< BACK TO THE HOME PAGE 42 comments

Flashback Beasts, Plagues and The End-Time

December 9, 2010

VIEW: A clip from our report, Apocalypse! It first aired on the eve of a new millennium - December 1999. This time of year, as the calendar's about to turn, the Web site traffic spikes. And why not? Our culture lately has been bombarded by visions of the apocalypse in films, books and tv.

But nothing tops what can be found here in The Book of Revelation, written nearly two thousand years ago.

It's the last book of The New Testament, the mysterious one which brings the Bible to its close, and its images and ideas have shaped our world.

The Web site offers a pictorial chronology of the apocalyptic world view through the ages; a section on the antichrist; and a look at the evolution of apocalyptic ideology -- from Jesus and John the Baptist to Martin Luther and the Crusades, from Nazism and Marxism to the Puritans and Doomsday cults.

42 Comments

COMMENTS

Is there supposed to be more to this video?

Id like to see it if there is.

aARON / December 12, 2009 8:41 PM

This 2012 thing has everyone speculating, guessing, and making up stuff concerning the end of the world. I have a feeling it's only going to get worse and make Y2K, (remember that one?), look like child's play. Better start stocking up on batteries, k-rations, bottled water, etc etc etc....

kennedy / December 13, 2009 11:40 AM

It's all true. The world will tip on it's polar axis causing dramatic and violent chances in the climate. It will be such a sudden shift that earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, etc. will come to pass. I think...

Crug / December 13, 2009 1:57 PM

There's money in fear.......peace just does'nt quit make the same profit margins or big ratings!!

Peter / December 15, 2009 8:30 PM

Read the Book of Revelation years past. Want to read it again soon. This is not fear mongering of man. This is knowledge from God, Himself.

Barbara / December 17, 2009 9:32 AM

This article was well done and I enjoyed it.
The Book of Revelation was inspired to John by God Himself...breathed by God and written by John's hand. Time is ripe for the second return of Christ. Take not Revelation as merely a story in a book. The Gospel is the truth. What God says is what He is going to do and that in Revelation is going to happen. Almighty God is indeed in control and His timing for what is to come is going to come. Revelation is a book not to be feared except by those who deny God exists and as important refuse to believe on His Son Jesus Christ.

Cynthia / December 17, 2009 10:09 PM

Will they ever reshow this on the website?

Anonymous / December 20, 2009 11:45 AM

Nothing more than a fairy tale. It's astonishing how many people have been tricked into believing Christianity is truth.

MR. Rees / December 20, 2009 10:41 PM

It never ceases to amaze me that rational people still choose to believe such silly things as these.

nrdesiey / December 21, 2009 4:55 AM

An interesting website to visit on this subject is: wwwbibleuniverse.com this site pulls no punches and allows you to study this subject w/ out insulting your intelligence and does not let human theories or ideas to cloud the picture.

gerald fleming / December 21, 2009 11:27 AM

This document is the plan of the anti-christ
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/11/27/1609633/rw%20nw%20prt%20m%20hrw.pdf

Disever / December 22, 2009 2:58 AM

Life probaly will go on but remember the wise will be the surviviors, raise your children not with the dogma of religion, open mind and education and your influence give your children confidence.

lin / December 22, 2009 10:27 PM

Raise your children with open mind and education yes. But without religion they'll have no spirit.
The phrase "do not be afraid" appears in the old and new testament 19 times. Those who do not belive in God or the Word will be the ones trembling when Jesus returns.

mick / December 23, 2009 11:16 PM

the medieval mindset is obsolete...this fearmongering has gone on for centuries, they just keep moving the date back... sorry, I just don't buy it anymore... john was referring to things in his own time, and the "beast" was emperor Nero...

d smith / December 24, 2009 2:36 AM

Is not the "end of times" when one is deceased?

