Regarding eschatology in general, since Norman mentioned it, and I think it's relevant:
ISIS is interested in eschatology, too. Very interested. They wish to hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the
Mahdi, who will, according to them, unite to battle the Antichrist and rid the world of evil.
I completely lose patience with millennialism, which promises an easy way out for all earthly problems. (And sometimes delivers--I can't argue that
the millennialist group that committed mass suicide one neighborhood over from mine didn't escape this world of woe, in their version of the Rapture.)
No need to bother saving the environment or paying off the debts we've racked up for future generations to deal with, if the world is going to end soon anyway. Don't bother working for peace and justice, either. It's so much easier to just confidently slap a bumper sticker on one's gas-guzzling SUV--"WARNING: IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED"--and then piously sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Or "Jesus, Take the Wheel," if you prefer.
As my own Church approaches the eschatology-rich season of Advent, I wish more of my fellow believers would focus less on this or that frightening sign that the end of the world is near, and instead focus on Jesus's description of the Last Judgment in
Matthew 25:31-46--in which
how we have treated other people is presented as of paramount importance.
(The "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me" bit particularly jumps out at me these days. What good is it to ace the end-time prophecies and flunk
that? Maybe the Son of Man arrives on the clouds in glory only
after he arrives as a little Syrian girl in a barely-seaworthy vessel.)