And the Internet is full of a whole bunch of other “September 23rd” doomsday sites. I swear every year or two these things pop up like roaches; with the true believers, it’s like a game of perpetual whack-a-mole, because no matter how many times these predictions are wrong (which is EVERY TIME), they just keep coming back for more.
Our skeptical friends over at Skeptoid do a nice take down of this latest doomsday prediction:
Let’s start with what’s being predicted for September 23, 2015 – and for September 2015 in general. According to various conspiracy, prophecy, and prepping websites, the following things will happen on the date itself:
• Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
• President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the White House. Of note is that Francis is the 266th Pope, September 23 is the 266th day of the year, and the average length of human gestation is 266 days.
• The Autumnal Equinox.
• The First day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, also known as “the Feast of the Sacrifice.”
• A range of dates that Comet 67P is scheduled to make an extremely close passage of Earth, September 15-28.
• The September restart of the CERN Large Hadron Collider will open a portal to another dimension.
• The end of Jade Helm 15 on September 15.
• The September 25th launch of a new UN initiative, Agenda 2030, which signals the end stage of Agenda 21 implementation.
• The date of the last of the “Four Blood Moons” heralding the End Times, on September 28.
• The approximate date of predicted economic collapse.
• The end of a Shemitah year in the Jewish Calendar, the last year of the seven year agricultural cycle, that traditionally brings with it great tribulation.
All of these events have been prophesied to form a combination that will bring on the End Times. What are the sources of these predictions?
• The obvious confluence of the three major world religions on September 23.
• Biblical prophecy, specifically the “Four Blood Moons” prophecy.
• The End Times prophecy of Sir Isaac Newton.
• A dire warning from French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who claimed on May 13, 2014 that we have “500 days to avoid climate chaos.” 500 days after May 13, 2014 is September 24, 2015.
• Prophetic dreams and visions by people attuned to such things.
• Predictive programming in Hollywood entertainment – specifically, many uses of the numbers “9” and “23” in films and TV.
Hmm, that’s quite a lot of scary End Times stuff, isn’t it? Except that the End didn’t come. But that won’t stop the apocalyptic fanatics from continuing to make their doomsday predictions; indeed, a quick Google search for “the coming apocalypse” will yield a mountain of Internet fodder to feed all the Bible-thumping, paranoia-inducing, hide-in-your-basement, conspiracy-mongering that you could ever want regarding future end-of-the-world predictions.
Well, it seems that yet another end-of-the-world prophecy has bitten the dust. Dec. 21st, 2012 – dreaded day of “the end” as supposedly fortold by the Mayan Calendar – has come and gone just like every other doomsday. Beyond citing the obvious fact that we’re still here, I cannot help but poke fun by passing along this humorous photo of arch-skeptic James Randi while he was in Cozumel, Mexico just last week 🙂
NASA says world won’t end in 2012 despite Mayan calendar
We’re less than a month away from the so-called end of the world, but NASA says you don’t have anything to worry about.
Earlier this month, NASA posted a list of frequently asked questions about why the world won’t end in 2012, like some believe the Mayans calendar indicates.
The post explained that Earth has been getting along fine for the last 4 billion years and there is no threat to our planet this year. …
But how can those egghead geeks at NASA be so sure? Well, there are these things called “logic” and “reason” which tend to give validity to arguments such as this:
… But just as your desk calendar ends on Dec. 31 and world keeps going on, the same goes for the Mayan calendar, NASA explained. Just before you run out of pages doesn’t mean life as we know it will cease to exist. …
Years ago I performed an impromptu investigation of the Montana Vortex, a roadside attraction whose proprieters claim that there is actually some kind of weird adjustment to the laws of physics in order to account for the strange goings on there. Like many such attractions, the folks who run the Montana Vortex have a “mystery house” where the effect of gravity seems to be lop-sided. But while this is obviously an illusion, it certainly feels real…
Thanks to a follower of this blog (@denatureSD on Twitter), I saw this recent Science Friday video from YouTube which nicely explains this phenomenon. Enjoy! 🙂
As readers of this site know, May 27, 2012, is the time that I have stated as being the date Jesus Christ will return as King of kings over all government on this earth. For such an event to come to pass, the Trumpets of Revelation must all sound, the United States and dollar collapse, the ten nations of Europe arise to fulfill the final revival of the Holy Roman Empire, and Russia with China must unite against Europe in WWIII.
As an aside, readers of this site should also grasp that as far as prophecy is concerned, ten nations in Europe have already combined in association with one another to the degree that the mixture of clay and iron is fulfilled. All that remains is their entrance into a final war, a prophecy that can be fulfilled quickly, as this posting will cover.
How is it possible or even conceivable that all these things can happen in such a short time? And what if none of these events have occurred as late as five, four, or even three days before Jesus Christ is to return? Is it truly reasonable that Christ is coming on May 27th? No, it is not reasonable, not within the parameters of man’s thinking. When this date was given just over three and a half years ago, it was not reasonable to people then, and now it has simply become that much more unreasonable.
