2012 Doomsday Myths, Pagan Prophecies and the Bible

We’re living in some interesting times. I don’t know when the last time was, I guess it was just before the year 2000 when I saw this kind of a frenzy about the potential for the world ending. How many of you have heard about the date December 21, 2012? I mean, as above and beyond on the regular calendar? Well, that sort of is going to spawn the message this morning which is going to be something of a conversation with you.

This must be the longest sermon title I’ve ever picked: 2012 Doomsday Myths, Pagan Prophecies, Armageddon and the Bible. A long title, probably be a short sermon though. But there is an awful lot of interest right now in final events, and I’m talking about above and beyond what you always see among Christians that are looking at the prophecies and bible eschatology.

People are struggling with apocalyptic fears. Just to give you an example of this, if you type in the word "2012, end of the world" into Google, I think most of us know how to do that, you’ll come up with about 3,390,000,000 results, and some odd change, thousands.

People are really concerned about this upcoming date. It’s not very far away, connected with somehow the end of the world or some kind of apocalyptic event or epic earth-changing experience. There have been a lot of movies that have come out. Columbia Pictures had a movie by that name, 2012, and it talked about the end of the world and it had something to do with these cryptic Mayan prophecies that they had somehow been able to foretell that the world would end.

Now, you wonder, Pastor Doug, why would you take this kind of fables and legends and bring it into a church where we focus on bible prophecy? Well, I think it’s interesting that there was a survey and that ten percent of the people worldwide, not just North America, believe something dire is going to happen to the earth this year. Did you catch the significance of that? A full ties of the people that live on the planet are thinking something cataclysmic is going to happen to the world, not some day, this year. That really makes me think. It makes me wonder.

It’s often true that before God does something, the Devil brings in a counterfeit. And I can just about guarantee you that somehow the Devil is going to exploit this interest somehow and I think Christians probably ought to sit up and pay attention and think, what does this mean. Or if nothing else, if the world is on edge and wondering about the end of the world, perhaps that’s an evangelistic opportunity that we should exploit.

I remember when I first came to be pastor here. September it will be 19 years that we were here. But we actually had an evangelistic series that year. But one reason I think the meetings went so well is because Harold Camping was saying that it would be the end of the world, back in 1994. That was his first end of the world prediction. It was a prediction production. And then we know last year, on May 21, he again said the world was going to end. Well, since, he has admitted that he’s not setting any more dates and it was wrong and that he apologized for doing that, but people had a real interest.

If you look at Christian and religious websites, you can track them on the internet as just a graph, as the month of May came, interest in religious things and prophet books and Christian websites spiked almost two-for-one. Amazing Facts saw record visits to our websites, especially the ones that are dealing with bible prophecy. And now that’s happening again, another upswing in anything that has to do with prophecy. People are looking at what’s happening in the world and they’re apprehensive. Well, we haven’t had a catastrophic natural disaster in several months now but it seems like when you do have something on the scale of the Japanese tsunami or the Haiti earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami and earthquake or the one in Chile or New Zealand or the economic problems.

Another little fact I thought was interesting, the ammunition companies, pistol gun ammunition companies like Ruger and Sturm, they’re not taking orders for certain guns and ammunition because they said, we just can’t supply it. They’ve got salesman out in the road that have nothing to sell because the demand is high and some people wonder if that’s because they’re afraid something is going to happen to gun rights or if they’re afraid they’re going to need to arm themselves. There are new programs that are on television dealing with survivalists and how they’re preparing for the end of the world. These are not Christian programs. These are programs that are on like the History Channel and National Geographic.

People who are worried, they’ve got these bunkers. I think I showed you pictures in another presentation a few months ago. They’ve got these underground bunkers that you can buy now and the manufacturers cannot keep up with the orders. The idea is people are going to try to dig a hole in the ground and they put they put this self-contained compartment down there with water purification and air filters. And when it looks like there will be some kind of nuclear disaster or World War III, they can go down in their hole in the ground and somehow survive until conditions become livable up above again. The idea being we can somehow do something to save ourselves.

How many of you know somebody that has in the last few years moved from the city to the country because they’re apprehensive about what could be happening in the cities? I see several hands going up. Well, where does this come from? Part of it, as I said, I think is just because of the unprecedented economic volatility in the world. People are concerned about the collapse of the euro, which will create a domino effect with the other currencies of the world including America. People are concerned about the economy here.

