I suppose my point was that we can't determine when all the book of Revelation is going to be set in motion. The disciples thought that it was, at longest, months away when Jesus ascended. Now, 2000 years later, it still hasn't happened. But you can't deny one thing: it's getting closer. (And I can't wait )

Well, I personally would say some time in the next ten or twenty years. Daniel (I think it was Daniel) said that just before the end there will be a great increase in knowledge and population of the world- look at the last hundred years. Also, the US is mentioned as a world power(not by name but by description) in prophecies of end time, but China is not. If America keeps going in the direction it is, China will rule the world within the next fifty years. This is not predicted, so we can assume that the world will end well before that.
Also, the Armageddon (the battle between religions) is building up with the tension in the Middle East and the Palestinian Israeli war.
Matthew- As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the time of the end. Look at society today, and you will see the violence, selfishness, tolerance of sodomy, apathy, vice, immorality and confusion that there was before the flood. Not long now.
Something that I thought was really cool when I heard about it was the whole symbolic thing with the seven days of creation. The first six days were days of labour, and the seventh day a day of rest. Theologians have traced Biblical genealogy back to about four thousand BC as the creation of the world. Six thousand years. In Revelation, John sees the Christians being taken up to live in heaven for a thousand years before moving back to the new Jerusalem. And in the old testament somewhere, a day is said to be as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. That means the six days of labour are up. Soon it will be time for the day of rest. And then an eternity on a new, perfect world.
There are other signs. Natural disasters are far more rampant now than they have ever been. Wars and rumors of wars fill the newspapers. Society is ripe to accept Satan, disguised as Christ, and eat up the deception, even the very elect.
The second coming is soon. We can't know when, all we can do is prepare, and try and save as many as we can.

P.S. Whoever it was who mentioned a seven-horned leopard, the beast is symoblic. Just like Alexander the Great is a three horned goat, the beast will probably be a world religious leader, not a ravening creature. Actually, that's another sign that the end is nigh. Technology has reached a point that a leader will be able to impose a mark, possibly electronic, onto all his followers, something that would have been ludicrous a hundred years ago. The number 666 may be a code used to activate the chip or whatever. I don't know. But we'll see soon enough.

I agree that it is soon, but remember: people have predicted that it is "soon" (as in: within a few years) for a long time. Also remember: there have been wars for all time. I believe that if we lived during WWI or WWII, we would think that those were the "wars." But now, over half a century later, nothing has happened.
I believe that the natural disasters may NOT be more prevalent now than they ever were. Think about it: if a Tsunami in Asia, and an earthquake in China, etc. happened a thousand years ago, we wouldn't have heard of them. But now, the world is connected, and we all know about world events mere hours after they happen. So now, we know about ALL the natural disasters in the world, not just our local ones. This creates the illusion of there being more of them.
Also: immorality and sin, corruption and greed, etc. have been around forever. Again, it may seem like more now because we hear about more. This is because of the media and increased attention being drawn to these things.
I'm not saying that everything you said is wrong, I'm just saying that we need to look at things in perspective.

I will have to side with Beren on this one. Remember that earthquakes, fires, and volcano's happen. The only addition I'll put on what Beren said with that is now there are also an awful lot more people. An earthquake today that kills a thousand people might only have killed a hundred in the past. When you get the population density in places like we do today, the potential for any disaster is magnified. Add that to modern civilization's Titanic attitude that makes our actions in the wake of tradgedy much more useless.

As for sin and immorality, remember there are no new crimes. There may be new methods, but the crimes are the same. Even with the internet. Ah, the interent. Surely one of the greatest and one of the worst things ever created.

One last thing to add to Beren's post, WWI was called the Great War. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the thought was at the time that this would be the war to end all wars. Further I think they thought the same thing in WWII.

Remember Y2K and the Millennium Fever. Prophets have been predicting doom for thousands of years. Some have been very specific with dates. And yet here we still are. What is the next date going to be when we find ourselves (mostly) still here in 2013?

It's about time we stopped taking prophecies literally and started looking at ways to move beyond our apocalyptic fantasies. Some years ago I saw a Time magazine cover with dead Africans strewn across the page the caption reading "the Apocolypse is here." What if a Seer several thousand years ago actually saw that cover in a vision? I've had dreams wherein certain things about the future were revealed, yet the future remained in flux.

We have been living in "Apocalyptic Times" since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Suffering and appalling conditions have been the lot of most of humanity since the beginning of Colonialism. And has grown a thousandfold with Corporate Neo-Feudal Globalism. The power to stop the rape and pillage of the planet and it's peoples are in our own hands. We cannot wait for a mythical Saviour to arrive and set things right. Benjamin Creme keeps pushing back the date for the Maitreya (Jesus), who he claims is walking among us right now, to reveal himself. But We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.

We have been waiting for the shift of energy from our lower chakras to move into our heart chakras en masse. The Spirit of the Christos will then move us to do what we must to clean up the mess we have made and heal ourselves and the planet. I think this is what the prophecies reveal. The Four Horsemen have been wandering the planet with Western Faces since we brought disease and tyranny to the New World when Columbus first fell upon the shores of the Americas.

You want 666--Ronald Wilson Reagan--six letters in each name. That doesn't mean he was literally the devil, nor that he was totally evil. But he and Maggie Thatcher in recent years epitomized the "Let Them Eat Cake" Spirit that is at the Heart of the 500 year Apocalypse that is still ongoing.

Also, The Mark of the Beast has been around since Roman Times. Every slave who has been branded, every Jew that has been numbered, every person that has allowed Avarice into their soul and been enslaved by their addictions to Money is so marked, as has anyone who has ever been numbered in a census, or forced to carry identity papers. Again, let us not be so Literal that we miss these signs. The Apocalypse has been with us for hundreds of years and if I hold out any hope for 2012, it is that it will mark the ending of the Apocalypse and a New Beginning for Mankind. I hope we finally grow up, get over it and get to work fixing things.

But I'm not going to hold my breath either .

P.S. If we get really lucky and do a good job redeeming ourselves maybe the Elves and Fairy Creatures will come back.

I suppose, being an Adventist, I am biased, as one of my baptismal vows is to prepare for the soon coming of the Lord.

Yeah, well there's nothing wrong with being prepared . I don't know what's in the cards either way. But I still hold out hope for the future.

Gandalf's Beard

I have a great book of essays on 2012 collected by Sounds True. It has a HUGE range of well written hypotheses and propositions. Its The Mystery of 2012.

All i cant stop thinking is that 2012 is when Palin is projected to run for preident... *shudders*

Sorry to bring this thread back up, but this just might close it . My friends and I had this debate, then someone just popped in and said the Roman Calendar, the one we use now, is Four years ahead of the Mayan calendar, which means this all would have happened by now.