movie review

The movie I watched is called Apocalypse: Caught in the Eye of the Storm. It was released in 2000 and it was directed by Peter Gerretsen. The protagonists are Helen Hannah (Leigh Lewis) and Bronson Pearl (Richard Nester), who are news reporters for WNN, and the antagonists are Franco Macalousso (Sam Bornstein), who plays the anti-Christ and Len Parker (David Roddis), the manager of WNN who is working for the anti-Christ.

The movie begins with Helen and her grandmother watching the WNN news where anchorman Bronson is reporting from the middle east where the war of Armageddon is going on. After her grandmother and a lot of other people mysteriously disappear, Helen views some tapes her Grandmother left. The tapes are about show about the end times and Helen discovers that her Grandmother and the other people who disappeared were taken to be with Jesus and that the world is currently in the rule of the anti-Christ (Franco Macalousso), whom everybody presumes to be the Messiah. After watching these videos Helen becomes a christian and then tries to convince his co-worker Bronson that Franco Macalousso is the anti-Christ, but he doesn't believe her and thinks she is derranged. Helen is then sentenced to death along with everyone else who believes in God and Christ. Bronson goes to his father's grave and digs it out and discovers that his father's remains are no longer there and realizes that Helen had been telling the truth. Bronoson is also sentenced to death, and he will die on live national television. Just as he is about to be executed a video is played of Len Parker telling Bronson that nobody has a say in whether to believe in Macalousso or not. Then, back at the station one of Parker's agents has also become a christian and is playing Helen's tapes, resulting in people accepting Jesus as their savior all across the world. That is how the movie ends.

I really liked the plot of the movie, although it wasn't very related to the apocalypse in certain parts. The movie is right to say that there will be wars and natural disasters when the end is near because that is mentioned in the Bible. However in the Bible it never says that people will suddenly mysteriously disappear leaving behind only their clothes. The Bible says that God will not let his people go through that hardship, but it never says how he will prevent them from going through it. What i did like about the movie was how they portray the anti-Christ and everything he will do. The movie shows that the anti-Christ will deceive many by stopping all the wars and making himself seem like the Messiah they were all waiting for after all the calamity they have had to endure. Most of the movie does interpret the Apocalypse very close to what will happen, but it also seems to me that the director assumed some of those events are going to happen because some are never mentioned in the Bible. For example, Len Parker was at one point able to move objects without touching them. This was probably added to give a higher sense of power to the anti-Christ, but the Bible never says that he will have such a power. Other than that the movie does an excellent job illustrating the Apocalypse. It demonstrates very thoroughly what people will have to go through when the day arrives.

letter to a leader

to whom it may concern,

I realize that a lot of you do not believe in God and for this reason I write this letter. I know there are those of you who do not have a religion and do not believe in any Gods. However I believe that now more than ever it is crucial for us to repent of our sins and to strengthen our relationship with God.

There have been many theories of when the world will end and all of them have proven to be false. No one can ever know for certain when the world is going to end other than God. He is the only one who knows when the world will end and when he will send his son to come to earth once again to save his people. In the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, it says that there will be war and natural disasters when the End Times are near. There have been a lot of natural disasters lately like all the hurricanes and the tsunami in Indonesia and the war in Iraq and I'm sure most of you do not know whether to believe that these events are all happening as a sign of the apocalypse or that it is all a coincidence that these events be mentioned in the Bible. I do not believe in coincidences, everything happens for a reason therefore I believe the first of the options mentioned above. I adamantly believe that the apocalypse will happen, but I have no idea how soon. According to the Bible nobody knows when it will happen and nobody will be aware of it while it's happening, but I definitely thinks it is very close. For this reason I believe that we should repent of our sins and strengthen our relationship with God. The only way to save our souls is by accepting God as the one and only true God and accepting Jesus Christ as our savior. I know that for many of you this sounds completely absurd, but it is necessary to let Jesus Christ in our lives for he is the only one that can save us when the time comes.