People are concerned about natural disasters and overpopulation and the potential of Iran getting nuclear weapons. And you can pick your scenario of last day disasters but people who are not even Christians are wondering, is this the end of the world? Have we gone beyond the point of no return? Some of this that is focusing the attention on this year, interestingly, springs from some Mayan prophecies. Those are the inter-America Indians. We’ve been down there before and we’ve seen them. And there’s a calendar that they uncovered and it’s called the 2012 Phenomenon. It comprises a range of eschatology beliefs according to which there will be a cataclysmic or some transformative events that will occur on the 21st of December.

Now, you understand why the 21st of December? You’ve got the winter solstice. In the northern hemisphere, the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky. We just passed the summer solstice there in June and when the days now are getting shorter again and then when you get to the 21st, the sun flattens out again and then the days become longer.

Many cultures of the world actually celebrated the 25th of December as a holiday because they saw the days were then notably longer again. Some of it was the 21st because they realized that they stopped getting shorter. And so somewhere between the 21st and the 25th, there’s usually no difference in the time, sunset during that time, all over the world people who observe the heavens and calendars said these were very significant dates. And so for the Mayans, who had a very accurate calendar by the way, and most of their architecture and their buildings were focused around magnetic and geographic lines and the sun, and their calendar went over a span of 5,125 years is going to come to an end on December 21st of this year.

And so some people have said that it’s going to be when the fat lady sings, whatever that means. That something big is going to happen. And there’s going to be a turning point and everybody means something different by that. Fears have been running rampant among some people that the world may end this year, due in part to these predictions.

Scenario suggests everything from a solar maximum, the sun is going implode or the earth will collide with an object like a black hole or a passing asteroid is going to strike the earth. Talks about a flaming mountain there in Revelation and I’ve seen some people talk about 2012 and then they go to the Book of Revelation and they combine the prophecies and they say that burning mountain is going to strike the earth is the asteroid that’s going to hit in 2012. Any of you heard that one?

Or a solar flare. It is true that solar flares, we had one just this last year that was a little bigger than normal and they had to redirect airplanes because going over the northern regions where the atmosphere is thinner they were afraid the radiation would affect communications. So they said if they have a phenomenal solar flare, it could totally shut down our electronic communications on the globe. Maybe that’s what’s going to happen. And so then they turned to the prophecies in the bible where it talks about the earth being scorched with great heat and people will try to weave together the Mayan prophecies with some of the Book of Revelation.

I’ve actually seen somebody quote Isaiah 30:26 speaking about the earth being scorched with great heat, ‘Moreover, the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun and the light of the sun will be sevenfold.’ Seven times the intensity that we have now. That’d be pretty hot but I don’t think that prophecy has anything to do with heat. I think that’s talking about the new earth. It’s talking about light and brightness. The moon will be brighter and the sun will be brighter and everything will be brighter.

Or they’ll look in Revelation 16:8, ‘The fourth angel poured out his vial,’ these are when the seven plagues are poured out on the earth. ‘Before the angel poured out his vial on the sun and power was given to him, the sun, to scorch men with fire and men were scorched with great heat.’ Global warming. If you think global warming is bad now, wait until December 21st. I think that’s just going to be pretty cold actually, but that’s the way some are reasoning these things.

Now, it’s not just the Mayan Indians. A number of supposed prophets and religions around the world are saying we are on the cusp of something amazing, something catastrophic that is getting ready to happen.

Among the Native Americans, and of course there’s a very wide, broad kaleidoscope of diverse tribes among the Native Americans. Now, they had certain things they held in common. Some of the larger tribes, being a Navajo, who I lived with on two different occasions and did mission work with, and the Hopi that bordered the Navajo. And the Hopi prophecy is saying that when the blue star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the fifth world will emerge and they say we are now on the edge of that time. And they’ve got a number of prophecies and their tribes and legends that they say something important, something pretentious or profound is about to happen right now.

In the Islamic religion, they’re looking for the advent of the Twelfth Imam. And they believe it’s going to be the greatest religious teacher since Mohammed. As a matter of fact, if you don’t think this is something that the world is aware of, the infamous Iranian president Ahmadinejad, I’m sure I said that wrong. He closed his speech at the UN by calling for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. He actually prayed before the UN assembly, ‘Oh mighty Lord I pray that you hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.’ It’s a nice prayer, but they’re looking for and they’re longing for and expecting someone to come who is going to be a savior in the world.

