Are we living in the 'end times'?

In the aftermath of yet another failed prediction that the world will come to an end, should we take seriously the idea that we are living in the 'end times'?

Harold Camping and his followers at Family Radio will no doubt find a reason why their confident prophesy that Christ would return at 6 pm on Saturday 21 May did not eventuate. It is not the first time that such predictions have fallen by the wayside. And it won't be the last.

But while it's not hard to mock the rather futile attempts to second-guess God, is scepticism about end times theology justified?

Pastor Daniel McKibben officiates at Royal Oak's Seventh Day Adventist Church in Auckland. He believes that while it's impossible to know the hour or day, it is still true that we are living in the last seconds of earth's history. And Religious Studies lecturer at Victoria University, Chris Marshall, talks about the many iterations of end times thinking that has occurred through church history.

Photograph by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.