I hope that at least a few of you share my point of view and understand what I am talking about. I realize that to many of you I just sound like another crazy person ranting about the end of the world, but I can assure you that I am not crazy (well, not that crazy). I truly believe that this will happen, possibly not in our lifetime, but we should be prepared just in case.

sincerely,

Maritza Casas

interpreting data

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/etstats1.html

I couldn't really find a graph about my topic so instead I found chart that explains why we are currently going through the Apocalypse.

In this chart the author gives all these biblical citations about event that will happen during the Apocalypse and then he gives events that have already happened or are currently happening that are related to those mentioned in the citations. A lot of the information given (especially the biblical citations) is very helpful in deciphering the apocalypse, however it does not seem entirely legit because the author does not give any sources. What the author says is probable, but it is hard to believe when he does not mention where he got his info from. He does give a complete set of data though, and that helps viewers understand the Apocalypse a bit better. By giving all those biblical citations the author is, in a way, explaining the Apocalypse. The statistics try to show that the Apocalypse is already here and while they may be believable they are not reliable because, like i said before, they don't have any sources. The statistics are very interesting, but they only mention a nominal part of the Apocalypse.

"End Time Statistics .... proof we are living in the time of the end." Life Research Universal.....Nutrition, Christ, Hanz and Biodiesel ! 15 Jan. 2009 .

The Buzz

For this blog I was supposed to find a recently published article, however, as the apocalypse is not a very common topic, the most recent article I could find was from July 2007. The article is called The Final Days and it was written by Benjamin Anastas. The article is six pages long and I found it on the New York Times website.

In his article Anastas talks about the various predictions made of when the world will end, but he mostly talks about 2012. He talks about an overnight radio show called Coast to Coast where a the host, George Noory, brings in the author of the book Apocalypse 2012 to talk about his book. The author explains that his book is about the Mayan prediction that the world will end on December, 12 2012, he says that it amazes him how much we are all changing. After talking about the radio show Anastas then mentions some of the different interpretations of the end of the world. He notices that virtually everybody expects the world to end in the most horrifying ways, a lot of people think it will be a series of events, not many people think it will be an instantaneous event.

He then talks about the biblical version of the end of the world. He seems to take the book in a literal way, so he appears to be a bit uninformed about the topic. He basically just summarizes what will happen when the day arrives and all the different ways people think it will happen. So this article was not a very good article because it was mostly information i had already read. But it was a well written article nonetheless.

Anastas, Benjamin. "Final Days." The New York Times 1 July 2007. 5 Dec. 2008 .

The Great Debate

The apocalypse is not a very controversial topic because there isn't much you can argue about it other than, "It's not going to happen," or, "It's not going to happen the way the bible says." So I looked for the opinion of Christians' on this topic as well as the atheist look on this.

I found that Christians believe that the apocalypse has already begun and that we are currently living through the apocalypse. They believe this because a lot of events going on right now(natural disasters, wars, diseases etc.) are very similar to those described in the Apocalypse. According to "Apocalypse Now" by Nancy Gibbs (published in 2002), more than one third of Americans pay attention to how the news might be related to the end of the world and talk about what the bible has to say about it. The article also said that many Christians believe that 9/11 was an omen that the End Times is approaching. Because Christians believe that the second coming of Jesus is near, they are trying to get other people to realize this as well by talking about it at clubs and at church. They want to convert people into Christians so they can be prepared for the second coming of Christ. The opposing view is the opinion of an atheist, not only does NOT believe in the apocalypse but he also thinks that people who do believe in it are harming humanity. "Billy" believes that apocalyptic myths are a great influence on the Republican party. He believes that most of the Republican party is constituted of apocalypse believers. He says that the actions of those believers are affected by their beliefs. For example Billy says that the believers' thoughts are, "If the world is going to end soon anyway, why bother dealing with poverty? It’s easier to give money to your friends and their corporations. Why worry about debt? Once Christ returns, money won’t matter." He also believes that all this carelessness will ruin the economy, he thinks that after we realize that the world isn't ending then it will be too late because the United States will already be ruined.

