The end of the world is coming, whether you like it or not.
So say a multitude of people, all with a different reason and time. Of course, the most prevalent is the growing segment of the population who, in the words of my friend AAlgar, “will be on their roofs with canned food and a firearm” when the millennium rolls around. There are segments of this group that think civilization may start to fall apart even sooner, as some businesses and even the government start their “financial year 2000” several months before the actual start of the new millennium which, by the way, I’m counting as the year 2000 --- “the people” have chosen this as the year to celebrate, so who cares what some nitpickers say about there having been no year zero?
What are we really celebrating anyway? It looks to me like the biggest thing is the changing of all four numbers of the year at once, not any anniversary of something happening in year zero or one. I mean, did people back then actually say, “You know what? I'm sick of all this counting backwards stuff. Let's just call this year one and be done with it.” If we’re counting anniversaries, I would be more inclined to count, then, from the Chinese dating, which puts us at year 4697, and makes the new millennium about three centuries away.
Speaking of older civilizations, the Mayan “indians” came from a civilization much older than they, called the Olmecs. Interestingly enough, they both had the same prediction date for “the end of this world” --- a phrase meaning not the destruction of the planet, but for a cataclysmic event so terrible that most of the Earth’s population doesn't survive it. The last one was the Great Flood spoken of in legends the world over. These stories (along with many others) have many common details, though with the ethnic flavor of the area in which it developed --- the story of Noah and the Ark being the most well-known among modern–day Xians and Jews. The Mayans and Olmecs, though, agreed that 23 December, 2012 (when translated to the Gregorian calendar we now use) would bring about our latest undoing in a cycle that has repeated itself at least 4 or 5 times so far.
Some modern researchers have found evidence that we may be in danger on 5 May, 2000. On this date, five planets (Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars), the Sun and the Moon will all be lined up on one side of the Earth. The researchers say that all of this gravitational pull on one side may be enough to pull loose the crust of the earth from its molten core, pulling the South Pole, heavy with ice, towards its attraction. It may help to think of the Earth as an orange— if you could slide the skin of the orange around over the inner meat of the fruit, you would get an idea of the outcome of this --- the poles now at opposite sides of the equator, and points that were previously in the temperate zone at the two coldest points on the planet. There is also evidence that this may have happened at least once before. If fact, this shift may have been the cause of the Great Flood that occurred about 6000 years ago, and also may have been possible for the sinking of the long sought after city of Atlantis, which, as it turns out, seems to be a real place after all.
Some of these researchers believe that the ancient monuments that exist on the planet may be a long-gone civilization’s warning to us, such as the pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt, the Aztec and Mayan temples in South America, and even the possibility of intelligently crafted structures on Mars. I know the Mars face has had its fair share of debunking lately, but besides that there are a lot of geometric–looking structures nearby on the Cydonian plain. Don't misunderstand me --- I'm not saying that we humans originally lived on Mars, or even that there was once life on Mars beyond microbes, but I'm not discounting anything that this evidence says might be possible either. I'll keep my mind open about it until someone comes up with solid evidence either way.
In any case, there is solid evidence that the Sphinx looks to be a lot older than originally thought --- maybe even 25,000 years old. The weathering patterns on the Sphinx are distinctly indicative of water weathering, not air and sand, which means that the Sphinx was built back when the climate there was not as it is now, but a lush grassland. And there are catacombs under it which haven’t even been explored yet, due to the Egyptian authorities’ balking on the matter. Who knows what information these spaces may hold?
As science expands at the exponential rate that it has taken up, we may just find out that one of these theories, or another yet undiscovered, is correct. Perhaps the end of the world really is nigh.
Repent!