12/21/2012 and Endtime Predictions: A Different View

[tcmgpt13]

Predictions are often wrong. After two hours of watching the History Channel’s latest production entitled Nostradamous:2012 that is my conclusion. Apparently I am not alone in feeling disgruntled about History Channel productions, as seen here in a review of yet another of their programs, Lost Book of Nostradamus:

Lost Book of Nostradamus Movie Review - Read Variety's Analysis Of The Film Lost Book of Nostradamus

Recently Reviewed
Lost Book of Nostradamus
(Documentary -- History Channel, Sun. Oct. 28, 9 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY

'The Lost Book of Nostradamus'
History Channel spec 'Lost Book of Nostradamus' explores a tome that may be linked to the reputed prophet.
Produced by 1080 Entertainment. Executive producers, Ken Ashe, Kreg Lauterbach cq; supervising producer, Betty Buckley; producer, Sarah Hollister; director, Lauterbach; writer, Hollister.

With: Pascal Cabrilier.
Narrator: James Lurie.

All right, let's take it as a given that the History Channel wants to shed its stodgy old image, but even so, it's hard to justify overblown nonsense like this thumbsucker, devoting two hours to a book of dubious provenance that might be linked to the 16th century alleged prophet. Filled with extremely earnest "experts" of peculiar pedigree (including a psychic and the Nostradamus Society of America's president), this sort of portentous baloney suggests the television apocalypse can't come soon enough.

Born in 1503, Nostradamus has long held fascination for those drawn to such blather by his seemingly prescient writings about events that occurred hundreds of years after his death. This latest spec focuses on a picture book that, if you look really hard, predicts towers on fire (the World Trade Center!), the Pope fighting a bear (the Cold War!) and -- get ready for it -- the precise window when the World Will End, give or take five years. (Here's a hint: If you have an IRA that matures in 2013, you might consider cashing it in right now and heading to Aruba.)

"Lost Book of Nostradamus" would be bad enough if it just gave a platform to psychic Ellie Crystal or Nostradamus enthusiasts Victor Baines and Jay Weidner, who approach the topic with straight-faced zeal. Worse, though, the narration perpetuates the idiocy, with narrator James Lurie at one point saying, "It does appear that the bad news is coming more rapidly, more intently, than ever before." Oh really? This would come as news to the millions who died during WWII, who, admittedly, didn't have three 24-hour cable news channels (or for that matter, the History Channel) capturing each moment with "news alert" urgency.

So is the antichrist among us? Are the hands of the apocalypse clock winding down? Will anybody stay with this spaced-out production against Sunday football and "Desperate Housewives," even if it is a couple of nights before Halloween?

Unsettled times are often bountiful to peddlers of such material, preying on the most gullible among us, desperate for answers to the big mysteries. Yet while I wouldn't pretend to possess a crystal ball, gazing into the near future emboldens me to prophesize that anybody who isn't a Nostradamus nut going in should be irritated or bored out of his mind by "Lost Book of Nostradamus."

I agree with this reviewer about being bored by yet another History Channel production Nostradamus: 2012 which at (most) times seemed to be a prolonged commercial for global warming. Do whatever these men say to prevent global warming or...The predictions are all dire. And repeated and highlighted more than once. Boring. I feel the program is a thinly disguised story to sway opinion so that it becomes easier to push through radical environmental controls whether or not they make any sense for economic survival. Perhaps the conspiracy here is the radical environmental agenda. If any of the dire predictions are correct the pathetically little mankind could do about carbon emission control (especially as most third world countries would be unwilling and/or unable to also participate) seems rather futile. Here is a London Times article about the man-made global warming “crisis” :

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved - Telegraph

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

Polar bear Photo
Polar bears will be fine after all Photo: AP

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.“

[Baraka Obam#2]

There will be a man of ebony and ivory chosen by the people, but lead by his wifes angry eyes, the people fooled by words of free gifts, they will call him pres i dented , OR SOMTHING LIKE THAT! Its a little fuzzy right now, give it a THOUSAND years maybe it will come true. LOL Woops that already happened, I am gonna have to get out my magic bowling ball. If ten pins will fall then it will be a miricle!!! I call it bowling for Jesus!! Did you know, if you are Christian and you belive in the predictions of the soothsayer you are sinning. I just thought I would mention it, seeing that most that professs the knowledge of bible do not know its teachings. The most important knowledge in the world is, WHAT WILL BE, WILL BE, so forget all the fire and brimstone, but keep the guns locked and loaded, truly it is man that is his worst own enemy!!!

