The great and awesome Day of the Lord

[Mithrae]

As y'all know despite being raised as one I'm no longer a Christian and haven't been for over a decade: I don't accept core Christian doctrines (eg. I'd only guess ~70-90% probability for the existence of some kind of 'God' and consider it significantly more probable than not that Jesus didn't rise from the dead), and more importantly I don't even adhere to the teachings of Jesus (to sell what you have and give to the poor, don't worry about tomorrow but trust in God's provision, stop working for money and start working for the kingdom of God).

But I try to keep an open mind, and over the past ten months or so I've been troubled by the topic of biblical prophecy. It actually began all the way back in 2011, when one prophecy enthusiast came to the forum with all kinds of fallacies and arbitrary conclusions, claiming that his pet theory had only 112 trillion to one odds of being false. So in response I did a more objective assessment, and came up with something like 100 to one instead; which is not mind-blowing or miraculous, but is still somewhat intriguing.

I've privately gnawed on that issue at times over the years, but never managed to falsify it to my own satisfaction and even found a couple of additional points worth considering too. So hopefully the rest of you can help prove me wrong.

As I see it, if a prediction has been made and parts of it had already come true, that's either coincidence or it's indicative of genuine foreknowledge. Hence the likelihood that the rest will come true is the inverse of the likelihood that the first part was coincidence. (Plus the likelihood that it would happen anyway, prophecy or no, but in the case of biblical prophecies that's basically zero and therefore irrelevant.) That is absolutely critical to my reasoning, but I can't find a fault with it: Either the fulfillment of the first part was coincidence or it was indeed foreknown, and if it was foreknown then the rest of it presumably is foreknown also; so the likelihood that the first part was not coincidence is roughly the same as the likelihood that the whole prophecy is genuine.

Thus we have -
Prediction: Prophecy and interpretation
Confirmation: Signs and complete fulfillment

The biggest problem I've found with many Christian prophecy enthusiasts is that they tend to include their interpretation as part of the 'sign,' like that fellow from 2011 (and with some particularly enthusiastic folk, simply make up what constitutes a sign from whole cloth!), and that's a key error I've tried to avoid in my reasoning. In each case I've tried to justify an interpretation of biblical prophecy as legitimate, not arbitrary, and only then begun to consider how likely it is that the 'sign' which came to pass is mere coincidence. I will try to be as brief as possible with the signs I've been interested in, but I'll still put them in another post because this is already getting on the long side for an OP. However I'll briefly comment on two of the most obvious objections first:

1 - Biblical prophecies are too vague
It's a fair point, but firstly, that is why I've tried to specifically quantify the likelihood of a fulfillment or 'sign' being mere coincidence, distinct from and after establishing a legitimate interpretation; and secondly, what would the alternative be? If a prophecy were very specific then anytime since 400 CE or so basically any 'fulfillment' would be subject to the criticism that it was engineered by Christians to match the existing prophecy. Some miraculous exceptions which could not possibly be engineered by humans might apply (though not for any of the ones below), but then there's the endless debate over whether there's good reasons why a deity would not openly and universally reveal himself in such a manner. Criticisms on those grounds are not particularly valid to my mind, since they simply assume certain things about what 'God' or prophecy should be like, rather than addressing the actual data available.

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated. I have tried to be careful in considering other scenarios, other possible 'fulfillments' in my estimations of probability, so I don't consider it a valid objection to blithely state that it simply must have been more probable than I've concluded.



Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

[Mithrae]

I have to stress that these are extremely abbreviated treatments of these 'signs'; I tried to write each of them in 500 words or less, and failed miserably in two of the three cases. In particular, note that I have privately done both 'objective' and more 'sceptical' assessments of likelihood for these signs, but presented only the sceptical assessments here; for the first sign in particular, the more objective assessment would give it odds of 273 to one! But the brevity also means there'll surely be objections I've considered myself but simply haven't tried to deal with here - looking forward to hearing them



The sign of Joel

Joel wrote that "The sun will be turned into darkness / And the moon into blood / Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes" (2:31). In his first sermon on Pentecost, Peter apparently thought that prophecy was being fulfilled in his own time: According to NASA's data there'd been a solar eclipse in November of 29CE, very nearly a total eclipse when viewed from Galilee, and just fifteen days later a lunar eclipse during Hannukah. When these - the closest and most striking such occurrences in at least thirty years if not much longer - were followed just a few months later by the crucifixion of Jesus, who could blame Peter for that erroneous conclusion?

