>People have said "The end is near!" for so long already...
> Travholt.

This brought back to mind something that is somewhat distantly related. I was told by some missionaries to Greece that "the [blank] is near" was a Greek idiom for "the [blank] is here." They gave the example that waiters at fancy restaurants would say, "Your waiter is near" when, literally, the waiter was right there waiting to take the people's orders. The missionaries, in any case, said the same was true of the Greek language back in the first century. Thus, "The Kingdom of God is near" would have had a very different meaning to the Greeks--that the Kingdom of God is already upon them. And, by extension, I guess that if we were translating Greek documents that said, "the end is near," it would have meant to the writers "the end is here." And, from a Christian viewpoint, Jesus' resurrection marks the coming of the Kingdom of God, and everything after Jesus is the last times.

None of this has to do with the Second Coming and its tie-ins to our sorry stewardship of the environment, but I thought it was still interesting enough to mention.

gabby