[Sadsack]

Does that include the predictions of The Book of Revelation, Baraka?
SS

[tcmgpt13]

Personally I view the current global warming story as little more than a way to control populations by passing ever more freedom crushing laws. This global warming story also seems to make it appear that mankind has enough power to control the weather of the Earth. Yet what we do is so insignificant when using the earth, the solar system and then the universe as a comparison measure to mankind’s importance. It seems that many (most) contemporary powerful men are unable to accept that mankind has so little power and control over weather, but in earlier times there was some thought about this and it was far more humble thought than prevails today:

“3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him? (Psalms 8:3)

Psalm 8:3,4 - Bible Verse Desktop Graphic - Download Free Christian Wallpaper

“Pride is one of the distinguishing characteristics of puny man, and has been one of the chief causes of all the contentions, wars, devastations, systems of slavery, and ambitious projects which have desolated and demoralized our sinful world... Astronomy shows] us what an insignificant being -- what a mere atom, indeed, man appears amidst the immensity of creation! Though he is an object of the paternal care and mercy of the Most High, yet he is but as a grain of sand to the whole earth... What is the whole of this globe on which we dwell compared with the solar system?... What, then, is a kingdom, a province, or a baronial territory, of which we are as proud as if we were the lords of the universe and for which we engage in so much devastation and carnage? What are they, when set in competition with the glories of the sky? Could we take our station on the lofty pinnacles of heaven, and look down on this scarcely distinguishable speck of earth, we should be ready to exclaim with Seneca, "Is it to this little spot that the great designs and vast desires of men are confined? Is it for this there is so much disturbance of nations, so much carnage, and so many ruinous wars? Oh, the folly of deceived men, to imagine great kingdoms in the compass of an atom, to raise armies to decide a point of earth with the sword!" Dr. Chalmers, in his Astronomical Discourses, very truthfully says, "We gave you but a feeble image of our comparative insignificance, when we said that the glories of an extended forest would suffer no more from the fall of a single leaf, than the glories of this extended universe would suffer though the globe we tread upon, `and all that it inherits, should dissolve.'" --As quoted in C. H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David commentary. “

These next paragraphs are from a young man’s discussion about the 2012 predictions. It heartens me to see that some young people are thinking for themselves and even doing a bit of research to support their beliefs. According to this information the Mayan date of Dec. 21, 2012, is not to be feared but is to be seen as a day of celebration:

The truth about 2012

The truth about 2012
By Ben Tremblay

You might have heard about 2012 and the end of the world. Well, I’ve recently put a website online called 2012 Explained to try to inform people of this other life nonsense. In brief, for people not familiar with the concept, the Mayan Long Count Calendar is ending on December 21 2012 and this is what they call the end of the Great Cycle. I felt so bad about all the false information and the fear propaganda being made around this event that I felt the need to create a website and make this all clear.

It is believed that on that date, the world will either ends or dramatic changes will take place. The possibilities are that there will be an increase of flood, volcanoes eruptions, earthquakes, a comet hitting earth and a magnetic poles shift. I explain on the website how this is all totally nonsense, that the end of the Great Cycle is considered by the Mayas as a celebration day and not as a doomsday and that it would be impossible for them to predict such event.

Also, Nostradamus apparently predicted that a comet will hit earth in 2012 causing major chaos on the planet. Again, I think it is fairly objective to say that Nostradamus can’t be trusted. Everyone can be a Nostradamus and it’s in fact fairly easy. Simply write vague enough statements/predictions with no dates about terrible events and once a terrible event occurred, you can probably make a link between your predictions and that event. I found a very nice article dating from 1984 about Nostradamus predicting the end of the world in the 1990’s and I think you can all draw your own conclusions! Here’s the article: 1990’s End of the world.

One last thing I explain on the website is that the only rational possibility is a magnetic pole shift. A magnetic poles shift is essentially the North pole and the South pole swapping places. It has happened some 780,000 years ago and many believe that we are overdue for another one. To be more precise, some believe it will happen in 2012 exactly. The NASA has confirmed a pole shift in the near future is a possibility, but no one knows! It’s not something you can predict. It is generally agreed that a pole shift could disrupt our planet. This would affect everything ranging from telecommunications to animals and humans. There’s only one thing you have to consider that may people intentionally forget to mention : A poles shift takes 5,000 years to complete! I’m pretty sure you won’t be here anymore. In the beginning of a pole shift, we might face temporary problems with cell phones, GPS, etc. but nothing close to the end of the world!

I won’t explain the whole thing in detail as I’ve created a website for that purpose: 2012 Explained.

