Jeff, all theology aside, I can't help but think that the never ending search for "signs" of the apocalypse must be the hobby of folks who view their lives as so boring that they must excite themselves with little daydreams about the dramatic events surrounding the end of time.
Why is now any worse than any other age of man? Was the end near in 1908 when an earthquake killed 160,000 people in Sicily? Was it near when a tsunami completely destroyed Lisbon in 1755 and killed 60,000 people? Was the end near when the Black Death decimated the population of Europe and Asia? I was watching some dispensationalist show on at 3 in the morning the other day and they were predicting the end of the world as the words "war" and "plague" flashed across the screen. The wars and plagues of our time (post-Soviet Era) are nothing compared to those of earlier ages.
As it is true that only Americans believe in dispensationalism, I'm guessing its particularly those Americans who aren't much into reading history books.
