Pseudo-intellectuals used to gravitate toward Nostradamus. Then, Edgar Cayce had a brief flurry of fame. Now, some think that the town of Medjugorge is the home of prophecies.
It was said of the recent killer of several people in Arizona, “He was very interested in the 2012 prophecies.” That end-of-the-world “prophecy” is based on an interpretation of the Mayan calendar. As usual with such things, people get some facts, or what appears to be facts, and magnify them into something much bigger and more profound than they are. Some prefer to do that then discipline their minds to work well with the world around them.
Prophecies Can Be Deadly
Pseudo-intellectuals love prophecies, no matter how dangerous they may be. Some nincompoop parents were actually telling their children’s pediatricians, “We’re not getting our children vaccinated. All those vaccines will damage their immune systems and they will end up doing more harm than good.” As a result of that horrifically wrong prophecy, children are dying from diseases they would not have gotten if their parents had been a little smarter.
But, since prophecies have such an attraction, a new one may be explained and considered:
A Prophecy so Useless That it Cannot be Harmful
We live in twenty-four hour days, each of which takes place in a year of 365.25 days that are divided into twelve months, the second of which has a day added to it every four years. Within that 24 hour day/12 month system, the date with the largest repeating number is 11/11/11, a surfeit of ones that occurs every one hundred years. Almost a thousand years ago, in the year 1111, the eleventh day of the eleventh month would be written out 11/11/1111. At eleven minutes and eleven seconds after eleven o’clock that day, the time would have read 11:11:11 11/11/1111. Fourteen ones!
On that day in 2011, that date and time would read 11:11:11 11/11/11, a dozen ones in one date/time. That same number of ones would appear once again, twelve hours later, making twenty four ones in one day.
It may be said that there could be a better translation of the Mayan Calendar that says “On the day that the number of ones matches the number of hours in a day, the world will end.”
When that happens, we do not want anyone adding or subtracting exactly one hundred years from 11/11/11, at which point there are dates with a similar number of ones. No. We mustn’t confuse people who want simple facts with more complicated truths.
We prefer that the alarmism of this end-of-world prophecy be as profound as possible and continue, unabated, until either 11:11:12 11/11/11 or until 12:01 on 11/12/11.
