In a recent column (Dec. 27), Cal Thomas suggested we may well be living on the threshold of the end times, considering the many media reports of “wars and rumors of wars.” But history teems with records of such. In fact, in 2003 The New York Times published an article on war which stated: “Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been at peace for 268 of them …”

Thomas’s quote regarding war comes from Chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel, which contains prophecies of the end times and the Second Coming, a matter the columnist also wrote about. In verse 34, Christ proclaims that the signs of those times and his return would occur sometime during the lifetimes of his contemporaries — 20 centuries dead now and he himself the supreme no-show.

The columnist, a staunch Bible-only Christian, wrote that no one has the right to change the true meaning of Christmas to suit themselves, a meaning he defined as encompassing the incarnation, Christ’s substitutionary death, forgiveness of believers’ sins and the promise of heaven.

Then informed Christians of differing beliefs must be perversely suiting themselves in denying, say, the incarnation (Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses), or biblical inerrancy/infallibility (Episcopalians), or in affirming the doctrine of the annihilation of the unrepentant (Seventh-day Adventists and the Witnesses), or the equality of Scripture and tradition (the Orthodox and Catholics),etc.

Thomas didn’t state what he believes ultimately becomes of such Christians. I wonder if, in his view, they are nonetheless saved.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston