Friend of the Inn Uwe Siemon-Netto is an award-winning journalist and confessional Lutheran. His most recent column for the website Freepressers.com takes up the many disasters (natural and otherwise) that are dominating the news. How have apocalyptic-minded people thought about the end of the world in previous periods of church history? How should we think bout it when our own newspapers are filled with “it’s the end of the world as we know it” language?

The Bible cautions believers against speculating about the date and time of the Apocalypse, although current world events and calamities seem to invite such conjecture. There are the uprisings in the Middle East. In Japan, the tsunami and earthquake disasters are fueling  nuclear fears. And then the nuttiness of clergymen fitting Luther’s definition of “false clerics and schismatic spirits” reminds us that Christ listed some signs of the looming end of times, for example the appearance of many bogus prophets.

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