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Comment by kubb | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, what grounds their belief that it's going to happen soon? Why not in a thousand years? As far as I know, there is no mention of the exact date in the Bible.

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The land of Israel has been a vassal state or part of another state or empire for most of recorded history. Israel becoming an independent state in 1948 ties in with messianic prophesy.

No, but even the first christians believed they were living in the end times. It's been believed for 2000 years.

For the first Christians, it made sense. But gradually, as it didn't happen, people adjusted their expectations.

New Apostolic Reformationists believe that there are increasing number of "new apostles" who are receiving messages from God, which they see as evidence of the end times.

It is also common among these folks to believe that the end times don't just happen and that instead it is our responsibility to create the circumstances that enable the end times. This can either mean creating a state of instability and violence or creating a worldwide christian theocracy that lasts for 1000 years. Both involve massive upheavals of global systems.

My favourite bit of Biblical trivia. Consider this passage from the Revelation of St John: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%208%... describing, perhaps, events leading to the end of the world:

> The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.

"Wormwood", a type of bitter plant, translates to Russian as "Chernobyl", and Ukrainian "Chornobyl": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl > Etymology

Sure, but this description doesn't correspond to what happened in Chernobyl, and none of the other trumpets have corresponding events.

So do the Evangelicals believe that Chernobyl disaster triggered the apocalypse, and that it has been happening ever since? I don't think so.

Yes, you would have to extend some poetic license.

This was a bit of ad lib, the US branch of Christianity follows it's own logic and sadly I cannot answer the serious question.

I'm pretty sure there were some bits in the Bible about loving thy enemy and turning the other cheek. But maybe I misremember.

It's a Pascal's wager. If you're convinced Armageddon is going to happen at some point, then you should do all you can to prepare for it happening in your lifetime. And that approach is explicitly encouraged in the Bible: "You do not know the day or hour", etc.

Right "you do not know the day or the hour", not "you know that the day will be sometime between 2026 and 2076". I understand being prepared and whatnot. I don't understand the certainty of the date. Even the Bible says that it's unknown.

Not only is there no date, it explicitly says the time and date is not known to us.

The closest we have to a "date" is Jesus claiming the current generation wouldn't pass away before the end times arrived, which obviously didn't happen. So even the "Son of God" got it wrong.

Wow thousands of years of theology all got it wrong, including Thomas Aquinas and some of the smartest people who ever lived. If only they had your brilliant HN thesis they could have saved so much time and understood so much more.

Owwie looks like I'm going to need some lotion for that sick burn.

Better to get used to the burning sensation

The same self-centeredness that drove man to think that Earth was the center of its Universe.