w wilson / December 24, 2009 10:23 AM

@w wilson

Sure is. And that's what people fail to realize, for anyone end of times is when they die

iceberg020 / December 25, 2009 9:28 AM

With the state of the world economy and our environmental mess. I would be shocked if we made it to the end of 2011...lol

bRiAN c / December 25, 2009 9:54 PM

Some times I think we are living the book of Revelations now..or as my mom used to say "Sometimes I think this is hell".....Michael Manis-Jericho NY

Michael Manis / December 27, 2009 1:09 PM

Before you make up your mind on what Revelations means, you might want to check its origin. In the past several decades, archeologists have "dug up" lots of information that helps us understand the treasure that is the Bible. Revelations, for example, was written by John during the time of Christian persecutions, and his writings were seen then and are today to be his description oss his dreams. They are horrible, but so were the experiences of Christians during those years.

This information is part of the introductory paragraphs of the book of Revelations in most Bibles. It's dependable information. You should read it.

bnsam / December 27, 2009 4:11 PM

I try not to worry what other people choose to believe or not believe. I have no desire to "win over" others to my set of beliefs and unbeliefs. As long as they all follow the Golden Rule, we will all be OK. As much as I feel many believe the wrong things, I'm not sure I'd like it more if everyone believed the same exact thing. Maybe diversity of belief is as healthy as diversity of genes known as hybrid vigor. Of course I may be totally wrong, as I normally am.

Frank Mitchell / December 27, 2009 5:35 PM

These are things that "make me go "Hmmmm":

It amazes me that people would WANT to follow a God who invented and allows to persist: animal abuse, child torture, world disease and famine, devastating weather events, cancer, etc., etc.

This is the same God who tests your faith by asking you to kill your only child and allows his own to be tortured and butchered to "save you" rather than simply do so himself, as we know he he could with a wave of one teensy finger. Not even that much effort.

This is the God that stole a young virgin's dreams of marriage and family, gave her the normal desire humans have for intimacy, but saved her, otherwise untouched, for himself...therefore let her remain a virgin with no other children.

This is the God who then tortured and butchered HER "only begotten son" son before her eyes, because that was a more interesting or important way of "saving us" and demonstrating his power... And let her experience that death, not knowing, as he did, that her son would eventually rise again.

Who, besides Christ, suffered the most in that scenario? And just by the way: Why didn't she rise again after her death, just to show what happens to uncomplaining, unquestioningly obedient worshippers?

This God is also the one who supposedly allowed the death of every male child---excuse me--CAUSED the death every firstborn male child of a vast geographic area (those whose parents didn't slaughter an innocent baby sheep and paint the doorway with its blood), just to make a point or influence a decision of someone here on Earth. (BTW, Were any of them, I wonder, "only begotten sons? Did they rise again?)

This is the God that let Sara go childless until she was old, just BECAUSE, then gave her child to someone else..again, just because he could. This is the God that turned a woman to a pillar of salt for looking back at what she was running from, not knowing what it was, exactly, and running in terror for her life.

He is the being who still expected her husband to be grateful, not just obedient, for being saved from the destruction. (I wonder: Could God himself will himself to feel true gratitude under those circumstances? Has he had to try? Will he ever experience terror and horrific loss, and still have to find a way to feel grateful and loving toward the one who caused it?)

This is the God that allowed slavery, that still DOES allow it, that allowed the Holocaust, and will allow another,etc.,etc.

This God is the same omnipotent being who allows horrific things to be done, and to happen, either by circumstance or the evil of other people, even though his creations pray their guts out to him that he won't....and lets people exist for a lifetime of poverty, disease, ignorance and sheer misery, while others have the opposite, no matter what they do.

If you hate homosexuals...well, this is the God that created them, and who will by many people's reckoning later roast them for being that way...even while millions of them have prayed to be otherwise, and were tortured by shame when God didn't answer nor encouraged other humans to realize he'd chosen their "lifestyle" for them (via biology or destiny) before they were born.

(If you believe they choose, why did he give you the easier choice, but give them early life experiences that made them want what is supposedly evil?)

