judged the wicked people he drowned in the Flood.

On to Ray’s next verse of what to look for in the end times:

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. (Matthew 24:7)

Yes, there are wars, but no more now than in the past. The incidence of famine and pestilence is far less today (no thanks to Christianity), and science is helping predict earthquakes and make cities more resilient. This argues against Ray’s claim. And the movie itself was shot in tourist areas of Southern California, with beautiful blue sky and palm trees (not desolation and death), a poor location to make the claim that social conditions are going downhill.

Next up:

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. (Acts 2:20)

Consider the context of this verse. The disciples were gathered for the feast of Pentecost, shortly after Jesus had returned to heaven, and the Holy Spirit descended on them. They all spoke in tongues, and passersby marveled that each could hear God praised in their own language. In this verse from Acts, Peter is explaining that this was a fulfillment of a prophecy from Joel.

Now consider the entire quotation (2:17–21). Joel was listing what will happen in the last days, and Peter said that this visitation of the Holy Spirit indicated that Joel’s clues to the end were happening at that moment. Yes, the sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood, but it will happen in the time of Peter and the apostles.

Another fail, Ray. You’ve really got to read these things more carefully.

There will be terrible times in the last days. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers . . . (2 Timothy 3:1–2)

Ray’s focus here is naughty words used in movies. I’ll grant that there are more R-rated movies now than centuries ago, but this seems a tiny point to put in a Top Ten list. And he’s concerned about f-bombs in movies but not concerned about the insane violence in Passion of the Christ? I’d rather have a society comfortable with rude words than violence.

It was the same in the days of Lot. . . . But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:28–30)

Ray interprets this as an increase in the acceptance of (shudder!) homosexuality.

You know you live in strange times when the atheist has to explain to the Christian what Bible passages mean. No, Ray, that’s not what we’re talking about here. The point is suddenness. The wicked people during Noah’s time were going about life as usual and were caught unawares by the Flood. The people in Sodom were surprised by the hail of destruction. The section continues with admonitions against going back to your house for your stuff when the end comes—just run for safety.

Yes, we’re more accepting of homosexuality. No, that’s not what this passage is about. In fact, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 isn’t even about homosexuality (more).

Finish up Ray Comfort’s Kant-Fail® Signs of the End in part 2.

If you’re a “Bible prophecy scholar,”
then everything is a sign of the End Times—
eclipses, earthquakes, floods, droughts, Wednesdays, dandelions,
war in the Middle East, peace in the Middle East,
Middle Eastern restaurants in the Midwest. . . .
— slactivist

 (This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/14/14.)

Image credit: Ben Sutherland, flickr, CC

We live in strange times. 41 percent of Americans say that Jesus will definitely or probably return by 2050, and 38 percent believe that natural disasters are signs from God. For white evangelicals, those fractions are 58 percent and 59 percent, respectively.
What accounts for this fascination with the end times? Dr. Robert Price commented on one element of popular culture, the Left Behind novels that wallow in the horror of a post-rapture world. Price sees this as Christian porn. Fans of the series can read in those novels what they’d like to read in the newspaper. They’re eager for Armageddon, and they see themselves as the good guy in the book.
Crying wolf
A larger factor that fuels this anxiety is Christian personalities who point to every bit of bad news as evidence that things are going to hell and that Armageddon is around the corner. These guys never met a natural disaster they didn’t like. Jerry Falwell wondered “whether the crisis in the Middle East is actually a prelude to the end of the world.” Glenn Beck said that the recent story of a Syrian rebel eating a human heart is a sign of the end times. Pat Robertson said that the 5.8 magnitude Virginia earthquake of 2011 was another sign. Oh, and security cameras, too.
Jesus gave this advice about the end times:

When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. … Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places. (Luke 21:9–11)

The gospel of Mark adds that these signs are “the beginning of birth pains.”
The Pat Robertsons of the world will ask, Do you hear about wars and earthquakes in the news? Well there you go—that matches what the Bible predicted. What more evidence do you need? And if you say that there have always been wars and earthquakes, they quote 2 Peter 3:3, “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.” John Hagee interpreted this immunity to the facts: “The very fact that you don’t believe [Jesus] is coming is proof positive he’s on the way!”
But let’s return to reason. For this prophecy to stand out, it can’t be referring simply to disasters, because there’s always a baseline amount of war and natural disasters. It’s about a substantial increase of those things, and we’re not seeing that today.
War, earthquake, famine, and pestilence, oh my!
First, let’s put to rest worries about increasing pestilence. Science has made gains against disease that would have been inconceivable just a few centuries ago. Sewer and clean water systems, vaccines, and antibiotics have altered life dramatically in much of the world, no thanks to God. Smallpox, killer of half a billion people in the 20th century alone, is only a memory, and polio and guinea worm may soon be gone as well. While cancer and influenza still exist, we’ve made great progress against them. The trend is positive here.
Famines in India and China killed millions of people a century ago. Food distribution isn’t perfect today, but modern technology has increased crop yields so that widespread famine is almost impossible. (More on the relative value of magic vs. technology here.)
As for natural disasters like earthquakes, we can’t control them, but for many, we have advanced warning. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which caught the city off guard and killed perhaps 10,000 people, could not happen today. We also have warnings for tornadoes and tsunamis.
Famously wrong end-times prophet Hal Lindsey said, “To the skeptic who says that Christ is not coming soon, I would ask him to put the book of Revelation in one hand, and the daily newspaper in the other, and then sincerely ask God to show him where we are on His prophetic time-clock.” Like Harold Camping, or John Hagee, some people just won’t look at the facts and realize that they predict the future no better than a palm reader.
 (What about war? I discuss Steven Pinker’s surprising conclusions about violence in Part 2.)

If you listen closely 
you can hear the footstep of Messiah 
shuffling through the clouds of heaven.
— John Hagee

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/10/13.)
Photo credit: Amazon