When I was a fundamentalist in the 1980s, even then I couldn't understand why so-called Christians were writing books, making terrorizing plays, etc. to hypothesize about how close we were to the coming of Christ (as if no other generation had done that before ... try all of them!).
Or the craziness of thinking Reagan was the anti-Christ because his first, middle and last names had six letters each. Or the nonsense about P&G symbol on toothpaste being a Satanic symbol; or Russia being the Bear from the Book of Daniel, etc. And so many people buying into all of the nonsense!
In any case, from the 1970s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, and numerous other venues (e.g. Word of Life traveling circus) used to whip this up, I thought hasn't anybody taken the biblical passage "no man knoweth the hour..." seriously?
In retrospect, like most else in our money-driven culture, it probably had more to do with $ rather than theology.
It was a sad affair then. And as an agnostic today, I feel bad for those who take it seriously. But also angry by the moral hazard it poses to spawn complacency and inaction among those thinking the end is nigh.
For example, I have family members who are still fundamentalists and they aren't the least bit interested in recycling. They don't see the point when Jesus is coming any minute and global warming will be the least of the problems of those left behind. If they end up being wrong by 200 years or forever, that's a big act of irresponsibility and selfishness in my book.
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