This is the God who is so concerned with "faith" that he will allow people to murder each other over the question of exactly who and what and how and why he exists, and what he wants from us....instead of informing us directly.

And the real reason people do still worship has NOTHING to do with love for him, even though they wish it did, for true love and terror don't co-exist in humans. People, it's terror you feel, and a tiny sense of relief that this monster might be on YOUR side and think you are really trying hard enough to forgive HIM, or at least beleive he has the right to do these things to you and yours and the Earth. You hope with all your being that he either doesn't hear EVERY thought, or will forgive your doubts or moments of forgetting your terror.

You're so scared that you will hurt others, including those you love, to please--or at least not anger--the God of the Bible, and other Gods we honor here on Earth. You pray that the Bible or other alleged guidebook gives you at least a clue of what he wants, that the people who wrote it really did get it directly from God, and that your current religious leader is interpreting it correctly, and that you are in the right group.

And that's very understandable. He's pretty terrifying, and won't even give us a clear picture of what he wants from us--just some indirect signs, open to interpretation. And if you trust archeologists, maybe not even that.

Yes, he's terrifying beyond what we can even imagine--IF he exists.

Now, that's the God I want to follow!!! The God I love with all my heart!! My guide as the epitome of all that is right and good and just and loving.

It stands to reason that, since this God is one who loves gory spectacle, indirect instruction, and hazy revelation, public yet very personal retribution, who loves punishment of people he invented and whose confused brains he created so, that he would choose this way to end the world as we know it.

Demons eating people--wow. Fires, floods, famine, pestilence...rather tame by his usual standards. Roasting people in an eternal BBQ pit for not believing in him and his GOOD (!!)-ness....now that's more in line with his usual standards.

You'll say that it's the evil of Mankind, or the (almost equally powerful) Devil who causes all this badness...but,my All-Powerful, All-knowing, I-created-the-universe-even-my-own-self deity could've stopped it all with a wave of his hand...enlightened our minds, explained it all, prevented the cruelty, calmed the weather, created us to not need food (so as not to kill and destroy to eat)or have base desires...at the very least, simply made the naughty people evaporate forever with a wave of his pinky.

And to think we argue over whether lethal injection is too mean to do to a murderer who tortured small children. My goodness! Aren't WE picky!

But no...I guess we in our badness we ARE created in his image, because he too usually prefers the gory, cruel, mind-game, power-play, unfair, playing-favorites little chess game version of events. In all the Universe, with all he could have invented, he chose US, THIS.

Folks, if this is God, I'm not going along. If ALL we got is free will, I'm using mine. I'm thinking (well, wish I could think anyway, but then that God allowed this one to exist, so...) our God's big brother or sister is out there somewhere, and is more like the gentle, loving, all-merciful, all-wise, Alpha and Omega we've been told this one is.

I'm pretty sure it's dust-to-dust, and any rhyme or reason to the universe--even just its randomness--is explained by quantum physics with minds much greater than our own.

I think we all know the sadness and loneliness we feel when we don't believe there is a Jehovah after all, one who loves every little sparrow. But what is, is. I can't go back to believing in Santa Claus, no matter how much I will it.

I think whatever I believe in and do, as far as ethics, and love of the Earth, and all that is in it go, I do of that same free will, simply because it is right...and yes, it IS harder when you know there will never be an after-life reckoning for the evil, and no greater understanding in this life, and no afterlife revelation or reward. If I do the moral thing, it's because it's simply the right and merciful thing to do, as best I can tell form what I know now.

And I am grateful, yes, that I can know, at those times I do know, what is right. I feel deeply and sorrowful when I don't know, and angry and sad when I don't live up to those standards. Yet I try to be merciful toward myself and others, because if we don't, no greater being will.

To for those of you who are horrified at my hubris and/or sure (maybe even glad) I will roast forever, let me say: I don't care. Or, yes, I DO mind, very much. Yes, it's a scary thought. Yes, I'm so far from perfect that at least a little toe-roasting is probably past due. But it would be so very immoral to follow the God of the Bible, that I'd still have to do and think the same.

