The Russian Doomsday Sect, which threatened to commit mass suicide last November of 2007, made headlines once again. The sect members, who bolted themselves voluntarily in a cave was forced to move out from their own ?Big Brother House? after threats of flood from the melting snow began to weaken the cave?s foundations. Seven women agreed to come out of the cave and were immediately examined by Russian doctors if their health was compromised during their stay in the cave. Twenty eight other members are still inside the cave and are being negotiated by Russian officials to come out of their bolt hole.

These so-called Penza sect were among the hundreds of sects that branched out from the Orthodox Church after Russia?s fall from Communism in 1991. Earlier this week, these members threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if they were forced to come out. The doomsday cave is located in the outskirts of the village of Nikolskoye in Russia. They cloistered themselves in the Cave since last November of 2007 because they said that the ?Apocalypse? or the last judgment will come on 2008 based on their calculations.

In the years 999 AD and 1666 AD, doomsday rumors have been particularly circulating around worldwide Christian communities. I still remember in 1986 that doomsday will come, upon the arrival of Haley?s comet. Eight years later in 1994, I saved several clippings, which I collected, from Born Again Christians, Jehova?s Witnesses and Latter Day Saints (that are still with me) that contains articles foretelling the end of the world. In one of the clippings, it is said that the third secret of Fatima contains the Apocalypse and that in the year 1996, aliens will start to come down from their spaceships to prepare the second coming on 1998.

10 years later, it still has not come. Just like many other doomsday prophecies that were told, as in the case of Nostradamus?.

Doomsday, Apocalypse, End of the World or most fitting, the Second Coming of Christ will not come on days that we foretell. It is only God who knows the correct date and time He will come. But as of the moment, while some of our brothers and sister are terribly paranoid with all of these nonsense, let us always bear in mind that everyday is a doomsday. If you smoke, if you treat others badly, if you corrupt the money of the people, if you spread unfounded rumors, if you bear falls witness on your neighbors or if you covet your neighbor?s husband or wife, surely, when your own doomsday come, you have no chance to repent in the afterlife. For all of us are given only one chance to live and one chance to change.

For me, doomsday is our own death, which we do not know when it will come. So let us be prepared with our own lives by living what our conscience dictates so that when this dreaded day comes, we are already to face our own God, whatever name we call Him.