When California preacher, Harold Camping, predicted the world would end this Saturday evening, several of my Rapture-ready friends insisted I finish reading the "Left Behind" series and make my preparations.

What surprises me most is that in the 21st century there are thousands of people on this religiously motivated train ride of despair.

Let's make May 21 a holy festival, not because the world will come to and end, but because it won't. Celebrate life and the ongoing beauty of the world we are blessed to call home.

Moses, Jesus and Muhammad seemed to be striving for a world with peace. All that means for sure is the world's not going to be ending anytime soon.

Rapture and Rand: What a couple of sexy, compelling twins! Both offer unsparing moralistic revenge fantasies. Both solicit your agreement and your endorsement in exchange for your salvation.

By Kathleen O'Brien Religion News Service (RNS) Give these billboards credit: They don't hedge their bet. Judgment Day is coming May 21, 201...

Religion unites us in times of trouble, it helps us persevere in difficult circumstances, and it gives us hope. But we need to go further and seriously ask, does God use nature to punish?

Of course, Christians have been proclaiming the nearness of Jesus' return ever since there have been Christians. So far, one might conclude, Jesus has been uninterested in taking the bait.

Father James Martin, S.J., discusses some possible explanations for mass animal deaths as well as what the bible says about the end times.

When I was a kid I knew The World was going to Hell in a hand basket. I didn't know what that phrase meant, still don't really, but I knew that it was one of the only times I could get away with saying hell.

Around 1830 John Nelson Darby, having selected scripture passages from Daniel, Revelation, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and elsewhere, pasted them together, called them a whole, and invented the Rapture, a word not found in the Bible.

Christians can bet on a supernatural rescue for themselves and their kind and wait for the cataclysm, or they can dedicate themselves to compassionate action to alleviate suffering and injustice, to creating a better world.

Predictions of the Apocalypse or its personal equivalent of a direct path to heaven have been a common theme throughout human history. We seem determined to keep ourselves in a constant state of preparation for the end of time.

You might think that scientists and Evangelicals have nothing in common. But you'd be wrong. Large numbers of both agree on one thing: the end is near.

We could see in the coming years the emergence of a new kind of eschatology -- fresh, different, wiser biblically, more mature theologically, and more responsible ethically.