I was a very anxious teenager. Steeped in a deep depression, the entire world seemed pretty bleak and scary to me. Because of that, I was especially susceptible to the mania surrounding the year 1999 — from Y2K speculations about computer-controlled missiles firing to religious fervor predicting that the end times would arrive promptly at 12:00 a.m. (local time?), 2000. I had a friend staying with me over Christmas break that year, and I remember thinking I would never want to be away from home on what was potentially the last day of the world.
But even then, there was healthy doubt within me: I remember mulling this all over in my mind and thinking, “But didn’t Jesus say no one would know the day or the hour?” (Matthew 24:37) Because there sure were a lot of people out there who certainly seemed to think they knew!