If you’re a Buddhist, there’s about 400 million Buddhists in the world today, they’re looking for the Buddha Supreme or the second Buddha that originally Gautama Siddhartha, the first Buddha, said, ‘After me, Mahdiyah comes before the auspicious eon. He runs the end of years. This Buddha, named by the supreme, will be the chief of men.’ So they were foretelling that in the Buddhist religion that there is this other supreme being that’s going to come. He will be an incarnation of god coming to the earth and they’re looking for that to happen imminently.

If you’re a Jew, who are they still waiting for? Jews all over the world are waiting for the Messiah to come and I did some research this morning. You think I would know, being half Jewish, but I thought I would just want to find out what are the rabbi saying. And I looked at all the research about what they’re looking for in the messiah and they were all quoting prophecies in Isaiah that pointed to Jesus. But they’re looking for this person more to come as a conquering king. They are thinking of a military messiah who is also a righteous one who will come and fill the throne of David and make Israel a national power again and the world will have a domain of peace, something like what some Christians believe about the millennium.

And Jews that go to the Wailing Wall today from around the world, you can say a prayer and write it down and you stick it in the cracks, I’ve been there, at the Wailing Wall, closest you can come to the old temple so it’s a sacred spot because they can’t go up on the top. That would be holy ground and they’re not exactly sure where the old temple used to be. They just know this is a piece of the ancient wall, they fold up their prayers, they stick them in the cracks, and someone must clean them out every now and then or they wouldn’t have room. A lot of the prayers are talking about, when will the messiah come?

There’s a uniform expectation around the world for somebody to come. And even among the Hindus, I was reading this morning that they’re looking for this reappearance of Krishna, this avatar, is actually what they use. God in the form of man, something on the scale of Jesus. They say Jesus was just one of these incarnations of God but the great one is soon to come.

And so here you have the major religions of the world, the Christians are looking for Christ to come and the Buddhists are looking for the second Buddha and the Jews are looking for the messiah, the reappearance of Krishna, the Twelfth Imam among the Muslims. All the major religions of the world are primed right now for something to happen and ten percent of the world thinks something is going to happen this year, besides selling tickets to movies.

Just reach down, I’ll do the special on the prophecies of Nostradamus. And they said, does he say anything about 2012? That was like three million people just on YouTube went to see that. People are wondering, what does this mean? What’s going to happen? Now, I don’t know. In church I’m even reluctant to mention Nostradamus because he was an occultist. But you’ve heard of him. Haven’t you all heard of Nostradamus?

Nostradamus, he lived in the 15th century there in France and was well educated, wanted to try his hand as a healer. He lived from 1503 to 1566. And he tried to heal and, boy, he had a lot of customers because it was during the great plague and one out of three people in Europe died during that time and he’d use different remedies and concoctions trying to help people get healed but he must not have been very good at it. His wife and several children died from the plague and so that kind of ruined his reputation as a healer and then he went and got involved in the occult and tried to understand prophecy.

He began to advertise himself as a prophet and he wrote books and books and they sold very well. And his prophecies were all very vague and nebulous. You could never really know exactly what it said unless you were somehow enlightened by the spirits to be able to decipher it. Now, just to give you an example so you can understand how a prophecy of Nostradamus sounds, this is one of his quatrains. They’re in an arrangement broken down into four parts.

This is how he would write. ‘Out of the deepest part of the west of Europe from poor people, a young child will be born who with his tongue shall seduce many people. His fame shall increase in the eastern kingdom where all is good. The sun, all beneficial, and the moon is abundant. Its ruin approaches. From the sky, it advances. Change your fortune in the same state as the seventh rock.’ Now somehow people get World War II out of that. For me, and that’s as clear as mud. But you’d be surprised. People just buy this stuff.

His books are still flying off the shelves and I’m not going to read anymore than what I’ve read. I flipped through some of the prophecies and Nostradamus. And, friends, I think he was on LSD because it just doesn’t make any sense at all. And then you compare that and I’m sorry, I don’t want to be ungracious but I think that he was in a league with the devil, if you want to know the truth. You take all that and people who are desperate to understand the future, they can pull things out of that.

