For a few days in middle school, I was worried that the world might be ending.

A few classmates of mine had mentioned something about the apocalypse or the rapture occurring in September 1988. They seemed fairly serious about it.

I was 12 and hadn't given much thought to the world ceasing to exist. From a scientific perspective, I knew it would happen in approximately 5 billion years, barring a colossal meteor strike or nuclear war, but I hadn't thought of it much in a religious context. I was raised Catholic, and there wasn't a lot of end-times talk in church. The general message I got every week (mainly instilled by a very Catholic mother, more than the church itself) was that God saw everything , and we should feel guilty about our sinful actions and thoughts.

The second coming is

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