But on that basis we can set aside the unwarranted assumption that this prophecy must refer to supernatural events. The rarest 'blood moon' phenomena listed by NASA are not mere total lunar eclipses, but total eclipse tetrads; four in a row over a period of two years. There've been fifty-five of them since 1CE, but some share the curious feature that all four eclipses fall on the Jewish festivals of Pesach and Sukkot. There have been only eight 'feast tetrads' since 1CE... and the last ones of the previous millenium were in 1949/50 (the initial armistice granting Israel relative peace from its hostile neighbours was signed in 1949) and 1967/68 (Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967).

The rarest 'dark sun' phenomenon is not a total solar eclipse, but the hybrid of total/annular eclipses, and the rarest of these are the class 3 hybrids: There have been only eight since 1CE.

The third closest these phenomena approach each other over a three thousand year period from 1 to 3000 CE is 78 years apart (H3 of 1350 and tetrad of 1428/29). The second closest is four years apart - H3 of 1489 and tetrad of 1493/94 - around the time of Europe's 'discovery' of the region which would become a second home to the Jewish people (almost half of all Jews). So with that perspective, the closest that they approach each other is less than six months apart: The eighth H3 solar eclipse of November 2013 and the eighth 'feast tetrad' beginning April 2014.

The eclipses in Peter's day were not so unusual: But the odds of this match-up being mere coincidence are around 1 in 100. Not the 'feast tetrads' or their occurrence around dates of historical significance for Jews - that is simply a matter of interpretation - or even the fact that there'd been seven of both 'feast tetrads' and H3 eclipses, which again is merely laying groundwork for considering them significant, a confirmation of interpretation if you will. Instead I'm looking at what we might have predicted in advance if we'd noticed these facts early enough: Simply the probability that the next H3 eclipse would occur so near to that eighth tetrad - even within three years of it, never mind six months! - was only around 1% likely to occur as a matter of coincidence, based on the seven H3 eclipses in 2000 years; 1-(1-7/2000)³ = 0.01046, or 1 in 95.6.

By implication, we can have ~99% confidence that this was a fulfilment of the first part of Joel's prophecy, the darkened sun and blood moon, and that the great and awesome day of the Lord will soon be upon us.



The sign of Daniel

The prophecy of 'weeks' in Daniel 9:24-27 is one of the most famous in the bible, declaring that an anointed one would be "cut off" seven and sixty-two 'sevens' after a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and then after a seventieth seven everything would become, in the original Hebrew, "hunky dory."

Daniel 11:2-4 races across more than 200 years of history; after Xerxes I (who famously invaded Greece), eight Persian kings for the 130-odd years before Alexander are simply ignored. Similarly in verses 19-21 the rule of Seleucus IV (187-175BCE) is entirely omitted. Clearly, Daniel didn't mind leaving big gaps in his chronologies. For yet a third example, by any reasonable assessment his 70 sevens would have to extend to at least 50 BCE (538 BCE return to Jerusalem minus 490 years), yet chapter 11 makes no effort to fill in all those years: It departs from history around verse 35 by introducing a 'king of the north' whose actions are utterly inconsistent with the previous policies of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, exalting a foreign god where Antiochus' policies had been aimed at hellenization.

A similar gap to these three is found in the prophecy of weeks. Arguably the best interpretation begins the 70 sevens with the only biblically-recorded decree to rebuild Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2 which, like Daniel, also specifically notes the city's defenses (walls or trench). 69 sevens forwards from that decree lands around 29-39 CE - roughly the time of Jesus' death - but obviously there was no 70th seven at that time. Even the passage itself arguably implies such a gap: In verse 26 after an anointed one is cut off, "the people of the ruler who will come" destroy the city and the sanctuary and "war will continue until the end" but, after that ambiguous phrase, in verse 27 there apparently is a temple intact and the sacrifice and offering are stopped in the middle of the final seven.