And then you compare that to the clarity of the bible prophecies where Daniel does have a dream and it’s a little cryptic but then the angel comes and says, ‘these symbols represent these kingdoms.’ And he specifically says the kingdom of Babylon will go and then it will followed by the kingdom of Neopersia and then by the kingdom of Greece and the whole world, the history of the world is clearly outlined in the bible. These prophecies can be understood. When God says, ‘There will come a king and his name will be Cyrus and he is going to let my people go home,’ and then you read that prophecy in Isaiah who wrote it down before it happened and died long before its fulfillment, and along comes a king by the name of Cyrus of Persia who let’s God’s people go back to the Promised Land. I mean, you don’t have to wonder.

When a prophet comes and he says and he prophesizes against his pagan alter, he says, a king is going to be borne by the name of Josiah and he will burn the bones of the priests that are worshiping here on this alter and 200 years later there’s a king born by the name of Josiah who exhumes the pagan priests bones and burns them on that alter, there’s no confusion about that. That’s easy to understand. And the prophecies about the messiah and where he’d come from and how he’d be betrayed and how much he’d be betrayed for, I mean there’s such indifference between bible prophecy and pagan prophecies.

But people are all wondering when the apocalypse is going to happen and when it’s going to be the end of the world. You read in Luke 21:25, ‘And there will be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars. One of these Native American prophecies said that there will a blue star and that will be the sign that this messiah-like god-like man is going to come.

Now, I need to be very careful. Listen, please, understand me. I think we’ve got to be careful not to discount and discredit that God could have spoken in his own way to different people from different cultures in different parts of the world in different times of history. Do you understand that? The Lord has his children all over the world and at different points in their history, God could have revealed truth to them for them specifically that didn’t necessarily need to be part of scripture, so that when things happened they would know. Did God speak through a prophet named Balaam? He did. Was Balaam a Jew? No, he was not. He was from Mesopotamia. Yeah, actually he was an Iraqi, by today’s standards. And he did believe in the true God.

And so God has communicated in his own way, god is not limited, we can’t limit him that way, to different people around the world. But I think as Christians, we’ve got to be very careful not to get all twitterpated about some of these pagan prophecies because there are a lot of confusing things out there.

Let me finish this verse. ‘Signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars and on the earth the stress of nations with perplexity.’ Well, that’s happening. ‘The sea and the waves roaring.’ Quite literally the waves were roaring with the various tsunamis, and the water also represents people. When it talks about the waves roaring, it’s talking about unrest among the nations. ‘Men’s hearts failing them for fear and the expectation of those things that are coming on the earth for the powers of heaven will be shaken.’ Well, there’s going to be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, the powers of heaven will be shaken. And even historically we’ve had days where there were falling stars and signs in the heavens. ‘And then following these things, then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads for your redemption draws near.’

Now when Jesus comes it says it’s going to be like lightening shining from one side of the sky to the other, but before Jesus comes is Satan going to do his best to impersonate Christ? If you were the Devil, you’d want to be a good Devil. I know. Everything you do, do it with all your might. And if you can prepare people by giving them false prophecies for your appearance, you would prepare them. And I think the Devil has primed much of the world for Satan’s masterpiece of deception where he is going to masquerade as the messiah, as the return of Jesus for Christians, as the fulfillment of all of these needs and these silhouettes of different world messiahs or religion messiahs. He’s going to fulfill all that when he comes and the whole world is going to be ready, especially if that false Christ comes on the heels of some kind of cataclysmic disasters. We’ve already had a few. But the world is really anxious.

So what do I think about some of these prophecies? My confidence is in what the bible says. You probably heard us share with you that a couple years ago, our family has been to Belize twice, which was right there in the heart. Last time we went to Belize, we also went to Southern Mexico and that’s right in the heart of where the Mayan empire was. And it is fascinating, how sprawling and how sophisticated those people were. There’s a picture, I think that’s from our first trip which was like 2008 or 2009 I think, and we went and explored some of the Mayan ruins.

And if you fly a helicopter over Central America, southern Mexico and El Salvador and some of the countries there, Guatemala, they’re now using the infrared technology and the satellites and they’re mapping. They’re finding hundreds of unknown ruins because now they can see where there used to be streets and there’s square outlines of the ruins of buildings and whole civilizations that jungles have just grown over. They haven’t even begun to explore a fraction of the sprawling civilizations that live there. These people were very sophisticated. They did a lot of work building these temples.

