My 'End Times' Experience

I have lived through so many predicted 'End(s) of the World' that I've lost count. However, I am inoculated against such fears because of a personal experience.

In early October 1973, I took my firstborn daughter to meet her great-grandmother. I was the last of my grandmother's many grandchildren to become a parent, so it was quite a big thing. After visiting her, we proceeded to Colorado Springs to visit friends.

Our friends were fundamentalists, convinced that the End Times were at hand. They had chosen not to bring children into the 'Tribulation', were laying in supplies for the 'collapse', etc. They were heavily influenced by Hal Lindsey, and his book, The Late, Great Planet Earth. They gave me the book to read.

Being a very fast reader, I read the entire book before falling asleep. I was convinced! Using arguments based on prophecies in the Books of Daniel and the Apocalypse, Lindsey argued that The End was indeed at hand. Using those prophecies, he 'proved' that the next war Israel fought would be with the (then) Soviet Union, and that would trigger the Final Battle at Armageddon.

I woke up, ready to start laying in supplies and building a bunker. I walked into the kitchen for coffee. On the table was the local morning paper, with the front page showing.

The headline? 'Arab-Israeli War Breaks Out'! It was the morning of 6 October, and the Yom Kippur War had just begun. At that point, I became sceptical about all 'predictions' of the End Times, and decided to simply take Christ at his word, 'But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone.' (St Matthew 24:36)