Overall what the Christians are trying to say is that we need to prepare for the End of the world or also the second coming of Jesus Christ. They believe we should get closer to God and recognize him as the one and only true God. While the atheist believes that all of that is nonsense and it is hurting our economy and if we let it go too far then the US economy will be ruined.

Gibbs, Nancy. "Apocalypse Now." 23 June 2002. 25 Nov. 2008 http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/story.html..

Rev. of Apocalyptic myths by (((billy))). Weblog post. Do apocalyptic end times myths hurt humanity? 12 May 2008. 25 Nov. 2008 http://http://iambilly.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/does-apocalypsism-harm/.

Reflection

After researching the apocalypse more thoroughly and collecting data and facts about it , I believe I have gained more knowledge and understanding on it and I might have even gotten a little more interested in it.
I originally chose this topic because I was very interested in learning how the world would end according to the bible, mostly because I am a religious person. Before starting my blog I had only read bits and parts of the apocalypse, but had not read it completely. I knew the earth would have to face many calamities, but that was about it. When I finally chose the apocalypse as my topic I had to read the entire book and take more time to ponder what each symbol might represent. After reading the apocalypse I realized was going to be a very hard topic to research, but I was very interested on knowing more about it. As I had predicted the research was definately difficult. It was hard to find a website dedicated exclusively to the apocalypse because most of them were dedicated to the whole book of the Bible so it would only give a short summarizing paragraph about the apocalypse. The current affairs blog however was a different story. It was not as much of a struggle to find recent news associated to the apocalypse as it was to find a decent website. It was surprising to find out how closely related many events are to the events stated in the bible. Even more surprising however, was to learn that quite a few other people around her (besides my family) believed in the apocalypse. From the survey I took I learned that other teens are also somewhat religious and believe that all the events mentioned in the apocalypse will occur eventually. I really enjoyed finding and learning all this new info, it was very engrossing.
Overall I have greatly enjoyed researching the apocalypse especially since I would have done this even if it wasn't required for school and now I'm getting credit for it. Undoubtedly I have learned a lot with this research blog and I hope to keep learning more on this intriguing topic.

Survey

My survey was intended for people from ages 12 and on, however I gave it mostly to teens and young adults form ages 15-25. Eight women and eight men took the survey, two of the women were of age 30 or older. The survey asked the following questions:
Are you a religious person? (yes, no or somewhat)
Do you believe in what the bible says? (yes, no or somewhat)
Have you read the book of revelation (or the apocalypse)? (yes, no or some of it)
If you have read the book or heard of it do you believe it's going to happen? (yes , no or somewhat)
My hypothesis was that women were going to be more religious than the men, but that hardly anyone was going to be religious at all. I didn't think anyone would believe what is written in the bible and much less have heard of the apocalypse, therefore I didn't think they would believe in the apocalypse.
To my surprise, my hypothesis was almost entirely wrong, however it was not based on arbitrary thoughts, it was based on past conversations with other teens. According to the surveys. Five of the eight women were religious, one was not, and the other two were somewhat religious. As for the men, only four were religious and the other four were somewhat religious. Five of the women believed what the bible says, and three believed some of it. Two of the men believed in the bible and the rest somewhat believed. Two women and one man had read the book of revelation in the bible and none of the other men and women had read it. Five of the women and two of the men believed that the apocalypse is going to happen. The other three women and four men believed some of it is going to happen and the remaining two gentleman don't believe it is going to happen. As you can see my hypothesis was very much wrong.
I believe I got these results because I gave out the survey to almost all Hispanic people and generally Hispanics are more religious than Americans people because religion is a big part of the Mexican culture. The reason the women were more religious is probably because religion teaches about sensitivity, love, peace etc. and woman are usually more sensitive than men making it more likely for them to be religious. A lot of the men and women did not entirely believe in the bible or the apocalypse most likely because they have not read it or and/or they don't practice Christianity. Also because the book of the apocalypse is very symbolic and they might believe it is all literal, which would make it even harder to believe. These are some of the reasons I got the results I did.
It was very surprising to find out there are many teens who are religious. This survey helped me realize there are many religious people and quite a few that believe in the apocalypse.