There’s another picture where I’m just standing on one temple and I don’t know how clear it is but behind me, I’m on one temple, there’s temple after temple after temple after temple and I’ll ask the guide and say, what about all these? Oh, that’s more but we just don’t have the money to do the archaeology to explore them to investigate what’s under the ruins. They’re everywhere. And so when they find these stone calendars that talk about the date, it wasn’t as though they thought that when that calendar ran out the whole world was going to implode.

Actually, they kind of felt about their calendar the way we feel about ours. When we reach the 31st of December, it means another year starts. They just have a much longer year. Their calendar went through this range of 5,000 but they always assumed. You ask any expert in Mesoamerica and archaeology, they all say they just thought that was the end of the calendar and a new calendar would start. They never said there was any kind of cataclysmic event. But the devil has this somehow to get people primed.

One expert, one scholar, Dr. Canudo (phonetic), he said, while it is true that their Mayan long count calendar ends in December of that year, nothing indicates the Mayans thought that the world was going to end along with it. After all, our calendar cycles every 365 days. While some might party like there’s no tomorrow every New Years Eve, tomorrow always comes. And they believed it was tomorrow also. What he also says, Dr. Canudo, he says, what I’ve always found curious is that everyone worries about the Mayan predicting the end of the world in 2012 but no one worries about the fact that they didn’t seem to be able to predict their own collapse as a civilization.

I remember while we were in Belize on the last trip, one of the things that we did that was really neat is we took a kayak ride in a river in a cave under a mountain. And we had a guide there and there’s all these stalactites. I forget, stalactites are the ones that hang down, right? Stalagmites go up, is that right? All these stalactites are hanging down everywhere and they said, yes, the Mayans taught that these were the roots of the trees up above. And I thought, well, if these folks are thinking that the stalactites are actually the roots of trees and then they’re going to be telling what’s happening in the future, it doesn’t sound like it was real dependable. It sounds like there was just a lot of pagan speculation that was mixed in there. A lot of fascinating things but I want to base my future on that.

So, what do we do with all this information? Is the world going to end some day? Yes, it is. Will there be an apocalypse, an Armageddon? Is there going to be a great battle? Yes, there will. I don’t believe the battle of Armageddon is a battle between Iran and Israel or the US and China and Russia. The bible tells us in Revelation 12, ‘The dragon was wroth with the woman and went to make war.’ The battle of Armageddon is the ultimate war between the dragon and those the follow the dragon, those who worship the beast, those who have the mark of the beast, and those who are part of the church, the bride of Christ that have the seal of God. It is not between earthly nations. It is not between varying cultures. It is the ultimate battle between those that belong to Christ and those of the Devil that belong to the Devil.

And so how do we know when Jesus comes back? If we suddenly get a report that some messiah-like apparition is going to make an appearance at the United Nations, should we turn on our TVs and watch to find out what this great religious leader is going to say? Jesus said, Matthew 24:11, first thing the Lord says when he talks about signs of his coming, ‘Many false prophets will rise and deceive many.’ The first thing he says is, ‘Be careful, there’s going to be a lot of deception.’ You jump down to verse 23, Matthew 24:23, ‘And if any man shall say to you, lo, here is Christ or there, believe it not for there will arise false Christ and false prophets and they’ll show great signs and wonders insomuch that if it were possible they would deceive the very elect.’ So will there even be signs and wonders?

Can the Devil perform miracles? Now, some of you here don’t believe in miracles. You say, I’ve never seen a miracle. If you saw a miracle every day you probably wouldn’t think it’s a miracle. What makes a miracle a miracle is they’re almost unbelievable. I mean, the reason that it’s a miracle Jesus walked on water is because I have never seen anyone walk on water, not without some special effects or something. So when the bible says he did it, they were just as amazed back then as you would be today. The question is do you believe miracles ever happen?

Can the Devil ever perform miracles? Did he in the bible? When Moses threw his rod down and it became a serpent, pharaoh clapped his hands and in came his magicians and what did they do? They were able to at least duplicate that miracle. Did the Devil bring fire down from heaven in the story of Job? It was power. Does Revelation tell us that Satan is going to have power even going as far as bringing fire down from heaven in the last days? I know these things are extraordinary. They’re not what we see in our world every day today. Well, that’s exactly what the bible says. Some times are going to happen that you have not seen before that are going to even challenge skeptics with the power of God.

