From an article in The New York Times, Doomsday: The Latest Word if Not the Last:
Word spread quickly in some conservative Christian circles when Israeli troops captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Arab forces in June 1967. This was it: Jesus was coming.
But Jesus did not return that day, and the world did not end with the culmination of that Arab-Israeli war.
Neither did it end in 1260, when Joachim of Fiore, an influential 12th-century Italian monk calculated it would, nor in February 1420, as predicted by the Taborites of Bohemia, nor in 1988, 40 years after the formation of Israel, nor after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But after last week’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan, coming as it did after a succession of recent disasters, the apocalyptic speculation, bubbled up again with impressive fervor on many Christian blogs, in some pews and among some evangelical Christian leaders.
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“It’s inherently interesting,” [Craig C. Hill, a professor of New Testament theology] said. “If you have a sign out for the sermon, ‘Our obligation to the poor,’ you won’t get anybody. If you have a sign out for, ‘The Internet and the Antichrist,’ you’ll bring them in.”