There are many, many religions and not-the-full-picnic types that say that life on earth is getting worse and that we're heading for armageddon - usually as a precursor to trying to get you to buy into their beliefs 'before it's too late'. If you are tempted to believe them, have a read through the hundreds of predictions about our demise that have been circulating since at least 2300BC, which have fortunately come and gone without incident. http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm Interesting read. MelT
Rats! My apologies to everyone. I'm in the UK and the link works fine here (I just rang a friend over here and he got in no problem). Could anyone who *can* get in just drop a message here and let me know? If you don't mind, just to give a taster of the site I'll post a part of one of the pages here. The site is split into predictions from 4 different eras, I'll jst cut and paste those relevant to 2000 onwards. Sorry about the length of it, this is actually about a 10th of what's on the site: "2000 There's something about those three zeroes that makes 2000 a favorite year among doomsday prophets. But now that mysterious year, anticipated and wondered about for centuries, has slipped into realm of history. There are far too many doomsday predictions to list for 2000, but here are some of the more notable ones: Hal Lindsey, whose 1988 prediction failed, suggests the end in his recently published book, entitled Planet Earth - 2000 A.D. However, he leaves himself a face-saving outlet: "Could I be wrong? Of course. The Rapture may not occur between now and the year 2000." (Lindsey p.306) The beginning of Christ's Millennium according to some Mormon literature, such as the publication Watch and Be Ready: Preparing for the Second Coming of the Lord. The New Jerusalem will descend from the heavens in 2000, landing in Independence, Missouri. (McIver #3377, Skinner p.100) 19th century mystic Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, foresaw the end of the world in 2000. (Shaw p.83) Even Sir Isaac Newton was bitten by the millennium bug. He predicted that Christ's Millennium would begin in the year 2000 in his book Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. (Schwartz p.96) Ruth Montgomery predicts Earth's axis will shift and the Antichrist will reveal himself in 2000. (Kyle p.156, 195) The establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven, according to Rev. Sun Myung Moon. (Kyle p.148) The Second Coming, followed by a New Age, according to famed psychic Edgar Cayce. (Hanna p.219) The Second Coming, as forecasted in Ed Dobson's book The End: Why Jesus Could Return by A.D. 2000. The end of the world according to Lester Sumrall in his book I Predict 2000. (Abanes p.99, 341) The tribulation is to occur before the year 2000, said Gordon Lindsay, founder of the Christ for the Nations Ministry. (Abanes p.280) According to a series of lectures given by Shoko Asahara in 1992, 90% of the world's population would be annihilated by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by the year 2000. (Thompson p.262) One of the earliest predictions for the year 2000 was made by Petrus Olivi in 1297. He wrote that the Antichrist would come to power between 1300 and 1340, and the Last Judgement would take place around 2000. (Weber p.54) According to American Indian spiritual leader Sun Bear, the end of the world would come in the year 2000 if the human race didn't shape up. (Abanes p.307) 18th century fire-and-brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards concluded that Christ's thousand-year reign would begin in 2000. (Weber p.171) The world will be devastated by AIDS in the year 2000, according to Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Afterwards, the world will be rebuilt by a peaceful matriarchal society. (Robbins p.164) William Kamm, aka Little Pebble, is the leader of the Australian doomsday cult Order of St. Charbel, predicts that a comet will destroy the Earth before the dawn of the new millennium. Fundamentalist conspiracy advocate Texe Marrs stated that the last days could "wrap up by the year 2000." (Abanes p.311) Members of the Stella Maris Gnostic Church, a Colombian doomsday cult, went into Colombia's Sierra Nevada mountains over the weekend of July 3-4, 1999, weekend to be picked up by a UFO that would save them from the end of the world, which is to take place at the turn of the millennium. The cult members have disappeared. Perhaps they were picked up by aliens! (Source: BBC News). A radical apocalyptic sect emerged in early 18th century France: the Convulsionaries. One of the members, Jacques-Joseph Duguet, anticipated the Parousia in 2000. (Kyle p.192) Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), President of Yale University, foresaw the Millennium starting by 2000. (Kyle p.81) Martin Luther looked at 2000 as a possible end-time date, before finally settling on 1600. (Kyle p.192) Sukyo Mahikari, a Japanese cult, preaches that the world might be destroyed in a "baptism of fire" by 2000. (Source: ABC News) A Vietnamese cult headed by Ca Van Lieng predicted an apocalyptic flood for 2000. But doomsday came much earlier for the cult members: he and his followers committed mass suicide in October 1993. (Source: Cult Observer archives) Before the end of 1999, Hon-Ming Chen of the 30-member cult Chen Tao began backpedalling on his prediction of a nuclear holocaust and UFO rescue by December 31. Now Doomsday has been rescheduled to sometime "in the next year," according to cult spokesman Richard Liu. (St. Cloud Times, Dec. 26, 1999) Sometime in 2000 ("either a few days or a few months away," according to this Sep. 12, 2000 CNN article) the End of Days will take place, say members of a Mormon-based cult near the Utah-Arizona border. Hundreds