6-6-6

If you're reading this, the world has been saved once again -- consider yourself lucky. That's what the doomsday predictions would have you believe.

Today is June 6, 2006, or in the common date format, 6-6-06. If you want to get really creative with it, as so many people have done recently, you can drop the zero and record the date as 6-6-6. That's what so many apocalypse theorists have done. And why, you ask?

Let's go to the Bible, in the book of God's Revelation to John about the End Days (chapter 13, verse 18, GodsWord translation):

Let the person who has insight figure out the number of the beast, because it is a human number. The beast's number is 666.

And who is the beast? The Antichrist, none other than the the devil himself, indwelt in the body of man, to walk this Earth and deal death and destruction in the End Times.

The doomsayers among us have predicted tragedy for this date, calling for anything from the end of the world to the birth of the Antichrist himself. What more fitting day for the Antichrist to be born than on 6-6-6?

Obviously, though we can't be certain until the last time zone flips dates at midnight tonight, the end of the world theory has been debunked. You're reading this now, aren't you, so obviously the world is still spinning.

But what about this Antichrist bit? How can we ever know if the greatest evil has entered the world today (at 6:06:06 am, perhaps)? Superstitious expectant mothers throughout the world persuaded their doctors to induce labor yesterday to ensure that their babies wouldn't be born on this ominous date. But what of those babies who were (or will be) born today? Could one of them possibly be the Antichrist?

The experts in Bible study mostly agree that Christ will return for his people in an event known as the Rapture. This Rapture is believed to be immediately followed by a time of Tribulation that the Bible says will last for seven years. During this time of Tribulation, the Antichrist will rise in power to fulfill his part of prophecy.

Many Biblical scholars believe that the Antichrist will reach the pinnacle of his power at approximately the same age that Christ achieved renown during his physical time on Earth: thirty-three. It stands to reason, then, that if the Antichrist were born today, we could expect from twenty-six to thirty-three years of existence left, depending on how you measure the Antichrist's pinnacle of power.

But don't go preaching the end just yet. Again, let's look to the Bible (chapter 3, verse 3, The Message translation):

"I'll return when you least expect it, break into your life like a thief in the night."

The birth of the man who will become the Antichrist will set into motion an unbreakable chain of events. If you are to believe that he will rise to power at the approximate age of thirty, you can plot out a course from his supposed birth today to the start of the Tribulation. This timeline would pinpoint the Rapture at the beginning of the Tribulation, some time between 2032 and 2039. While a seven-year stretch of time is still a little uncertain, God said (in the verse above) that he would return "when you least expect it." By definition, if we expect the Rapture to occur between 2032 and 2039, or any time near that, God Himself gas already told us that we're wrong.

The conclusion: any prediction of when the world might end, or when the Antichrist might be born, is patently incorrect.

For more information, read your Bible, or check out the Left Behind website. Better yet, find a good church.

Joe