Every time a world leader burps, the ground shakes, or there is a comet within a million miles of Earth, prophecy pundits dust off their “The End is Near” signs and assure us that time is running out for planet earth. Predicting the end is a multi-billion-dollar business. Publishing companies have gotten rich by selling end-time prophetic books.

The 16-volume Left Behind series made its authors and publisher multiple millions of dollars. The authors are still cashing in with a reboot of a Left Behind film starring Nicolas Cage.

Now we learn that a comet may portend some interesting international intrigue. President Obama’s visit is said to coincide with the appearing of a new comet.

“As if there weren’t already enough signs in the Heavens, Comet Pan-Starrs will be passing over Israel with the arrival of Barack Obama in this Year of the Comet.

“Throughout history, comets have been interpreted as harbingers of plague, impending disaster, or the ascension of a new king.

“From YouTube videographer TheInfoCollecter: ‘This is no coincidence my friend, along with everything else we’re seeing happen daily, this harbinger appears. Wake Up. We Fly Soon!’”

By “We Fly Soon,” the videographer means the “rapture,” an event that a good many end-time prognosticators claim Christians will taken up to heaven to avoid a coming seven-year tribulation period when the Jerusalem temple will be rebuilt, the antichrist will make a covenant with the Jews (and then break it), people loyal to antichrist will receive the “mark of the Beast,” to be followed by the Battle of Armageddon. Actually, the really bad stuff only happens in the second half of the seven-year tribulation period. The first half is said to be all sweetness and light. Hal Lindsey wrote about this supposed scenario in his 1970 bestseller (30 million copies) The Late Great Planet Earth. I’ve written about this in “Doomsday Déjà Vu.”

For nearly two thousand years people have been predicting the end of the world. We just finished the Mayan Calendar hype, and before that we had to endure the prophetic nonsense of Harold Camping who “predicted that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on May 21, 2011, whereupon the righteous would fly up to heaven, and that there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on Earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the final destruction of the world.”

On December 31, 1979, Pastor Chuck Smith told those who had gathered on the last day of that year that the “rapture” would take place before the end of 1981. . . .  In addition, Halley’s Comet would pass near earth in 1986 and would wreak havoc on those left behind as debris from its million-mile-long tail pummeled the planet.

Nothing significant happened in 1986 related to Halley’s Comet, and there is no reason why it should have since it’s been a predictable phenomenon for more than two millennia as it makes its way around the sun every 75 to 76 years.

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was born on November 30, 1835, two weeks after the comet’s appearance. In his biography, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” Clemens died on April 21, 1910, the day following the comet’s appearance.

Halley’s Comet passed over Jerusalem in AD 66. Four years later, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the world went on. So maybe this upcoming comet is an omen that President Obama will lose his political Mojo and the media will finally report the truth about his administration and destructive policies.

I’ve just been slapped back to reality. Not even a comet hurling through our atmosphere at supersonic speed will make that happen.