2012 Explained - Why it shouldn’t be feared

What will happen on December 21 2012?

Quick answer: Nobody knows, but probably not much.

There have been a lot going on regarding the 2012 prophecy recently, including the movie “I am legend”, but surprisingly, not much information about what is really supposed to happen on that date is available. This is Probably because nobody knows and also because probably not much will happen. Most information available about 2012 is making reference to mass destruction of the world as we know it, earth’s pole shift/magnetic field reversal, Nostradamus predictions, end of Mayas calendar, etc.

The base of all the predictions is the end of the Maya calendar in 2012, which is supposed to mean the end of the world or a period of radical changes. In fact, the end of the Maya calendar is known as the end of the Great Cycle. People find it easy to believe in that theory because Maya civilization is known for advanced writing, mathematics and astronomy. It can seem like they really know what they’re talking about, but the truth is that the end of the Great Cycle is not the end of the world, it’s in fact a great celebration for the Mayas:

For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” (From USA Today)

Putting apart scientific data, here are the commons beliefs of the December 21 2012:

* Galactic Alignment. This Galactic Alignment occurs only once every 26,000, this is considered as the end-date in the Mayans Long Count calender. It is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator.
* A comet hitting Earth (Nostradamus)
o Read my article on Nostradamus to discover the real truth about Nostradamus: Nostradamus is not a valid argument!
* Earth’s Pole Shift/Magnetic field reversal
o Read my article on pole shift to discover the real truth about 2012 and pole shift: What is that pole shift thing and What is that pole shift thing part II
* Increase of calamities, natural disasters, mass destruction, etc.

I don’t want to repeat myself, but all of this is very vague as nobody really knows what will happen and the world is not at its first doomsday prophecy. There have been a lot of “Unfulfilled” prophecies in the past and you can have a look at this Wikipedia document for a list of unfulfilled religious prophecies.”

There is more discussion on this page and it is probably better to follow the link(s) above to read the whole of what this fellow say and to access all the links () which will not show up here by copying this information to this post.

These two web pages were written by a university student who mentions his background here:

About

About

There’s not much to say really, I’m a student in computer engineering and I’m interested in just about everything. I guess that’s why I decided to blog as I like reading and learning new stuff and then report it to my friends in my own way. As you can imagine I’m passionate about computers and more precisely web development. But I won’t make this blog a computer blog even though computer stuff will probably surface now and then. But apart from that I guess I’m a regular university student who enjoys life!

[tcmgpt13]

Many people claim to be privy to the day the world will end and yet it seems that has not been possible in any era so far:

The Day and Hour Unknown

36"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[a] but only the Father. 37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. (Matthew 24:36-41)

Here is a page which lists 21 failed endtime predictions just from the 1990’s alone:

ReligiousTolerance.org by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Many more predictions, along with specific dates of the end of times, have been made in the past which never came to fruition. The predictions of endtimes appear to increase in certain periods. They seem to be cyclical in nature and probably coincide with rapid changes in societal structures such as the change from an agrarian to an industrial manufacturing society or perhaps from the rather rapid environmental changes at the start of an Ice Age, warm temperatures to cold along with reduced food sources and the resulting famines. This sort of sharp, quick change often triggers fear which is fear of the unknown. Currently mankind seems to be at the edge of another great change in structuring business, agriculture and governments. Rather than relying on the manufacuring industry both the developed world and the less developed world are relying more on information industry, the service industry (rather than manufacturing) and industrial farming (rather than small family farms) to support its peoples. I believe this is triggering fear of the unknown. This time mass worldwide communication (radio, television, internet, telephones, newspapers) is involved in the change, thereby vastly increasing the speed of an already rapid change. This creates a series of conflicting belief systems about the future which may or may not have any basis in reality.

[Kritters]

Always good to see opposing views, whether accurate or not.
Kritters

[tcmgpt13]

Gee, Kritts, you took the words right out of my mouth. I can say the exact same thing about your viewpoint: "Always good to see opposing views, whether accurate or not."

[Kritters]

wow. somehow though, based on your comment, I don't feel the sincerity.

Let's review. I posted the view. You posed the opposing view.

So.....now you're opposing the opposing view?

Way to make great use of your time!

[tcmgpt13]

. What? You thought my last post was agreeing with you? Oh sorry, I corrected my post to clear up that misunderstanding. As for sincerity, well, I will leave that up to you to decide.

[Kritters]

No, I did not think your post was agreeing with me, TC.
Just one more misunderstanding on your part.

(hope you didn't bust a gut in erroneous laughter)