Sometimes I even wonder if this is all illusion, and whether the true test might be to see whether we can still try to be moral without the fear, or in spite of the sadness and anger and the lack of a reward. But still...wouldn't there be a better way, a way just as easy and much more direct, for any being who could create all of this? So.


PerryM / January 2, 2010 2:45 PM

The Christian revelation is inadequate. The only real end-time revelations left are the ones that may be handed over by the billion-breaking populations such as those in Asia. End times come as we enter the era of scavenging.

eric / January 3, 2010 8:18 PM

Great programing, why can there be more such great programs on tv such as this one?

Ron / January 5, 2010 2:55 PM

Phooey
My prediction of the future is a peaceful fair just well educated ecofriendly world.Once American govm. fails and is replaced with a representative democracy the world will be fine.
no more war pigs no more false wars.no one to stop international treaties to ban landmines and cluster bombs.no more arrest without trial,no more training and sponsoring torture,no more invading soveriegn countries to steal resourses.no more dictatorships sponsored by and created to supress unions,education,pluralist alternative parties,no one to limit news media.No one sponsoring and creating radical armed factions around the globe to create false enemies to justify new wars.Govms free to nationalise thier countries natural resourses for equitable distribution without being replaced with brutal corrupt dictatorships.If there is a satan,I vote USA.5 percent of the world population sure messes it all up for the free world.all the countries with health care for all,University ed.for all retirement for all citizens.All countries willing to sign no war crimes treaties no nuclear weapons prol. treaties no depleted uranium treaties.no making war treaties .thats my kind of world.All the flag waving Americans should fly your flags upside down and hang your heads in shame.
Endtimes are for the most easily brainwashed people incapable of critical analitic reasoning.I read the bible three times front to back.never fooled me.I think its a great
little book.I was young and found some good content but Ive read better works of man.
If you like parables please try thus spoke zarathustra :Nietze

ben / January 5, 2010 9:59 PM

I am shocked how many people buy into this nonsense. It is on par with the tooth-fairy and loch ness monster.

karen weintraub / January 6, 2010 9:38 AM

Do some investigating first and not from a Religious viewpoint. Research oil supplies and what happens when they run out( BTW that's sooner than you think). Research our natural water supply and how little there really is.Yes we have alternate ways to make energy but they are not easily available at this time and nobody really cares, Basically its too late.We should be focusing our resources on these issues or we will have contributed to our own definite demise ( the end of the world as you know it now) is going to end very soon. You will be forced to live within your means.So forget the religious finatics it is happening and it will not be a horned demon that brings destruction.

Scorpion / January 6, 2010 12:28 PM

man-made prophecies based on a man-made book. It's as real as the tooth fairy.
People who ascribe events to the bible (or whatever) fail to comprehend it was written by people. Primitive, ignorant people.

Grovel / January 6, 2010 8:20 PM

Didn't they just discover the largest oil reserves EVER under the floor of the Atlantic? Peak oil is a myth.

Fishman / January 6, 2010 9:21 PM

Man, am I glad I don't believe in this hocuspocus. I can spend that time thinking about important things.

Athan1145 / January 9, 2010 6:49 PM

Wow!! every interesting rather. I think we should just enjoy life for what it is and if it ends then there is nothing we can do.
so stop worrying and be happy.

Bob / January 9, 2010 8:44 PM

w.w.w.d

what if jesus came back already? as a man in birmingham or a woman in pakistan, w.w.w.d? what if he is walking across this land healing the sick with just his hands, maybe he is in a rock and roll band playing a guitar like a crazy man, w.w.w.d? would we say it wasn't true and laugh and call him a fool,or fall on our knees in fear and shed a tear, w.w.w.d? james,pomona ca.

james / January 12, 2010 7:40 PM

Use your brains, people. What makes Christianity true and Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or the myths of the Greek, Roman civilisations, or every other civilisation, wrong? Christianity is simply the dominant myth of the Western world. As disproofs of various aspects of religion trickle out of science, religions change their stories to survive, claiming that they didn't really say that the Earth was made in six days thousands of years ago... It's all trash. Demonstrably so.

