Jehovah's Witnesses Preach 2012 Apocalypse Skepticism (But Only of a Sort)

This morning a small group of Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door. This wasn't the first time I've been visited by the Witnesses, but it was the first time I'd heard their new message. One of the Witnesses asked me if I believed the world was coming to an end in December of this year. I told him that no, I did not believe the world was ending in December. His reply disturbed me greatly. He told me that since he started visiting homes at daybreak, I was one of only two people to express disbelief in the upcoming apocalypse. 

Obviously, I can't confirm this fact, nor do I know how many people the Witness group visited this morning. Nevertheless, it had to represent at least a couple of dozen houses in my immediate neighborhood. The area where I live is a mixed community of young professionals, college students, and senior citizens--all groups that one would hope would be more critical of claims that the world was coming to an end in less than four months' time.

This must be disturbing to the Jehovah's Witnesses as well, since they are distributing a pamphlet on the 2012 apocalypse that declares is a "fantasy" and have a well-rehearsed speech to convince the believers that the end is not yet nigh. The Witnesses base their claims not on scientific proof but instead on passages from the Bible.

This is rather ironic, of course, because the Witnesses are a millenialist organization which believes that Armageddon will happen practically any day now (and in fact the slow-motion destruction started in 1914), with the subsequent establishment of God's kingdom on earth. Consequently, we have the ridiculous specter of one apocalypse sending its preachers door to door to combat another apocalypse as a fake apocalypse. The message seems to be, "The end is near! Just not in December."

I guess this is slightly better than Ancient Aliens telling viewers that the aliens will be returning in December to take them to a quantum heaven dimension. But not by much.