But as the last apostle in this age, and as God’s end-time prophet, I am still telling people that this is true and that a short-lived WWIII is now at our doorstep. Due to this strong conviction, the Church of God – PKG is putting all its resources into promoting this final message of Christ’s impending return in order to complete the “work” that God has given us to do. This “work” is nearly complete. As my previous post was written over two months ago, this may well prove to be my final one, since there are only four weeks remaining in this age. …
Folks, as the saying goes, this is deja vu all over again. Here we are, on the day after supposed armaggedon, and there’s no nuclear holocaust, no fire raining down from heaven, no Rapture, and no return of Jesus Christ. In fact, things seem to be moving right along just as they were yesterday and the day before that (and so on…).
Need I point out the obvious, yet again? The obvious being that every single time one of these religious fundamentalists rants about the end-of-the-world, they end up being wrong. And, for the record, over the course of human civilization, there have been a LOT of these failed predictions!
Which begs the next obvious question: why does anyone bother to listen to these so-called “prophets” anymore?
No doubt, unless you’ve been living in a hole, you have heard about the supposed end-of-the-world coming this December 21st, 2012 – at least, that’s what some New Age whackadoodles and apocalyptic doomsayers would have you believe. Why do they believe this? Because, according to them, the Mayan calendar predicts it.
Unfortunately for the doomsday prophets, the Mayan calendar predicts nothing of the sort. Take, for example, the fact that recently the discovery of the world’s oldest Mayan calendar seems to have thrown the whole “Mayan 2012” prophecy of armaggedon into serious doubt:
The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.
The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn’t a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.
“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.” …
Oops. That’s embarrassing. So the Mayan calendary doesn’t predict the apocalypse? Why exactly is that?
… The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It’s these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the worldis a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn’t end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.
“There were 24 units of time they actually could have incorporated into their calendar,” Stuart said. “Here, we’re only seeing five units and they’re still really big.”
In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a “ring number” into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.
“There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns,” Stuart said. …
Of course, another reason to doubt the claims of the doom-mongers, despite the structure of the Mayan calendar, is the fact that no matter what the source for the supposed end-of-the-world prophecy, every prophecy of this nature in the past has had one thing in common: THEY HAVE ALL FAILED SPECTACULARLY! This includes at least one high-profile prediction from last year!
It’ll be interesting to see what the doomsaying believers have to say on December 22nd, 2012 when we’re all still here 🙂
(Reuters) – – Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll.
The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world.
“Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming,” said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.
“Perhaps it is because of the media attention coming from one interpretation of the Mayan prophecy that states the world ‘ends’ in our calendar year 2012,” Gottfried said, adding that some Mayan scholars have disputed the interpretation.
Responses to the international poll of 16,262 people in more than 20 countries varied widely with only six percent of French residents believing in an impending Armageddon in their lifetime, compared to 22 percent in Turkey and the United States and slightly less in South Africa and Argentina. … [emphasis added]
I want to just make note of the bolded text above: apparently, according to this poll, over one-fifth of the population of the United States – the most advanced and powerful industrial nation on the planet – believes in this 2012 end-of-the-world hooey. Oh… my… FSM…
After all, people have been predicting doomsday for thousands of years, with supposed divine revelation or prophecy to back them up, and all that time there’s been one thing common to all those predictions: they’ve all been dead wrong.
I have just one question for all of these people who claim to believe “the end is near”: Can I have all your stuff? 😉
The fine folks at NASA have put together a nice, quick video debunking the claims of doomsday related to the supposed end of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012. Check out the video over at Life’s Little Mysteries…
by Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put out a new video to address false claims about the “Mayan apocalypse,” a non-event that some people believe will bring the world to an end on Dec. 21.
In the video, which was posted online Wednesday (Mar. 7), Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Objects Program Office at NASA/JPL, explains away many of the most frequently cited doomsday scenarios. [See video]
Addressing the belief that the calendar used by the ancient Mayan civilization comes to a sudden end in December 2012, and that this will coincide with a cataclysmic, world-ending event, Yeomans said: “Their calendar does not end on December 21, 2012; it’s just the end of the cycle and the beginning of a new one. It’s just like on December 31, our calendar comes to an end, but a new calendar begins on January 1.” …
Despite the faux-surprise in the title of this post, I am not in the least surprised that there’s yet another true-believer who is trying to convince their followers that the end-of-the-world is just around the corner…
Ronald Weinland, who considers himself a prophet of God, continues to warn that Jesus Christ is returning on May 27, 2012.
For those who do not believe him and mock his message, Weinland claims that they will die from cancer.
His website, Church of God – PKG, claims that various end times events were triggered by the scattering of the Worldwide Church of God after the death of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong. With Armstrong no longer at the helm, Weinland claims he “is the pastor of God’s Church on earth, has also been appointed by the God of Abraham to be His end-time prophet and one of the two end-time witnesses (and spokesman of both), preceding the return of Jesus Christ on May 27, 2012.” …
I like the whole “you’ll die from cancer for mocking me” bit; it just seems to show that the good “Prophet” Weinland is full of Christs’s love.
Thankfully, most people will wisely ignore doom-mongers such as this self-proclaimed “Prophet”, but there will be those will be bamboozled. As for me, I just cannot wait to see what sort of excuses are offered on May 28th 😉
The Skeptical Teacher 