And especially in our culture today where people are so sophisticated and skeptical, if they saw a miracle, a bonafide miracle, they’d probably believe that whoever did it must be true, even though it might be the Devil. So we’ve got another difference between the true and the false prophecies. They all show great signs and wonders insomuch that if it were possible it would deceive the very elect. What’s going to differentiate the very elect from the ones who are deceived? The elect know the Lord, they know the word.

Behold, Jesus said, I’ve told you before, what’s going to prevent the elect from being deceived? We know what Jesus told us. So are you reading what Jesus told us? Wherefore if they say to you, behold, he’s in the desert, off there in Israel, some being has just appeared and he’s going to bring peace to the Middle East. Go not forth. Behold, he’s in secret chambers. Flat screen television, believe it not. ‘For as lightening comes out of the east and shines even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the son of man be.’ Will we know when Jesus comes? Absolutely. It’s going to be spanning the heavens.

Do we have prophecies that tell us when the end of the world is coming? You know for me what I think the most compelling prophecy is? It has nothing to do with any pagan prophecies or the Mayan prophecy or radio preachers. Matthew 24:14, ‘When the gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world for a witness and all nations then shall the end come.’

Can I tell you something at the risk of sounding self-centered? I got really excited this week when I was surfing around the satellite Christian channels, you the Glorystar Network, 3ABN, Hope Channel, all these, and I went to the Loma Linda Chinese Channel that we’ve got. Loma Linda has a Chinese channel. I was so excited. And there I was preaching in Chinese and I was so excited because I had never seen it before and they had translated. It was the youth program that we had done and it was in flawless Mandarin. I was impressed myself. I didn’t know I had it in me.

But you know what, the reason I got so excited us because that is one of the most unreached countries in the world and I thought about that prophecy in Matthew 24:14, the gospel is going to be preached in all the world. And I’m just one little voice out of thousands that are doing it. The gospel is right now going to the whole world. And even though I might not personally be able to stand up on the corner and preach the public evangelistic meeting in China yet, but we hope that day is coming so.

Amazing Facts is trying to get everything ready and get our lessons translated and programs translated so that when we can do public evangelism we’re ready to roll, so to speak. I don’t know if you remember when the iron curtain come down and suddenly they said, sure, come on in and do evangelism. We weren’t prepared as a church to do it. We didn’t think it would happen so fast. And when Karen and I went to Russia, we were scrambling to get lessons. All they could do was Xerox some very primitive lessons that were translated. I say Xerox, you know what I mean. But so we’re real excited about what could happen in China when they finally start allowing to give more freedom and allow public evangelism there.

But I think we’re living in the generation that’s going to see Christ come because he said not that the whole world is going to believe but the whole world will have an opportunity to hear as a witness unto all nations. And so now through satellite television, through the internet, there’s more people on the internet now in China than there are in North America. Through the internet, through the printed page and through CDs, we sent over our Cosmic Conflict translated in Mandarin a while ago and it’s just gone all over the country, as has the Final Events DVD. And that’s just a little bit that we’re doing. The gospel is going to all the world. There’s still a lot of work to be done in the 1040 window but with electronics and with satellite and with the internet, it’s happening right now.

Look at the volatility in what you’ve seen happen in what they called the Arab Spring. What’s going on with the big turn over of governments and the political situation in these Arab countries? Do you know why? Because the generation now that is growing up there, they’re getting their information outside of their country and they’re thinking for themselves. This is the generation that is really searching because they can use all these other sophisticated technologies on their cell phones. They can listen to the world now and they’re paying attention.

So I think Jesus is coming soon and there will be some natural disasters, political upheaval, financial disasters. There may be plagues and wars and rumors of wars. All these things need to come to pass. But when the gospel goes unto all the world and everyone has had a chance, the Lord is not willing that any should parish. He wants all to come to repentance. Then Jesus said not might, then the end will come. Then the end shall come. So I do think that we ought to really be excited.

And you know, with all this interesting 2012, for me I say great, evangelistic opportunity. And as a matter of fact, I’ll probably take this sermon and put it on YouTube and give it some kind of ominous title and get them to read the bible and go to the website and study the truth. Because like Y2K and like 1999 and all that stuff, some of these days like May 21 of last year, these days will come and go but Jesus doesn’t change and the truth doesn’t change and we need to let the world know. Amen.