The cover story of the current TIME Magazine deals with the end times, the Bible, and apocalyptic prophecy.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/story.html

Not surprisingly, the popular "Left Behind" books and movies are prominently featured, with all their 'rapture at any moment' theology intact, wherein saved Christians will all disappear, leaving everyone else behind to wonder where they all went.

One passage from the article's third page particularly caught my eye:

quote:

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Miller knows people who have prepared Bibles with the relevant passages indexed about what will occur during the Tribulation, so that their left-behind friends and relatives will know to prepare for the earthquakes and locusts and scorpions: when "the sun became as black as sackcloth and the moon became as blood." After a while, sightings of the Antichrist come naturally: when U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan tells the World Economic Forum that globalization is the best hope to solve the world's problems, when the forum floats the idea of a "united nations of major religions," when privacy is sacrificed to security, the headlines are listed on the prophecy websites as signs that the Antichrist is busy about his business. "He's probably a good-looking man," says Kelly Sellers, who runs a decorative-stone business in Minneapolis, Minn. "I'm sure he's in politics right now and probably in the public eye a little bit." Sellers has read every Left Behind book and is waiting for the next one—"anxiously." "It helped me to look at the news that's going on about Israel and Palestine," which, he believes, "is just ushering in the End Times, and it's exciting for me."

His sister-in-law Jodie thinks technology is a key to hastening the End Times. "'When Christ returns, every eye shall see Him,'" she quotes from Revelation. Thanks to CNN and the Internet, "we're getting to a place where every eye could actually behold such an event."

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I wonder what such people will do when they see Satan in his final impersonation, on "CNN and the internet".

[ June 27, 2002, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: John ]

I read the article and thought it dealt with the subject rather well. It suggested that most people do not believe in endtime events as depicted by the "Left Behind" series. There are those who do believe, but most do not. And then the Jews have mixed feelings about Christians who believe it.