Posted January 17,2007: Everybody duck!

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the doomsday clock to five minutes before it's all over for mankind. And it's not just the nuclear nuts in North Korea and Iran who prompted the scary jump forward, or is it backward, toward annihilation. it's also Mother Nature and Her screwed-up weather. No, there I go being wrong again; it's our fault because it is we who screwed up Mother Nature.

But wait a minute, are we sure that the cause is not really the scientists who started the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists? After all, did a doomsday clock even exist before they invented it?

"... Its hands have been moved forward or back 17 times before the latest announcement..." Now, I ask you, are these scientists so powerful that they can move time back and forth? It seems to me, if they can do that, then that should be the real story.

I'm not too worried about it, though. The scientists who started this organization in 1945, with an average age at that time of, say 35, are now over the century mark. Most really old people I know are real worriers and generally pessimistic about everything, particularly about the future of the world. 'Help, help, the sky is falling.' Personally, I wish global warming would hurry up and get here and melt the ice rink that used to be my back yard.

And where does God fit in here? Don't you think maybe He has something to say about when He'll pull the plug? Or do these old geezers of the quot;Bulletin" have a direct line to The Big Guy? I may not have a direct line, but I do have the Word. And the Word tells me that no one will know in advance as to when the end time will occur but that we all better always be ready. In Matthew 24:42-44 Jesus said:

Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you be ready too; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

Ozark common sense tells me that I'd better live today as though He is coming tomorrow or maybe tonight. If we live that way, our future is secure no matter when the doomsday clock hits midnight.

(For more information on the doomsday clock, see: The Doomsday Clock, It Tolls For Thee)