Please, use your brains. This Apocalypse myth is so dangerous. It drives us to war. If GWB had Revelations in mind when he started the war in Iraq, then this myth has already killed some of your children.

CB / January 14, 2010 2:06 AM

Wish I could add something to "PerryM's" note - but he nailed it to the cross (so to speak).

Bravo

rbowden / January 15, 2010 3:15 PM

I want to cut and paste into a paper PerryM's comments. They are the best I've read or probably will read.

And they say what I have come to finally believe for myself. It has taken me most of my 77 years to reach this point, but here I am and here I stand as I can do nothing else.

Margery / January 15, 2010 9:08 PM

People still belive in fairy tales

david drysdale / January 16, 2010 1:13 AM

Apocalypse, a literal end of the world? Pure religious fantasy and social hype. Religion loves to exploit fear and ignorance.

http://amuletdiscounts.blogspot.com/2009/12/its-end-of-worldagain.html

L Michaelis / January 17, 2010 9:46 PM

id rather suffer here a short time in my test of faith to live in complete harmony there after in heaven than to question God's work an go to hell u have to remember satan once was a beautiful angel that wanted to be God an have his power an betrayed the lord. are faith has to be tested

Anonymous / February 16, 2010 11:32 PM

The greatest scam satan created was to make human beings believe he doesnt exist.

SecretAgentMan / July 10, 2010 1:31 AM

"Few people have ever read the book of Revelation..."
Really ???

May Lyn / December 10, 2010 8:30 AM

the book of revelations is the pinacle of literary absurdity. Cant believe people in their right minds would even pay slight attention to this rubbish, let alone believe it.

stefhen bryan / December 11, 2010 1:15 AM

PerryM... now that you have read the Bible, why don't you take time to understand it? It sounds like you still have a lot of questions to ask, let alone anger issues to contend with. By the way...Jesus HAD to be tortured and beaten because he BECAME sin. Therefore, even He was justly dealt with. And If Mary rose again after her death what would that prove? Would that one miracle supersede all of the other things Jesus did in the Bible? No, because her performed all of those things and yet you still don't believe!One more thing...God did not invent homosexuality, and people are not born that way! Homosexuals are confused. In their search to "find themselves" they identify with other lost people (who are facing the same struggles) in order to define who they THINK they are. There ARE logical answers to all of your questions. I recommend that you engage with biblical scholars if you really want to know. Stay encouraged and keep seeking TRUTH!

Margery...I am concerned for you as well. what if you are wrong? There is a judge that we will all have to answer to on judgment day. If I told a judge that I did not believe in the American judicial system that does not prevent him from throwing me in jail for breaking the law!

For everyone else reading this remember...
1. SEEK and you WILL FIND
2. BEWARE of FALSE PROPHETS
3. STUDY to show thyself approved
God bless


LarryH / December 18, 2010 3:35 PM

Great comments everyone, we all seem to have opposing views, but for me I wan't to believe wholeheartedly the bible but I have one question that I'm confused about and no one can seem to give me a straight answer on it, so maybe some of you scholarly minded ones can help me out. If god created the earth in six days, and although adam and eve was created within that time frame and within a few thousand years christ walked the earth, but according to science and with almost irrefutable evidece the earth is supposedly billions of years old and flooded with tons of fossils of ginormous animals that roamed the earth at that time. So did the bible scribes and scholars get it wrong to say god created man in his image, Whose image was the dinosaurs created in or what part or parts of this creation thing are we missing. There's a vast amount of time between when adam and eve was created and when dinosaurs ruled the earth. The planet was even supposed to had been destroyed by an asteroid. It's like a dose of science-fiction and religion all in one, and I haven't gotten a straight answer on this one yet, so can someone please give me some clarity on this one.
(Gregg Mc)

Gregory M / January 1, 2011 3:28 AM
SEND A COMMENT