I'm not that guy with the beard and the sandwich board sign prophecying the end

This is just a quick clarification of the praying in public article, due to the wealth of responses.

I saw a lot of good, albeit long-winded, points brought up. The few things I think are important are: I do not have a defeatiest attitude, I am not simply sitting around begging Jesus to come back, and I did not mean to imply that the end of the world is tomorrow, next week, next year or next generation.

Perhaps I should work on my writing skills a bit more. My point was actually that we must not give up hope. That the end times did begin a long time ago, and may be a long time from being over. That we mustn't allow ourselves to become depressed or overly anxious over the growing push to make Christianity an unmentionable, but that we must continue to do Christ's work in anticipation of his return.

When I brought up the "end is near" issue, it was merely to point out that - at some point - every knee shall bow, every tongue confess.

Whatever future generations will think of us, I doubt they (the believing ones) will think us silly for believing that we are in the midst of the "wars and rumors of wars" that were prophecied. As rkid#1 pointed out, God's time is not ours. In fact, he is completely outside of time.

My point is simply that, as she put it, we must keep the end-game in mind - not to proclaim doom and destruction, but to keep our hopes and others alive instead of getting caught up in the troubles of the moment.