That's great it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and airplanes

If I'm being honest, I can say: I don't really believe in the end of the world, like in a biblical sense.

Then again, I believe in both creationism and evolutionary theory--creationism just says that God made the world. It doesn't say how long it took. In fact, the Bible says that a day is to a thousand years as a thousand years is to one day. And so what if they messed up the order a little bit; whether it was earth, trees, man, animals, then woman, or if it was earth, protozoa, pond scum, invertebrates, blah blah blah, then humans, who cares? I mean, the old testament had people living to be 7 or 8 hundred years old. Something was clearly wrong with their dating system, or their concept of chronology. So in my mind, every living thing on earth is the product of God, and evolution just dragged it out a bit. Even if the Bible suggests that God said, "Hmm, I think I'll make an Earth today!" and poof! there it all was, are we really foolish enough to think that God works in minutes?

So back to the end of the world. So I don't think it's going to suddenly rain fire and sulfur and we all either enjoy the splendors of heaven or rot away in hell. But, why won't the world come to an end the way it began--over millions of years? Perhaps that's the way God wanted it. But I am starting to feel like we're testing God. I truly believe that we're accelarating the end of the world. It almost certainly won't happen in my or my children's lifetime, but it seems likely within the next thousand years or so.

Okay, perhaps we don't have sulfur rain, but what about acid?

I think R.E.M. had it all figured out. Seriously: earthquake, check. Birds, check. Airplanes, check. So we're not currently having a snake problem, but isn't that what St. Patrick had to deal with in the 4th century? We're talking about millions of years here, so this is somewhat relevant today. (Aside: in searching for a site to link to the snakes being driven from Ireland, I learned so much! 1) There really are no snakes in Ireland, but there probably never have been, since the island separated from the mainland in the last Ice Age and 2) St. Patrick never really drove anything out of Ireland at all. He simply brought the Irish Catholicism, which they did not have before him. So it was like driving out the demons, oft represented as serpents, or snakes. And here we are back in the Bible, in the garden.)

And R.E.M never even mentioned hurricanes worsened by global warming (at least not in the lyrics I could manage to memorize.)

I'm scared. I realize that terrible things have been going on for a long, long time. But it's just weird to feel so vulnerable in this world in which we act like we control everything. There is a pandemic coming, and thousands or even millions of people could die, and we are powerless to stop it. We usually know when hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tsunamis are coming, but we are powerless to stop them.

Godspeed to all.