December 21, 2012
Scary! I recently watched a History Channel program about December 21, 2012: The Mayan Calendar.
According to the show, numerous figures in history have made mention of the eventuality of the End of Days— the ancient Oracles of Delphi and the Sybil, the Mayan calendar, the ancient Chinese I Ching, the Indian Hopis, Merlin (the 17th century seer, not the fictional King Arthur wizard), and St. John in the Book of Revelations. Even the Internet-based project Web-Bot has predicted the same thing.
Disturbingly, at least two of the references above—the Mayan calendar and Terence McKenna’s time wave formula based on the I Ching—have given a specific date for this cataclysmic event. The Mayans, who were obsessed with time-keeping, were somehow able to design a calendar so precise (surpassing the Gregorian calendar), it was able to predict lunar eclipses thousands of years into the future.
Using their astronomical calculations, The Mayans believed that the earth is composed of five natural cycles, and that a new cycle of the earth occurs every 26,000 years. The last and 5th cycle will end during the winter solstice in 2012. During that time, multiple alignments of planets, including the sun, will take place and a previously unknown star or a black hole located at the center of the galaxy will affect the sun.
This belief has some fact in science. About five years ago, scientists at NASA discovered a massive black hole right at the center of the Milky Way. They admitted an alignment could take place sometime in the near future. The effect of this multiple alignment would shift the earth’s axis slightly and create a reversal of the North and South Poles. This reversal already took place about 700,000 years ago. The effect of this shift would cause powerful earthquakes across all continents, great floods and tsunamis, and near-mass extinction of all animal and human species.
The wise and revered Cumean Sybil and Oracle of Sybil predicted several milestones in history centuries before they happened, such as the rise and fall of the Roman emperors, the liege of the British kings, the discovery of the Americas, the Black Plague that eradicated a quarter of the world’s population. They also foretold the modern wars (World Wars I & II) where ships swam at the bottom of the sea (submarines), chariots that breathed fire (tanks), and men who had wings (airplanes).
The English seer Merlin foresaw wars, diseases and natural catastrophes as a prelude to the end of the world. The Book of Revelations predicted the rise of the Anti Christ, terrorist attacks and the wars in the
Middle East. In a chilling coincidence, most of these events are occurring in this lifetime. The war in Afghanistan, North Korea smugly detonating underground nuclear test missiles, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Anthrax, SARS and now the H1N1 virus, global warming and climate change—glaciers the size of Texas in Antarctica melting at a rapid rate, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, record high temperatures causing widespread forest fires and killing off several animal species as well as sub-zero winters never seen before, just to name a few… are all these signs of the times we are living in?
If you look at it objectively, no one can predict the future. Throughout history, generations and cultures have feared the end of the world one time or another, but they were all wrong. Even religion teaches us the same mindset. In Catholicism, we believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, Judgment Day, which is also known as the end of the world. But at the same time, we don’t know when this is going to be. The moral teaching of this encourages us to live a good and clean life everyday because the world could very well end tomorrow.
From that standpoint, maybe having a little fear about the end of the world is healthy in a strange way. It urges us to live life to the fullest, to remind the people in our life how much they mean to us every day, to count our blessings, to wake up to a new day and be grateful simply because the sun still shines brightly in the sky and we continue to live, even if this moment is all we have left.
On December 21, 2012, I would have just turned 32. I would probably be married then. Although I am still relatively young, I have lived a good and full life to my standards—enjoyed my childhood and youth, remained close to my family and God; I have fallen madly in love, experienced heartbreak and pain, traveled to new places, and have put to use my education by working in the corporate world. Who knows, maybe I would have also gotten around to writing a novel and going to Paris by then. That’s my own personal prediction. 
