photo #8739919

I was nine years old when I entered fourth grade under Sister Mary DE Lourdes. The first lesson in our new “Baltimore Catechism” was a subject I had never thought about. “The End of the World!” There was no explanation of when, how, what, where, who, etc. I had never given it any thought, the concept of the whole world coming to an end was incomprehensible. As you can imagine this scared the shit out of me. My imagination took over, where I had a vision of the earth exploding into fiery little pieces, dust and smoke with everybody dying horrible deaths. I dreamt that it would happen exactly at midnight, Central Standard Time on New Years Eve 1959. Thank God I was wrong, but not before I had the dry heaves that night. This episode piqued my interest in the scriptures, I chose to be an altar boy, then after graduating grammar school I enrolled in the seminary, after that I spend four years studying religion under the Augustinians. I studied the “Book of Revelations”. As I entered University I learned more about the secular aspects of religion, Biblical prophecy as well as the apocryphal non-canonical holy scriptures, the Quran, Joseph Smith and secular prophets from Edgar Cayce, to Nostradamus, to the Greek Oracles, to (Egyptian) Livius, to Mesopotamian seers and the relationship between them and governments, other religions, politics, business, and even organized crime. Now some sixty-five years later I am again afraid. This time it is because of what is playing out on a very complex world stage. Yes, I am very aware of religious fanatics who have predicted the end of the world repeatedly and even gone so far as to have followers commit suicide in the process. That is just plain stupid. I am not questioning the God’s timing and I don’t claim to know when it is coming, I do know it is coming. I do know things change, things always change, they never stay the same, God created entropy. I am not afraid to die however, I would like to delay it a couple more years. What I am afraid of is what kind of world I leave behind for my family. If there is any way for me to leave this world a better place for them to live in, I want to do it! I am trying to just that with my books.