At least we know when the end is coming
By: Donnie Johnston
Date published: 12/21/2007

OK, folks, we've got five years left.

That's right! Five years from today--Dec. 21, 2012--the world is scheduled to come to an end.

One doomsayer's opinion?

Oh, no. This is a consensus. OK, a consensus of two, but a consensus just the same.

According to the writings of Michel de Nostredame (better known as Nostradamus), the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012 (no specific hour or minute is given).

Some think the end will be the climax of a world war that will begin in 2008. Others believe the beginning of the end occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or the day America invaded Iraq.

But Nostradamus is not alone in his predictions. The ancient Mayan calendar, perfected long before the French physician and astrologer began writing his now famous quatrains, ends abruptly on the same date.

Scary!

OK, why Dec. 21, 2012? Why not Dec. 20 or Dec. 23?

According to astronomers, Dec. 21, 2012, is the day when our sun moves to the exact center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

What is the significance of that scientific fact? Does the sun and Earth slingshot off into some black hole when it reaches the center of the galaxy?

Even the most brilliant of scientists have no clue, but apparently the Mayans knew. And so did Nostradamus. Unfortunately, they are all dead.

If you believe Nostradamus and the Mayans, we are hell-bent for oblivion. The end is right around the corner so get your affairs in order.

This, of course, is not the first end-of-the-world prediction. Far from it. Since the birth of Christ, there have been at least 200 sure-fire dates on which the end would occur.

We, of course, are still here.

The two most celebrated end dates came roughly 150 years apart and both originated--where else?--in America.

In the early 1840s, a religious scholar named William Miller calculated, through biblical means, that the end of time would come in 1844.

According to historians, tens of thousands of people awaited the second coming of Christ on March 21 of that year.

When the end did not occur on that date, they set their sights on Oct. 22, 1844. Many actually did sell their worldly possession in anticipation of the end of the world. It did not occur.

Most of us recall the second end-of-the-world hysteria. In the two years leading up to the beginning of the 21st century there were millions of people who were absolutely sure it would be all over when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.

Some hoarded food and water and waited for the end that never came. It remains unclear whether these people were relieved or disappointed.

The 1844 movement, which became known as Millerism, was sure that Jesus would return on the predicted dates. The 1999 fanatics (this was the Y2K phenomenon) were far less religious in their outlooks.

They just believed that all computers would stop working at the stroke of midnight and that would lead to the failure of banks, power grids and other systems that were run by high technology.

Oh, yeah. There was one other thing. They also said that computers would launch nuclear warheads leading to world destruction. It was not God but computers gone awry that struck fear in them.

Like Y2K, God doesn't play into the Mayan's end-of-the-world prophesy. Apparently when the sun, which is the center of our solar system, hits the center of the Milky Way, Earth and everything on it is no more.

While Nostradamus perhaps saw a final apocalypse, the ancient Central America Indian culture, which some think was influenced by extraterrestrials, sees only an unexplainable void after Dec. 21, 2012.

Will the end occur then? Like the Miller prediction and Y2K, we can only wait and see.

I doubt that anyone will sell his worldly goods in anticipation of this event but a lot of folks may wait until Dec. 22 to buy their 2012 Christmas gifts.

And if they do buy them before the end date, they would be crazy not to charge their purchases instead of paying cash.

But then, what good would cash do you in a black hole?

Prepare yourself, for according to the Mayans and Nostradamus--two highly reliable sources--the clock is ticking.