From the UK Telegraph:
Subheading:
Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth.
Article:
Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.
The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm.
In America Ron Hubbard, a manufacturer of hi-tech underground survival shelters, has seen his business explode.
"We've gone from one a month to one a day," he said. "I don't have an opinion on the Mayan calendar but, when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar flares, radiation, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) ... I'm going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It's just in case anybody's right." [more...]
Me: Sun spots are real, life on earth is uncertain, and Jesus is coming again, but I don't think God will use a Mayan calendar to influence His dates for world-shaking events. I also understand that prognosticators have been misinformed in their interpretation of the calendar. I expect December 21 to come and go without the earth coming to an end. Still, it's salutary to be shaken out of complacency. Each of us is mortal. Our destiny is to die, so we may as well give thought to that reality now as well as later. And short of death, some extra food on hand is always wise.