Beware, the end is near - or maybe it's not

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Dene McGriff wants to make sense out of the last days - the end of times. He has turned to the Bible. Others have turned to ancient calendars, prophecies and even movies.

All see the same message: The end is near.

McGriff, a retired Carmichael, Calif., businessman, runs a Web site called Tribulation Network, which is devoted to Bible prophecies about the end of the world as we know it.

"People are looking for answers; there's a lot of anxiety right now," said McGriff, 67.

They have browsed for answers in an array of books on the subject, with titles such as "The Mystery of 2012," "Time Storm 2012" and "2012: The War for Souls." They have watched for them in the movie "2012," which opened this month and earned more than $200 million worldwide in its first week. And they have perused the proliferation of Web sites like McGriff's.

And "The Road," based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy about a post-apocalyptic world, opened in some cities Wednesday.

"We're in an apocalypse bubble, in the same way that there was a real estate bubble and a dot-com bubble," said John Hall, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis.

Hall has studied apocalyptic movements since the 1970s and is the author of "Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity." He does not believe the end is near, echoing the sentiments of others who either dismiss the interpretations or debunk them as scientifically unsound.

"But I think all this reflects fears people have," he said. "They are nervous about what's going on in the world."

Global warming. Pandemics and health scares. War in the Middle East. End-timers like McGriff say these are signs that we are living in the last days. "Look at the Bible," he said. "It's predicted."

The end of the world has come and gone before. Believers have parsed the messages from Nostradamus to the Bible Code, have circled dates on their calendars, and they are still here to mark another.

"Nobody wants the world to end, but everyone wants to know when it's going to happen," said Phil Hotsenpiller, the pastor of Yorba Linda Friends Church, a Southern California megachurch.

Hotsenpiller is the author of "Armageddon Now," a series of seven graphic novels showing how the biblical prophecies play out. He also hosts an annual prophecy conference.

He says these are the last days. He would not predict the date. The only prediction he would make was that the end of times would "be good for Hollywood, and they'll probably make a lot of money."

Many credit, or blame, the current end-of-the-world interest in the examination of one ancient Mayan calendar - there are three - that some have interpreted to say that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012.

On that date, the Mayan "long count" calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. The day is also the winter solstice. The Mayan calendar is so well known that it has spurred its own cottage industry.

"There is also an incredible alignment of the stars on that day," said Colin Andrews, who has written about end-times prophecies in "The Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012."

Mayan scholars have also said the ancient civilization did not predict the end of the world.

Instead, they said that date symbolizes an end of an important era and would be a reason to celebrate.

"It's much like the way we celebrated the end of a century," said Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. "To say that it's an end of the world is simply not true."