I've been hearing this stuff since I was a kid. A big boost in the end-time stories came with the invention of the Atomic Bomb. However, we all survived, and I'm still here. There was a big revival of end-time prophecies in the 1980s. I think '86 was supposed to be a bad year for the earth, but we survived that year too. In the late '60s all the leftists and hippies in San Francisco were predicting that by 1984, we in the US would all be living under "1984" (the novel) dictatorship conditions in the US. They said Nixon would be our new dictator and he never would leave office. But we're here now and Nixon's gone. Then I remember the prophecies about 2000. All electronics and machines were supposed to shut down, all our airplanes and power plants. But they didn't, and we're still here.

I don't know why people try to give specific dates and years for an end-time. As far as the end-time was concerned back in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, the end came for as many as 80 million people in Europe and the Orient because of fascism, and the end came for another 60 or more million because of communism.

But the rest of us are still here and things look ok to me.