Apocalypse Now? Doomsday Predictions Are Just Recycled Bogus Theories

Old doomsday predictions never die. They just get recycled.

Just six years after radio preacher Harold Camping promised the apocalypse, and five years after the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to extinguish life on Earth as we know it, new doomsday predictions have arrived. This time, they come via YouTube and a man named David Meade, who claims that the first spiritual sign of the apocalypse will arrive tomorrow (Sept. 23).

Meade's theories meld biblical prophecy with astronomy. He claims that on Sept. 23, there will be a rare alignment of the sun in the constellation Virgo — with the moon just to the east — with nine stars and three planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) clustering around the constellation's head, like a crown. This is supposed to be the sign foretold in the beginning of Revelation 12, which reads, in the New International Version of the Bible: "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.