The following is an excerpt from the new book The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War, and Our Call to Greatness by Betsy Hartmann (Seven Stories Press, May 2017):

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According to opinion polls, a staggering percentage of Americans accept that the world will end in a battle in Armageddon. In a 2010 Pew poll, 41 percent of respondents said they expected Jesus Christ to return to Earth by 2050. Two years later a Reuters poll found that over one-fifth of the American population believed the end of the world will happen in their lifetime, as compared to 6 percent in France, 7 percent in Belgium, and 8 percent in Great Britain. Another recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that 49 percent of Americans think that natural disasters are a sign of “the end times.” (emphasis added)

In the months before the purported December 21, 2012 Mayan apocalypse, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) received so many inquiries from children and adults terrified that a rogue planet […]