The initial 69 sevens began with Nehemiah's walls, and there's an interesting parallelism between that and the medieval walls of Jerusalem which stand to this day, a pattern of 62 sevens and 7 sevens bounded by walls, temple and culmination:

• -> Artaxerxes/Nehemiah building Jerusalem and its walls c. 445 BCE
  -> 426 years (62*7 is 434) to 19 BCE, when Herod's temple project began
  -> 49 years to Jesus' death (cf. John 2:20)
  -> No final seven, though the temple was destroyed a bit later
  
  -> Suleiman the Magnificent's walls commenced 1535
  -> 432 years (62*7 is 434) to 1967, when Israel gained the temple mount
  -> 49 years to 2016, just after the feast tetrad
  -> Final seven perhaps begins in 2016-18

Some Christians invoke 'prophetic years' of 360 days to align the prophecy better with Jesus' death (cf. Gen. 7:11 & 8:3-4 and Rev. 11:2-3), and while that is unconvincing in itself, it creates a very curious coincidence in the latter half of the parallel: From the peace treaty ending the 1967 war to the fourth eclipse of the 2014-15 feast tetrad is exactly 49 of those 'prophetic years,' 17640 days to the very dot (a coincidence with only about forty in 17640 odds, or 1 in 441, since we would still remark if it had been the start of the 1967 war or one of the other eclipse days etc.).

The surprising alignment of those 'prophetic years' could be taken as confirmation that the 70th seven of the prophecy wasn't left randomly floating around unattached in time: This parallelism is unlikely to be mere coincidence. How unlikely? The prophetic years thing is - at best - confirmation of interpretation, not of prediction. What we would have 'predicted,' had we noticed that segment of pattern beforehand (and indeed as I myself did speculate, look for and find) is the start of the parallelism, the date of construction which begins the second set of 69 sevens.

For that, the odds are around 1 in 23: Since biblical Israel first gained control of Jerusalem in the 11th century BCE there've been some thirteen times when construction on its walls has captured the attention of history. Hence, the likelihood that such a major project would have occurred even within five years of the 'predicted' time - let alone within two years as history records - at the start of the parallel 69 sevens, is around 1-(1-10/2900)¹³ = 0.0439, or 1 in 22.8.

So by implication, we can have ~95.6% confidence that these 69 sevens have been a fulfilment of prophecy, and the 70th is soon to occur.



The sign of Elijah

The so-called 'Revelation 12 sign' of September 23rd last year was laughably unconvincing - even besides the arbitrary count of Virgo's stars it would have been "a great sign appeared in heaven" (12:1) which no-one actually saw in heaven, and wouldn't even have noticed without trawling through some astronomy software with a fine tooth comb. Nevertheless this passage in a book otherwise focused on the 'end times' has the curious feature of describing Jesus - a male child who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter� (12:5) - as an infant, who is taken away and protected during those final seven years.

In ancient Judah there was also a boy born to be king who was taken away and hidden, to be revealed and crowned in the seventh year: Joash the son of Ahaziah (2 Kings 12).

There's a tale of two kingdoms here - the larger northern kingdom of Israel and that southern kingdom of Judah - and it goes back to the time of Elijah. Of all biblical prophets, Elijah is the one most associated with the end times: Despite Paul's insistence that the wages of sin is death for all men, Elijah is one of only two reported characters who never yet died on this earth, the other being Enoch, and just as Enoch is cited in the penultimate New Testament book of Jude, the final book of the Protestant Old Testament declares that "I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes" (Malachi 4:5).

Today the world's Jews live overwhelmingly in the USA and Israel - over four-fifths of all Jews between them - and of these countries the larger and more northerly has seen some quite striking parallels with the reported history of the biblical northern kingdom. The ruler when Elijah came on the scene was king Ahab:

• 1. Ahab ruled for 22 years, while from the time Bill Clinton “came on the national stageâ€� as governor of Arkansas in 1979 to the end of his presidency in 2001 was 22 years (he'd served as Arkansas Attorney General for two years before that, and he held no office for two years 1981-83)
  2. Ahab had a strong wife who helped direct the course of the nation, as with Bill Clinton
  3. Ahab was criticized for letting one of Israel's worst enemies Ben-Hadad go free (1 Kings 20) and amazingly, it was widely publicized in 2014 that on the very day before the 9/11 attacks Bill Clinton had told an Australian audience that he “could have killed bin Laden� if he'd been prepared to sacrifice hundreds of civilians in the operation
  4. Ahab's rule was marked by scandal and perjury, having Naboth falsely accused and killed (1 Kings 21), while Clinton himself was impeached for perjury in 1998
  5. Ahab's rule ended three years after that scandal, just like Clinton's
  6. Ahab's wife continued on in the capital after the end of his reign, as did Hillary Clinton
  7. The second ruler after Ahab, and his primary successor – his son Joram, after the two-year reign of another son – ruled for 12 years, while from the time Barack Obama “came on the national stage� as a national senator in 2005 (he'd previously served in the Illinois state senate) to the end of his presidency was also 12 years

These parallels are intriguing at the least. The ruler after Joram was unrelated to them, King Jehu:

• 8. Jehu was a leader, but not a politician or member of the royal family
  9. As a commander of the army, Jehu had been a supporter of Ahab's family, before turning against them
  10. Jehu's progress towards the capital is described as being “like a madman� (2 Kings 9:20)
  11. After Joram was out of the way, Jehu's memorable showdown was against Ahab's wife (who perhaps hoped to become queen in Israel just as Athaliah did in Judah)
  12. In his bid for the kingship, Jehu had received the support of religious 'conservatives' such as Elisha and Jehonadab the Recabite (cf. Jeremiah 35)
  13. Despite that, Jehu himself was not a righteous man; for example in rounding up the priests of Baal, he personally offered a sacrifice in Baal's temple before killing them all (2 Kings 10:25)

Again, these seem to be quite interesting points of comparison with Donald Trump. Last but certainly not least, it's worth noting that the primary reason for Jehu's anointing (by Elijah's successor and presumably at his command) was to get rid of Baal worship: And in July or August of 2015, just a month or two after Donald Trump announced his candidacy and for the first time in god only knows how many centuries, another temple of Baal was destroyed; the 2nd century Temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS.

This 'Jehu prophecy' about Donald Trump had actually been hinted at by some Christians from at least as early as September 1st of 2015. We don't need any kind of mathematics for the odds on whether or not Trump's victory was mere coincidence: Around the time that the temple of Baal was destroyed and some Christians were noticing some biblical parallels, the bookies' odds on Trump's presidential hopes were around 18 to 1, one sixth of Ted Cruz and one twentieth of Hilary Clinton.

It was Jehu who also killed Ahaziah the father of Joash, more or less marking the start of the period in which the infant king of Judah was taken away to be revealed in the seventh year, as in the curious imagery of Revelation 12.

So by implication - taking all those earlier parallels with Clinton, Obama, Hilary and Trump himself as mere confirmation of interpretation - the fulfilment, the fact that Trump did end up winning despite such long odds, suggests that we can be ~94.4% confident that this was a prophetically significant fulfillment, and the seven years of Judah's king will soon come to pass.



Obviously, I hope that these are wrong. But any one of these would be quite intriguing even alone, and together I find them quite daunting: So far I haven't managed to falsify them to anything even remotely approaching my own standards of scepticism.

Hopefully others can help!

[Divine Insight]

Obviously, I hope that these are wrong. But any one of these would be quite intriguing even alone, and together I find them quite daunting: So far I haven't managed to falsify them to anything even remotely approaching my own standards of scepticism.

Hopefully others can help!

I certainly have no intention of trying to convince you to change your standards of skepticism, but I will offer why these examples are not impressive to me.

On "The Sign of Joel":

By implication, we can have ~99% confidence that this was a fulfilment of the first part of Joel's prophecy, the darkened sun and blood moon, and that the great and awesome day of the Lord will soon be upon us.

For me personally this is totally unimpressive and here's why:

To begin with people who lived back in those days spent most of their time outdoors, they didn't have TV's and computers to keep them occupied. So they were very attuned to events happening in nature. They were also well aware that a darkened sun and blood moon where indeed seen as very superstitious signs of divine intervention. So the idea that religious prophecies would include these types of superstitious beliefs simply does not impress me. And the fact that NASA has confirmed that, solar and lunar eclipses have indeed occurred during this period of time does not in any way suggest to me that this prophecy must then have some validity. So yes, I would have absolutely no problem chalking this up to mere coincidence.

