Pat Robertson Watch: No Babies = End of Time?

I know, I know. I just can't help citing the wacky religious broadcaster. He's just so damned quotable. In his latest installment on the 700 Club (which my cable company doesn't seem to carry), Robertson opines about declining birth rates in Europe:

Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you're not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there's really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in -- you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn't come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can't get it together. Why? There's no hope.

Just a couple of months ago, Robertson hinted that recent earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes could be signs indicating that Jesus' Second Coming is imminent.

"What was called the blessed hope of the Bible is that one day Jesus Christ would come back again, start a whole new era, that this world order that we know would change into something that would be wonderful that we'd call the millennium," he continued. "And before that good time comes there will be some difficult days and there will be likened to what a woman goes through in labor just before she brings forth a child."

When asked if the world was approaching that moment, Robertson said, "It's possible. I don't have any special revelation to say it is but the Bible does indicate such a time will happen in the end of time. And could this be it? It might be."

The fertility rate is down in the United States too. Could Robertson's views on the imminence of the eschaton have demoralized Americans? After all, if the end of time is nigh, why bother having babies?