December 21, 2012.
The day the world is supposed to end, or, in the language of Christians, the time of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Modern movies, books, discussions, facebook groups, and other parties show the fixation people have on this "end of the world" date. However, this obsession is not limited to just our day and age, if we look back in history, we can see that people got into this mind frequently. When the Iraq war came, people thought it was the end. When 2K was upon us, people thought the world was going to explode. With WWII, and before that, WWI, people thought it was over.
We can trace these heightened expectations for the Second Coming through history to the 1st century A.D. Just a few years after Christ had come the first time, people began to expect Him to come again, end the sufferings of the people, and reign supreme for the Millennium. During Paul's ministry, this obsession became a major problem within the Church at Thessalonia, not because the people believed that the Second Coming would happen, but because they were throwing away their lives in expectation of it. So Paul, Silvanus, and Timotheus wrote an epistle to the Thessalonians in an attempt to help the people keep hope in the Second Coming, but still live and plan for life (read the full epistle here). Chapter 4, specifically addresses the issue, stating, "study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you...for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep...then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air" (verses 11-17). The problem was, that these people stopped working, planning for the future, and caring about life because they thought, "the Second Coming is upon us, why work and save for a future that will not be?" They sit around, and literally wait for the Second Coming; the exact problem Paul was addressing.
Does not the same idea apply to us today? Some people give up actually living their lives because "the end of the world is near, so why break my back over something that will soon be gone?" "Why spend my life working away at making the world better, when it's only going to get worse until it ends?" The point of life is not to waste it waiting for something better to come along, the point is to make this life the best we possibly can. It's a proactive approach instead of a reactive one. Like Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 "for yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." No one but God knows when the Second Coming is. We can speculate about it all we want, but waiting for it leads to a wasted life.
So we need not give up our schooling, jobs, finances, storage areas, retirement funds, or any other areas of planning for a future because we speculate that the world will end. That way, we'll be prepared for the world to end, or continue on.
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