Run for your lives! The world is ending in 2012!!!

That's right friends, the clock is ticking, the days of all of us inhabiting this 3rd rock from the sun are numbered indeed! It's time to cash in your 401k's, quit work and support what other guilty pleasures you want to enjoy with credit cards of any interest rate because the dooms day predictors have given us the final verdict (again): an asteroid is going to hit earth creating total devastation and nothing but a bit of space rubble will remain where this planet once lay.

This is a fact! The comet's name: Nibiru
Time of impact: precisely 11:11pm (EST of course) on December 21, 2012.
How have they determined, with such incredible accuracy, the time and sequences of these events critical to our existence, nay, our annihilation? The way all other great, accurate, rock solid science is done: through a complex-yet-seemingly-obvious-mixture of quoting random verses and quatrains from Sacred Christian and Hindu scriptures, adding/subtracting/dividing/square rooting the numbers found in above stated random scriptures, and by combining the sum total of these answers with incredibly loosely interpreted quatrains from that great-and-deadly-accurate-seer-of-all-historical-events: Nostradamus.

Think I'm joking. I'm not. In fact, you can all consider this my letter of resignation, I am moving to the Maldives to live out the rest of my existence with exotic sea-nymphs, swimming off the coast with spider monkeys.

Actually, I am joking, but the fact that people are seriously talking about this is not a joke. This morning, a concerned father of one of the boys I work with as a 'youth environmentalist' called me asking for advice on how to counsel his son who refused to do his homework last night because 'if the world is going to end in 2012, what does it matter anyway'?
Think it's just young boys who are believing this?
It's not.
The morning conversation jogged my memory of how just one week ago, I was sitting at a table of grown adults and one man threw out, in all seriousness, the news that the world is supposed to end in 2012. Think it's just a handful of people believing this?
It's not.
If you take a minute to check, this is all over the internet, and we all believe everything Al Gore tells us on the internet, don't we? Just google '2012' and you'll see what I mean. Sights like
survive2012.com
december122012.com
and many, many more describe in surprising seriousness and detail what will happen. Some of them differ in the 'how' (some say Nibiru will collide with earth, others say it will change the earth's rotation), but they all agree on the 'when': 11:11pm (EST) 12.20.12.

So, that settles it, we're doomed. That is, unless, you'd like to consider the other couple times people have predicted the end of the world and were wrong about it. Oh, and by the way, when I write 'a couple' I mean more than 220 times people have wrongly attempted the apocalypse.
Here's a few:

• By the year 1984, Jehovah's Witnesses held the record for the most wrong doomsday predictions. The Witnesses record is currently holding at nine for the incorrectly predicted years: 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1984. After nine failures they claimed they were out of the prediction business
• 1998: a Taiwanese cult operating out of Garland Texas predicted Christ would return on Mar, 31 of 1998. The reason the Taiwanese group claimed Jesus would begin the second coming in Garland is because it sounds like "God land". However, the group abandoned their second coming prediction because of a certain detail: the cult's leader said that, before Jesus’ return, God would appear on every channel 18 of every TV in the world, but realized at the last minute, the Playboy Network was channel 18 on several cable systems, and God would not want to have Christians watching a porn channel.
• After promising themselves they would not make any more end time predictions, the Jehovah's Witnesses fell off the wagon and proclaimed 1994 as the end, saying their initial calculations were wrong.

Yup, their intial calculations were wrong, so were their new ones. All of them were, in fact, even the loose interpreters of 'the great' Nostradamus told us twice before the 'precise' year the world was going to end, once in 1999, and then they were bold enough to say 'we meant 2000'.

We know what you meant, you were still wrong.

Fact is, seems we all have a morbid fascination with the end of the world. I say 'morbid' because we are fascinated about it, but in a creepy way, like, 'why would we be excited about that? It's not going to be any fun if a comet struck our planet or changed it's rotation.' And, after all, why are we so thick-headed and slow to realize that any 'prophet' who says he or she knows 'when' the end is coming doesn't know enough to keep his mouth closed.

The reality is, all of our lives will end some day. 10 out of every 10 persons die. Seems like we better find a more worthy reason to live than worrying about when the end will come. This is a beautiful, sometimes scary planet to live on with a lot of noble but sometimes scared people to share it with. Instead of trying to peer into the future in futility, I've found incredible comfort, friendship, and truth from a person who 2000 years in the past said...

"I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full."

He has helped me reconcile my past, enjoy my present, and face the future.

BTW, for the record, I don't even know what a sea-nymph is.

Asking if Obama is the 'anti-christ' is not just ignorant, it's wrong

You may have never heard anyone ask that question, but I'm acquainted with many church going people who, in either direct conversation with me or whom I've overheard in passing, have posed it. May I respectfully and in gentleness direct you to stop?

I am a follower of Jesus. I realize that stating that publicly brings a certain weight and responsibility along with it: people expect something of me, for me to carry myself with a certain dignity and respect--for self and others. May I add, that, if you're a follower of Jesus, people are expecting those things of you too? One piece of scripture states that, as Christians we are to 'let our gentleness be evident to all.' (Phil. 4:5) Far too many times and in far too many circles, Christians have become known for being cruel, insensitive, and appearing at least a little ignorant.

Take for example those who claim to follow Jesus but also picket gay pride parades carrying placards that read 'God hates fags'. I have never heard one account of a person marching in a gay pride parade walking up to a 'christian' holding such a sign and saying 'I want to know the God you serve. You exude this sort of gentleness and kindness that I'm just magnetized towards'. It doesn't happen because statements like that are not only wrong (I would challenge you to find anywhere in Scripture that states 'God hates fags'), but also unhelpful to all.

Near to that gaff in tone and theology is the question 'do you think Obama is the anti-Christ?' or 'isn't Obama the anti-christ'? It's wrong in tone because, last I checked, a followers of Jesus are to 'not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another...' (Eph. 4:29, 31-32a) How does asking if Obama is the 'anti-christ' build anyone up? I'm sure it wouldn't build up our president if you asked him. I'm sure it doesn't build up those who voted for him. How is it kind and compassionate? It's not, the tone of the question itself sounds far from the heart of Jesus.

But it's also just plain ignorant. To be 'ignorant' means 'to be lacking in knowledge', also 'to be uninformed.' A person who makes such a statement, albeit in the form of a question, is ignorant because it shows that a person who claims to be a Bible believing Christian it simply not reading their Bible. Scripture plainly tells us that the 'anti-christ' will deny 'that Jesus is the Christ--he denies the Father and the Son.' (1 John 2:22) Obama has been a follower of Jesus for over 2 decades. I remember seeing a clip of him stumping in the election stating that he spends time 'every night, praying to Jesus.' Aristotle might have looked at it this way:
1) The anti-christ will deny that Jesus is the Christ.
2) President Obama does not deny that Jesus is the Christ.
3) President Obama is not the 'anti-christ'

There, that wasn't so hard now was it?

Who's to say, but might it be that at the bottom of the question isn't a sincere theological concern about the anti-christ, but rather some bitterness that that party we may have voted for isn't in office? Or maybe Barack doesn't fit neatly into the box that other Leaders who are Christians do? I don't know, but I know that, if we have a relationship with Jesus, it would probably benefit more from us getting rid of any bitterness, anger, slander, and every form of malice than it does from us engaging in 'theology' worthy of the National Enquirer.