My newspaper runs horrible headlines. War. Devastation. Rape. All these awful catastrophes. It makes my stomach hurt just to think about it all.

    Then there are the tabloids at the market. You know, the trash magazines that are the first to announce where aliens landed this morning, or who found Elvis last Monday night. Always one of them will have a headline about the end of the world.

    “New Prophecy: World Will End in Flames” it screams. Or some other lunatic fear-mongering idea. Yeah, right. Who really believes all that idiocy? On the other hand, even respectable scientists say that ocean life is dying, and that the ozone layer is vanishing. What will happen to humanity when the fish are extinct and global warming reigns supreme?

    Will it even get that far?

    The ancient Scripture says it won’t. It says that the world will end, but not like that. And it says nobody knows when the final end will be. Lots of encouragement there, right?

    But what if that ancient book is accurate? What if it’s on to something? It says exactly how the world will end. That God’s son, Jesus, will appear again. Just like the time that history tells us about. Except this time it’ll be a huge event. Massive. Global. And that event will mark the end of Earth as we know it.

    Lunatic, you say. Okay. Fine. But what if it’s right? What if it is true? Why not give it a chance and find out? You owe it that much. You wouldn’t want to scoff at your chance to escape all that, would you?