of memmbers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have pulled their kids out of school' in preparation for the Big Day. Jan 1, 2000 January 1, 2000. Jesus did not descend from the heavens. President Clinton did not declare himself dictator-for-life. The Antichrist did not rise to power. Nuclear missiles were not launched. Aircraft did not fall out of the sky. The global economy did not collapse. Terrorist bombs did not explode. The power did not go out. My computer still works. What we did have were some huge parties, spectacular fireworks displays, a Barry Manilow concert, head-splitting hangovers, lots of confetti to clean up, and some embarrassed survivalists who had spent their New Years holed up in armed fortresses when they could have been partying in Times Square. Y2K!! Compounding people's apocalyptic hopes and fears for 2000 was a technological problem that came to be known as Y2K. This problem was hyped by the media, preachers, doomsayers and the authors of a myriad Y2K preparedness books as something that promised to bring the world to a catastrophic standstill. But thanks to the diligent efforts of programmers, governments and companies throughout the world, the bite of the "Y2K bug" turned out to be mostly harmless. There were a few minor glitches here and there, but nothing serious. The fundamentalists who claimed that Y2K is all part of God's plan or that the Antichrist would use Y2K to seize power have been proven wrong! In the aftermath of this ultimate disconfirmation many of them have tried to salvage their dignity by saying "Just you wait! It's only the beginning of the end!" To the Y2K doomsayers I smugly say, "I told you so!" Here's an interesting article about the combination of Y2K with mystical expectations. In the honored tradition of the "comet pills" of 1910, many hucksters took advantage of people's Y2K fears to reap a tidy doomsday profit by selling survival gear. Now all those who "stocked up for Y2K" will have to figure out what to do with all those packets of freeze-dried food, bottles of water, gasoline generators, wood-burning stoves and shotgun shells. For an example of the extent that Y2K doomsday paranoia can grip someone, take a gander at Gary North's page. In your face, Gary!!! The Christian apocalyptic cult House of Prayer, headed by one Brother David, expected Christ to descend onto the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem on this day. The Israeli government recently kicked them out of the country in a preemptive strike against potentially violent doomsday nutcases who may attempt to catalyze the Apocalypse through terrorist acts such as blowing up the Dome of the Rock. John WorldPeace sent this post to Usenet, claiming that the failure of Jesus to return on January 1 will lead to the people of the world finally abandoning war and hatred as foolish pursuits and instead embracing peace, love and tolerance. Wouldn't it be great if he were right? Bobby Bible, a 60-year-old fundamentalist, believed that Jesus would descend from Heaven at the stroke of midnight in Jerusalem and rapture his church. A Philippine cult called Tunnels of Salvation taught that the world would end on January 1. The cult's guru, Cerferino Quinte, claimed that the world would be destroyed in an "all consuming rain of fire" on January 1. (I guess his prediction came partially true: there were plenty of fireworks going off around the world that night.) In order to survive the world's destruction, the cult members built an elaborate series of tunnels where he had stockpiled a year's worth of supplies for 700 people. CESNUR) UK native Ann Willem spent the New Year in Israel, expecting to be raptured by Jesus on New Year's Day. "It didn't happen the way it was supposed to," she said of the failure of the Rapture to take place. (USA Today p.5A, 1/3/00) Jerry Falwell foresaw God pouring out his judgement on the world on New Year's Day. According to Falwell, God "may be preparing to confound our language, to jam our communications, scatter our efforts, and judge us for our sin and rebellion against his lordship. We are hearing from many sources that January 1, 2000, will be a fateful day in the history of the world." Happy New Year! (Christianity Today, Jan. 11, 1999) Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the bestselling Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, expected the Y2K bug to trigger global economic chaos, which the Antichrist would use to rise to power. As the big day approached, they, like other doomsayers, backpedalled. (Source: Washington Post) Jan 16, 2000 Religious scholar Dr. Marion Derlette (.pdf link) claims the world is to end on January 16, according to an article in Weekly World News. This event is to occur after a series of natural and manmade catastrophes starting in 1997, and will be followed by an era of paradise on Earth. (This date is shown as January 6, 2000 in Richard Abanes' book End-Time Visions.) (Abanes p.43) Feb 11, 2000 On his broadcast on the morning of Feburary 7, 2000, televangelist Kenneth Copeland claimed that a group of scientists and scholars (he gave no specifics) studied the Bible in great detail and determined that Feb 11 would be the last day of the 6000th year since Creation, a date when the Apocalypse would presumably happen. Copeland did not imply he believed this to be accurate, though, but he went on to say that the Rapture will come soon."
You could be right. I was just posting something I thought people might find an interesting read whilst stoned. There must be a mention of dope in there somewhere though...yeah....yep there it is....right there - page 325, '...and in the End of Days people will start getting waaaay too picky on the Weed forums....' See, I knew it was relevant somehow. MelT
