[Darris McNeely] Someone dropped off on my desk this week a copy of the latest Wired magazine that has as its cover story this article talking about "Apocalypse not: climate collapse, mass starvation, deadly pandemics - get a grip" it says. And "Why the world won't end in 2012 or any time soon." This is Wired magazine. This is a popular technology magazine published in the United States. And what this article does is go through the last 50 years of apocalyptic scenarios that have been formulated by scientists, not religionists, but reputable, highly educated scientists like Rachel Carson with her Silent Spring, or Paul Ehrlich with his population bomb in the late 1960's. And it goes on further and even mentions the talk by a former United States President Jimmy Carter where during his term, he predicted that the world was going to run out of oil in just a very few short years. None of these predictions of oil shortage, of a population collapse, or explosion that would bring about the collapse of society, or other forms of pandemics or starvation have come about to produce the scenarios that those individuals talked about. In fact, the world keeps going on. We have more energy. We have taken care of some of these pandemics. We have prevented starvation. And the population has continued to grow. And the world has been able to take care of all of this.

The article goes on to coin a - actually to reference from another author - a term called "Apocaholism" - the tendency to get caught up in apocalyptic scenarios. And what's interesting about the article, it shows that you don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to be caught up in predictions about the end of the age, that you can approach it from a technological perspective and do the same thing. Now, of course, on Beyond Today we recently did a program, I did a program on when predictions fail showing how the people who get caught up in apocaholism from a biblical perspective try to read into and predict when Jesus Christ is going to return and the end of this age and make predictions on dates and years and actual days and have always failed and how that is a problem when it comes to prophecy.

The problem that comes, regardless of which perspective you take on this subject is to get into the realm of, let's say, scoffing. And then when you do that you fall into the problem that the Apostle Peter addressed in 2 Peter chapter 3 where he addressed in the first century this very, very problem of apocaholism and getting caught up in predictions.  In 2 Peter 3:3 Peter writes, "That scoffers will come in the last days walking according to their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming?'" Peter addressed this at his time and the problem that we can all fall into of saying, "Well, it's always been predicted, never comes, therefore it's not going to happen." But Peter goes on to show the real key when he gets down in verse 7 he says, "The heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word are reserved for fire until the Day of Judgment and the perdition of ungodly men" (2 Peter 3:3-7).

Peter is his writings here shows that there is going to come a time of judgment and it is going to come on God's time table as He says, it will come as a thief in the night as he goes on later to say. And it will be because of spiritual sin, the judgment upon ungodly actions. That is the key to understand.

And so "Apocaholism" is a problem to avoid, but watching and learning and being prepared for what the Bible says will come is a quality that we should develop in balance and from a godly perspective.  When you do that, you're going to be on the safer ground and you're going to avoid some of the problems and the pitfalls that come from getting caught up in trying to make predictions or being - running around always scared.  God's love, God's approach casts out that type of fear and prepares us for those times that are to come.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.