Someone asked me to look at one of the Bible 'prophecies' about the so-called 'End Times', when Jeebus is apparently coming back, primarily to make the planet run with rivers of blood (messy), but also to take away all the born again Christians. The prospect of every fundie on Earth suddenly disappearing sounds too good to be true, so paradoxically it's almost enough to make you want to believe it all, just to get rid of them.

The 'prophecy' is the one in Mark 13, in which Jesus says that he will come back when...

...ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

...and so on.

I quickly pointed out that 'wars and rumours of wars' is a little, well, vague, and that throughout history there have been many 'wars and rumours of wars'. Similarly earthquakes, famines and 'troubles' didn't just start up in the last century. But I was assured that the situation was now much worse in recent times and asked why I thought the situation was now 'markedly worse in only a hundred years'.

Let's just concentrate on the 'wars' aspect for now and see just what has been happening in the world for 2000 years. Firstly, how many wars are there in the world right now?

Ongoing armed conflicts (click for details)

Red is conflict (note: not necessarily 'war' - smaller rebellions and uprisings are included), so at first glance it appears that if you want to avoid it, a good start would be to move away from the Equator/Tropics. Essentially there are 31 'conflicts', which range from undeniably massive military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan right down to the 'Second Tuareg Rebellion' which I guarantee most people will never have heard of, and has a death total of 56 as I write. The map isn't exactly swathed with red is it? Where are the wars in the most populous areas of the planet - North America and Europe, for example? Most of Asia is not at war, nor is most of South America. In fact most of the world has no war at present.

For the 'prophecy' to be true the situation must be getting worse. So wars must be on the increase. Is this the case? A simple glance at a List of Wars, covering all historical and ongoing wars, suggest that the opposite is true - there are now far, far fewer wars than at earlier times in history, particularly the period when guns and gunpowder replaced swords, spears and arrows.

Glance down the list and find 'Pike and Shot era' and below it 'Age of Rifles'. Even without counting, it's obvious that there are dozens upon dozens of wars, all within a relatively short period (c. 1500 - c.1900), but a rough guide is that there were 300 different wars in that 400-year period. That does seem quite a lot doesn't it, if we are trying to assert that wars used to be less frequent, which they must be for this 'prophecy' to come to pass? And what does the name of the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453) tell you? How many wars in more recent times have continued for over a century?

It's clear that throughout history there has always been conflict, and it's also certain that there always will be conflict. There will be wars and 'rumours of wars' until humans die out completely, because that is the nature of humankind. History just proves that. But history also proves that war is largely a thing of the past in many areas of the world. In Europe we have had the largest period of sustained peace in history, since the end of World War 2. Yes, the US its allies now fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those are limited to two small countries in the Middle East. I never said that war has gone away altogether.

What disturbs me is that sites like Rapture Ready actively seek out news of human misery and economic instability, then and gleefully parade them (you can almost hear the whoops of delight) to herald the end of the world. These people want the world to end, they want there to be more conflict in the world, because that's just a sign that JC is coming back to get them. For example peace in the Middle East would be a disaster for them - who would rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (another End Times prophecy) if the Muslims were allowed to stay?

This is not the 'End Times', when war will break out here, there and everywhere. This is a period of relatively stable, peaceful co-habitation, at least for most people in the world. Quoting 2000-year-old writings, which are as vague as any of the prophecies of Nostradamus, and trying to match them to current world events, is ludicrous and laughable. Just because some fundamentalist Christians want there to be wars so that Jesus comes back doesn't mean it is actually going to happen. Ever.