2012

2012: The Hype and the Truth
By Wallace G. Smith
Sabbath, July 18, 2009
As my wife and I walked into the local cinema, before us stood one of the largest movie advertisement displays I’ve ever seen. It depicted a coastal city being completely ripped apart by unprecedented seismic activity—tossing vast swaths of the city into the sky and dumping entire neighborhoods into a hungry ocean. It was a scene of utter devastation that clearly would have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And it was a fitting advertisement for the movie 2012, the new End-Of-The-World epic written and directed by Roland Emmerich, coming out this November.

No stranger to such movies, with 2012 Mr. Emmerich is capitalizing on a growing public fascination: the idea that the world will end on December 21, 2012.

And a fascination it is. The end of the movie’s preview trailer asks viewers to go to the Internet and to search “2012.” I did that just a moment ago on Google, and got 194 million hits.

Why 2012?

It seems the Mayans—the well-known and much-studied ancient Mesoamerican empire—kept many calendars, including one known as the “Long Count Calendar.” This calendar will reach the end of a 5,100-year-long epoch on—you guessed it—December 21, 2012.

Is there anything to the hype? Should we expect doomsday to come on 12/21/2012—or, perhaps, a New Age paradise?

The Mayans, themselves, said very little about this date, though records show they certainly did not believe the world would end at that time. Many of their descendants today have complained that the current (and growing) 2012-related hysteria is simply a “gringo invention.”

But this has not prevented New Age fanatic proselytizers, astrologers and other occultists from latching on to the date with a passion. Some say it will be the end of the world, while others claim it will be the dawn of a new spiritual era. They point to (disputed) astronomical conjunctions claimed to occur on that day and to visions and theories “received” by some while under the influence of psychedelic drugs and hallucinogens.

Yet the Bible powerfully warns against astrology and other occult practices for divination of future events (e.g., Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Jeremiah 10:2)—warnings that today’s 2012-obsessed individuals ignore, or perhaps have never heard.

Given the state of things, today—with economic distress, terrorism, global instability, natural disasters of powerful intensity, and more—interest in what the future holds and concern for the direction in which the world is going is understandable. But the answer doesn’t lie in a date on an ancient calendar, the conjunctions of astrologers, or the hallucinations of drug-using “psychonauts.”

Rather, there is a proven source of knowledge about the future, and that source does speak of natural disasters—and supernatural disasters—of unimaginable scale and intensity. And it speaks, as well, of a soon-coming new age of peace and prosperity across the globe—a time without war or needless suffering, in which the nations have learned to live with each other in harmony. That source is your Bible, and not only does it have a proven track-record of accuracy, it does something that a mere date on a calendar or a “Galactic Alignment” could never do: the Bible tells you not only the amazing details about what is ahead, but it also tells you what to do about it!

If you would like to begin experiencing the prophetic power of Scripture, please consider requesting one of our free booklets, such as Revelation: The Mystery Unveiled! or Who or What is the Antichrist? Our television broadcasts—such as A New World Is Coming and Prepare for Armageddon—are also available online, for viewing anytime.

2012 may make for an exciting movie, but the incredible real truth about the future is very likely sitting on your bookshelf, waiting for you to discover it!