Also, the fact that Joel suggests that the day of the Lord would be a "Great and Awesome day" indicate to me that he was expecting a messiah that would bring peace and prosperity to the world. Not simply be crucified so that humans could continue to live in sin and shame for thousands of my years.

So nope, I'm not impressed, and I reject the probability that you assign to this so-called prophesy. To the contrary, knowing how ancient people viewed eclipses with such superstition as divine intervention I would actually suggest that there is a 99% chance that these kinds of prophecies are indeed coincidence.

On "The Sign of Daniel":

So by implication, we can have ~95.6% confidence that these 69 sevens have been a fulfilment of prophecy, and the 70th is soon to occur.

Again, you are assigning a very high probability to extremely vague associations as though those associations are themselves 95.6% confident. I disagree that the things that are being associated with the prophecies of Daniel are compelling, especially not to a 95.6% confidence level. In fact, my confidence that the prophecies that you have already accepted as being accurate predictions made by Daniel is extremely low. I'm already not impressed by the 69 prophesies that you claim had already been fulfilled. If I were impressed by those that would certainly change my thinking. But I see no reason to assign those vague associations a 95.6% confidence level.

So I'm just not anywhere close to accepting the probability numbers that you are laying claim to.


On "The Sign of Elijah":

So by implication - taking all those earlier parallels with Clinton, Obama, Hilary and Trump himself as mere confirmation of interpretation - the fulfilment, the fact that Trump did in fact end up winning despite such long odds, suggests that we can be ~94.4% confident that this was a prophetically significant fulfillment, and the seven years of Judah's king will soon come to pass.

I'll be the first to agree that Trump winning the 2016 election was indeed a shock to many people. It's easy to suggest that there must have been some sort of supernatural intervention to make that possible. In fact, it's hard for me to believe that so many Americans fell for his obvious con job. Especially the evangelicals. Although most of them voted for Trump solely because of the abortion issue. I know this to be a fact because I actually know several people who voted for Trump and gave this as their sole reason for giving him their vote.

In any case, I don't find your analogy between Biblical fables and American politicians to be worthy of a rating of 94.4% confident level.

So in the end I just feel that you are way too quick to assign high probabilities to vague associations that simply don't deserve that high of a correspondence.

Also, these so-called prophesies would need to have extremely high confidence levels to off-set so many other problems with these scriptures. And I just see no reason to accept your numbers. It's easy to claim that something has a 99% confident level when you haven't even remotely shown how that number was actually calculated.

[Mithrae]

It's easy to claim that something has a 99% confident level when you haven't even remotely shown how that number was actually calculated.

The only real response I can offer is that you haven't even remotely read my post or addressed its content I clearly explained the basis for calculating each of those figures; certainly in less detail than I could have done, yet probably at more length than many folk will be bothered to read... but definitely enough for anyone interested to see the rationale. Perhaps you simply are not interested in seeing it.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by Mithrae]

Yes as one of JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES I firmly believe we have witnesses many bible prophecies for our time come true and that we are living in what the bible calls "the last days"* . The few that remain for our time, namely the declaration of "peace and security", the destruction of Babylon, the "haidstone message", "attack of Gog of Magog", and finally the war of Armageddon are imminent.

JEHOVAH'S WITNESS






RELATED POSTS

What are "the last days"?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 124#891124

Is it possible to pinpoint exactly when this present system will be destroyed?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 423#891423

What is Armageddon in the Jehovah's Witness terminology?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 289#865289


FURTHER READING 1914​—A Significant Year in Bible Prophecy
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/book ... -prophecy/

[Divine Insight]

It's easy to claim that something has a 99% confident level when you haven't even remotely shown how that number was actually calculated.

The only real response I can offer is that you haven't even remotely read my post or addressed its content I clearly explained the basis for calculating each of those figures; certainly in less detail than I could have done, yet probably at more length than many folk will be bothered to read... but definitely enough for anyone interested to see the rationale. Perhaps you simply are not interested in seeing it.

Hardly.

