By TERRY CUMMINS
There’s no getting around it, the world is coming to an end. There are so many things on my mind like balancing my budget and the Super Bowl, I can’t be worried whether the world will end with a doomsday or the rapture. Most everything has two sides. We choose a religion, a liberal or conservative stance and diet or regular. Look inside a home, perhaps your own. The wife wants a new carpet, the husband insists on hardwood. The wife accuses of her husband of having a hardhead, so he backs his car out of the garage and hits a tree. Preparing for end times requires a choice.
We can’t agree on anything, including how the world will end. Looking at the facts, doomsday people base their end-times theory on man’s abusing the earth; the rapture faction supports prophecy found in the word. Most believers don’t hate scientists, but are not real friendly with them. Take the evolution-creation fight. If God created man through evolution, why did it take so long when it was a six-day job? Scientists don’t shun believers, although they’ve proved rapture is aerodynamically impossible. So if you are concerned, there are two choices, eliminate nuclear weapons or pray.
It’s serious. The doomers keep a Doomsday Clock; rapture scientists keep a Rapture Index. Prior to the Internet, the average Joe was in the dark. Now, you can track how much time you have before being blown to bits, or lifted up. The Rapture Ready Web site tracks the latest developments, like the wake-up call to Haiti. Stay tuned and logged.
The doom clock is ticking, and was recently moved back one minute, which provides a bit more time to get dressed for oblivion. With midnight being the end, the Doomsday Clock now stands at 11:54 p.m., which gives you six minutes. Just kidding, the clock is a gauge of international events dangerous to mankind, particularly the use of nuclear weapons. Climate change technologies and new life sciences including nanotechology are other worries. There are approximately 23,000 nuclear weapons on earth. Set off one and it’s the second Big Bang. How long will it be before terrorists have the science? What better way to be the martyr of all martyrs than to hide nukes in skivvies and walk up Wall Street and Main Streets? The present war over health care for all would end.
There are several Biblical references to the end time. Matthew gave warning in chapter 24: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, people were eating and drinking, marrying up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in a field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women grinding with a hand mill; and one will be taken and the other left.”
I’m married, in a field with a friend and we’ve been eating and drinking. I have a 50/50 chance or less if I attend a fundamentalist Church of Science. I do know that if we get a long rainy spell, I’m looking for an ark.
If it’s doomsday or rapture we caused it. Is there a middle ground? No, you’re either on one side or the other. So it boils down to faith and belief? That’s about it.
I do believe man is nuts at times, and that nuclear proliferation could cause the end. Is climate change a threat? Emission of enough carbon gases could cause warming, which can cause flooding. It happened at least once when people were eating, drinking and marrying.
Speaking of marriage, it was my intention to write about another problem. (For various reasons, wish I had.) When a man and a woman, each owning a dog, get married, the two dogs should be loving and compatible. But if they despise each other, bark and snap at each other, then the marriage is headed for a doomsday, unless one of the dogs is raptured away.
The word is we should love God and our neighbors, which shouldn’t be all that complicated. Whatever course we choose, either way goes back to self-destruction.
