Wanda,
Please know that my sarcastic post last night was not in any way intended to discredit you as a person but rather to extend Boanerges' humor by satirizing the type of post you linked to, which is frequently forwarded in mass e-mails marked by the following:
1) every other SENTENCE IS IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS (internet code for shouting)
2) lots of EXCLAMATION POINTS !!!!!!!!!!!!! and QUESTION MARKS ???????????
3) reference to some terrible imminent doom which
3a) only a few people know about and
3b) those people are hiding it from the rest of us
4) the statement that IT CANNOT BE DISPROVEN.
First, any logic course will tell you that nothing which is asserted to take place at an unspecified time in the future can ultimately be disproven. It just can't be done. We have to just live with that.
However, the word of God tells us clearly what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, in reference to his Son, the Lord Christ. And because of that, we are able to walk through this world with all of its terrors--whether real, possible or only imagined--with confidence. If we have already died with Christ and our lives are hidden with Him in God, what difference does it make if the place where I live is destroyed by natural causes, or I am run over by the #3 bus on my way to the bodega, or they finally turn off some tubes in a nursing home? There is only one
worst thing which is certain, and that is that all who are not in Christ at the judgment will be forever cut off from God in hell.
The dangerous effect of the doom scenarios is that they excite people's fear of natural disaster rather than awaken them to the fear of having offended the thrice-holy God; when the natural disaster does not occur, they stupidly and fatally assume that they are safe, when in fact those outside of Christ are still under the wrath of God.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you(repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:1-5, ESV)
But for those of us in Christ through faith in His justifying blood:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romand 8:31-39)
