The world will end in December 2012 - if the proponents of the Mayan Calendar theory are correct. There is nothing new about End-time alarms: the ancient astrologers lived in a perpetual state of expectation, and over the last 2000 years there have been at least 50 major prophecies and panics. Even science contributes to the doomsday scenarios, such as the Y2K bug, the Hadron collider and global warming. In Apocalypse When? Ted Harrison asks why it is that we are so determined to forecast The End. Why do many people prefer to think of the world ending in a single dramatic event than simply fading away over millions of years? Is it a way of not taking responsibility for the injustices of here and now?
The world will end in December 2012 - if the proponents of the Mayan Calendar theory are correct. There is nothing new about End-time alarms: the ancient astrologers lived in a perpetual state of expectation, and over the last 2000 years there have been at least 50 major prophecies and panics. Even science contributes to the doomsday scenarios, such as the Y2K bug, the Hadron collider and global warming. In Apocalypse When? Ted Harrison asks why it is that we are so determined to forecast The End. Why do many people prefer to think of the world ending in a single dramatic event than simply fading away over millions of years? Is it a way of not taking responsibility for the injustices of here and now?
Ted Harrison is a writer, artist and former BBC Religious Affairs Correspondent whose many books include studies of the popular fascination with and devotion for Diana and Elvis, and the cult of stigmata.
An excellent consideration of the end times phenomena that looks at the paranoia, the mistaken dates, the media hype and film sensationalism, the history and most of all the biblical and theological contexts of Apocalypse and End Times thinking. It's well presented, easy to read and though quite detailed it isn't at all dry for all the facts, dates and figures you find in it - but then perhaps that's because we are so interested in the End Times prophecies, be they Mayan or Christian, that we just enjoy reading about them anyway - in the same way as some enjoy reading a scary story before bedtime. Apocalypse When considers the psychology that may be behind the escalating rise in such prophecies from various Christian orientated groups, and indeed considers whether our concern for such things is wider than in the past or is it just that our methods of communication are better. Ted Harrison works hard to point out that in the end the one thing all the biblical stories make clear is that we cannot know the day or hour of the end times, and that to dwell on such things is not where we are called to focus our attention, rather we must live the right life here and now. -- Melanie Carroll The Good Book Stall
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