All you did was give some extremely vague personal opinions of what you think these various prophesies may have been referring to.

The idea that you think you have a mathematically compelling case is, quite frankly, ridiculous. If that were the case, far more serious scholars would be in agreement with that conclusion, as well as mathematicians backing up the findings.

Perhaps you are simply not interested in seeing this truth?

Where is there an overwhelming consensus on your conclusions from the historical and mathematical communities?

No such consensus exists.

In fact, even other devout theists would not agree with your conclusions. They might lay claim to verifiable prophesies, but there is a very good chance that they would disagree with many of your analogies and offer their own analogies and correspondences. And they will give their ideas a 99% confidence level.

What then?

And that will be the case to be certain. You can take that to the bank.

So I don't see where you have anything more here than opinions and speculation that historians and mathematicians wouldn't even give any credence to.

After all, if there was any credibility in your claims shouldn't the vast majority of historians and mathematicians be in agreement with you?

Clearly they aren't. So apparently I'm not the only one who isn't "seeing this".

[Walterbl]

Lots of people say that the European Union is the ten headed beast refered to in the apocalypse.

[Divine Insight]

Lots of people say that the European Union is the ten headed beast refered to in the apocalypse.

And they no doubt say that with 99% confidence level too.

Let's not forget also that the Jehovah's Witnesses, a relatively recent Protestant off-shoot of Protestantism started in the 1870's in the USA, believe that the Catholic Church is the "Whore of Babylon". And they seem to be 99% certain of that as well.

In fact, what faction or denomination of ANY of the Abrahamic religions don't claim to have a 99% confidence level in their religious beliefs and speculations?

There were people preaching in the days of George W. Bush that he was the Anti-Christ when he invaded Iraq. They were predicting that the Iraq war was the beginning of Armageddon or at least a prelude to it.

People have been equating these ancient prophesies with political events ever since these prophesies were popularized.

The "End Times" have been falsely "prophesied" more times that Donald Trump has misled the American people. This is just more of the same.

These kinds of end time predictions are never going to end as long as people keep reading these ancient stories and trying to equate them to the real world.

Besides, Jesus said that all the things he prophesied would come to pass before the generation he was talking to had passed. He even told several individuals that they would live to see it.

So much for the prophesies of Jesus. He was clearly wrong.

[PinSeeker]

Lots of people say that the European Union is the ten headed beast refered to in the apocalypse.

Yeah, there are lots of crazy theories bouncing around out there. It's very troublesome.

Just generally speaking, so many Christians (and the problem is, they're the ones who are the most outspoken about it) want to make 1-to-1 correlations between any one thing mentioned in Revelation and something going on in the world right now, when they're actually 1-to-many correlations, the many being past, present, and future. In other words, most of the things mentioned in Revelation are symbolic and have many manifestations at any point in history, past, present, and future. That's a very general statement, but that's the general problem.

We may not be absolutely in accord, but JW is right in his statement that we are living in the end times. How long they will continue remains to be seen, but really has no impact on how we are to live in the right now, other than that we should live in the right now as if it will happen tomorrow. Or even later today.

[Neatras]

How long they will continue remains to be seen, but really has no impact on how we are to live in the right now, other than that we should live in the right now as if it will happen tomorrow. Or even later today.

So if we go on another 1,000 years, will people in that "end times" period label the present moment as part of the end times? Were people in the 1900s living in the end times? 1800s? 1100s? 300s? Is there any meaning to calling something end times if the terms aren't defined well enough? Sounds like fear-mongering to me.

I'm sure people living in the 10th century would say they were living in the end times, but now we know better. Seems arrogant and wasteful to believe that our generation is that different.

I've noticed that a lot of old people seem eager to watch the world burn. They've had their fun romp around, they wanna experience a glorious rapture, and put those dirty heathens in their place.

Nevermind the absurd hubris that the world should stop spinning before they wind up in the grave. Nevermind that there's an entire generation of people just waiting to go out and see the world that end times predictors believe don't deserve or don't get to have their whole life ahead of them. But no, folks like Harold Camping were happy to declare the end was here in 2011. Posters on this forum were happy to declare the end was here in 2016. They want the world to end to satisfy their ego.

Seems like a massive empathy gap to me.