Out of curiosity, what grounds their belief that it's going to happen soon? Why not in a thousand years? As far as I know, there is no mention of the exact date in the Bible.

My favourite bit of Biblical trivia. Consider this passage from the Revelation of St John: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%208%... describing, perhaps, events leading to the end of the world:

> The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.

"Wormwood", a type of bitter plant, translates to Russian as "Chernobyl", and Ukrainian "Chornobyl": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl > Etymology

No, but even the first christians believed they were living in the end times. It's been believed for 2000 years.

The land of Israel has been a vassal state or part of another state or empire for most of recorded history. Israel becoming an independent state in 1948 ties in with messianic prophesy.

It's a Pascal's wager. If you're convinced Armageddon is going to happen at some point, then you should do all you can to prepare for it happening in your lifetime. And that approach is explicitly encouraged in the Bible: "You do not know the day or hour", etc.

The same self-centeredness that drove man to think that Earth was the center of its Universe.

See also: bean soup / "what about me?*

I believe it was related to both Israel gaining statehood after WW2, and the panic of nuclear disaster leading up to the end of the Cold War. It feels like a idea that really took root in the minds of evangelical Baby Boomers and early GenXers, but likely has lost all meaning to millenials.

New Apostolic Reformationists believe that there are increasing number of "new apostles" who are receiving messages from God, which they see as evidence of the end times.

It is also common among these folks to believe that the end times don't just happen and that instead it is our responsibility to create the circumstances that enable the end times. This can either mean creating a state of instability and violence or creating a worldwide christian theocracy that lasts for 1000 years. Both involve massive upheavals of global systems.

Not only is there no date, it explicitly says the time and date is not known to us.