A new poll released by the Pew Research Center revealed that nearly four out of ten Americans (39 percent) believe the “end times” is near. That number increased to 47 percent when the respondents identified as Christians. Historically black churches came in the highest, with 76 percent believing we are living in the end times. Evangelical Protestants came in second with 63 percent. The study also looked at individuals’ views on climate change and how that impacted their view on the current end times situation. 51 percent of US adults who believe that climate change is an “extremely/very serious problem” also believe we are living in the end times, while 62 percent of those who don’t believe we are in the end times believe that climate change is an extreme problem. 66 percent of all US adults agreed with the idea of stewardship of the earth, meaning “God gave humans a duty to protect and care for the Earth, including the plants and animals.” 54 percent agreed with dominionism, that “God gave humans the right to use the Earth, including the plants and animals, for humanity’s benefit,” and 48 percent believed both. Those numbers increased to 80 percent, 67 percent, and 61 percent, respectively, for those who were religiously affiliated. 

There has always been a fascination with end times predictions. In 1997, 39 members of Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide under the belief that their souls would enter an alien spacecraft following behind the passing of Halley’s comet. Y2K brought a slew of end times predictions and panic. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated doomsday prophecies in both secular and religious circles. A Lifeway Research poll in early 2020 found that half (56 percent) of pastors polled believed Jesus would return during their lifetime. At the onset of the pandemic, CNN’s John Blake wrote a warning about the rise in doomsday prophecies as the virus began to spread worldwide. He particularly highlighted the misunderstandings and difficulties of understanding the book of Revelation, the most common source for end-time predictions. “If there was a prize for the most misunderstood source for bad predictions, it would go to the Book of Revelation. It may be the Bible’s ultimate crossover – no other book’s imagery and language has so penetrated popular culture. Even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with its references: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, 666 and the seven bowls of plague,” he wrote. 

The difficulty of understanding Revelation and end times prophecy has also made it difficult for Christians to agree on the order of events. The poll found that 44 percent of Christians took a premillennial view of Jesus’s return in the end days, with 45 percent saying it is impossible to know the events that will lead up to Jesus’s return. A premillennial view posits that Jesus will return at a bleak time of humanity, while a “postmillennial” view asserts there will be a period of prosperity and peace before Jesus’s return. It highlights the difficulties of observing and understanding the times.