The End Is Nigh?

As a Christian, I find that I am both a believer in the supernatural and a skeptic. I know, the statement seems like an oxymoron, but hear me out. While I am a firm believer in God Almighty, His Son Jesus Christ, resurrection, miracles, and so forth, I am very skeptical in accounts of psychic activity, ghostly apparitions, alien abductions, and the like. It is to this skeptical side I write and the topic I am skeptical about is the notion of the Mayan Apocalypse supposed to occur on December 21. Now, I will admit, I know next to nothing about this so called prophecy other than the last cycle on the Mayan calendar is set to end. What I do know about the Mayans, however, is that they were a Godless, human-sacrificing tribe in ancient Latin America whose peak of civilization ended hundreds of years before the Spanish conquered them.

You might think my knowledge on the civilization is not enough to base a conclusion on the Mayan prophecy, but I contend that it is. Why? It is enough because I have read God’s Word. This notion that the Mayans had access to some secret knowledge unattained by today’s humanity is ludicrous. First of all, the Mayans did not believe in God Almighty. How could they have prophesied the end of the world without knowledge from a God they did not believe in? After Jesus Christ had risen again and was about to ascend into heaven, the apostles asked Him, “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus Christ replied, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” These were the twelve apostles, the men who were going to jump start the Church of God and they were not to know the times and seasons which God had set into motion until the end. If they didn’t know the future God had set into motion, what makes us think the Mayans would know?

In continuation of Jesus’s point, Paul basically gives us a sequel to the very thought of times and seasons in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.

See, Christ will come back when no one will expect it “as a thief in the night.” Who knows, Christ could come back on 12/21/12; however, the fact that people are expecting the end points to Him not coming back on that day. My advice, don’t fear the Mayan apocalypse, but anticipate the return of Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”