Fantasy Apocalypse?

I don't think it is so much in vogue with my generation, but with my parents' generation it was all the rage.  Like avid college sports fans and their bracketing or the speculation of fantasy football addicts, so it was with that generation and the End of the World.  Don't get me wrong, it is a fascinating topic to everybody (especially environmental enthusiasts) but I think you take it a little far when you are scouring the Prophetic literature looking for clues as to the identity of the Antichrist.  There's a whole subculture of Armageddonists (none of whom agree with one another) and it's gotten so that they can't see the forest for the trees.  Just like the addled disciples of Jesus's time who were baffled that He didn't throw down Rome and free the Jewish state once and for all, so too are many in the End Times camp: they are in danger of losing their faith when events don't play out like they expect.  My favorite example was a man who thought he had found the mathematical key to unlocking the Scriptures (he even wrote a book) and that by taking the verse, 'a day is like a thousand years...' he could then interpret all the mentions of Prophetic time with a little math and a pocket calculator.

The so-called apocalyptic literature (comprising the Book of Revelation, parts of Ezekiel and Daniel, along with parts of the other Prophets and even a smattering of the Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels) is quite a fascinating read and I believe the original sci-fi/fantasy literature, what with dragons and beasts and wheels within wheels and eyes and explosions and stuff, very exciting.  The only problem is we don't know what the future stuff means, so instead we make stuff up and proclaim it as Truth even more heartily than we do the actual Gospel.  The only thing we know for certain is:

1. Jesus has promised to come back.
2. The World will blow up.

Anything beyond that and we are truly entering the realm of speculation and fantasy.  Just like the excited masses who threw palm branches at the feet of the much anticipated Messiah's donkey and shouted for joy at His coming only to cry out in anger for His blood a mere week later when He didn't show Himself to be the military conqueror they had convinced themselves to anticipate, we should take the hint and approach the subject with humility so that we too do not lose our faith.  But what is our faith in?  Him or our own theories?  That would be certainty number three: what comes of those who have heard the Word but reject it, distort it, or ignore it?

God has a bigger plan in all of this, far bigger than we mere mortals can ever contrive or imagine, just  as He did at Christ's first coming.  He didn't send His own Son to free a certain nation but rather for the sake of the whole world and every person who had been or was yet to be.  We are small minded, myopic beggars plotting out each step in a war older than creation itself and then responding with the wrath of thwarted generals when our prognostications differ from someone else's.  We need to heed the verse that says:

"For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see."  

That's straight out of Revelation and a far more useful exercise than plotting exactly which modern world leader just might be the Antichrist.  'He who has an ear, let him hear!'