Read a Nov. 8, 2012, article from Virginia’s WTVR about hotels in Mexico and Central America that used the Dec. 21 date as a hook to lure tourists.

Read a Nov. 30, 2012, article from the New York Times about television networks from using the date of the supposed apocalypse to promote their apocalypse-themed programming.

In Russia and elsewhere, the end-of-the-world predictions in December 2012 caused some to panic, as this Dec. 1 New York Times story reports.

Mark Bailey is president of the Dallas Theological Seminary and a noted expert on Christian End Times scenarios. He is the author of essays in the books Countdown to Armageddon (Harvest House, 1999) and The Road to Armageddon (Word, 1999).

Richard A. Landes is an associate professor of history at Boston University, specializing in messianic and millennial movements. He was the director of the now inactive Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.

Michael Barkun is a professor emeritus of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. He is the author of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America and Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement.

Barbara Rossing is a professor of New Testament at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. She is the author of The Rapture Exposed (Basic Books, 2005), and The Choice Between Two Cities: Whore, Bride, and Empire in the Apocalypse (Trinity Press International, 1999).

July 23, 2006, Los Angeles Times op-ed by Zev Chafets on his appreciation of evangelical support of Israel even if they are motivated by predictions of Armageddon.

Richard Kyle is a professor of history and religion at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kan. He is the author of Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity (2006), in which he both praises and criticizes evangelicals for their embrace of secular culture and shows how their ideas about sin, women and private enterprise support the Republican Party platform.