Glenn Beck wrapped up a week of Apocalyptic fervor with a simple declaration: “Yes. I think these are the latter days.”

Recall that Beck's week started with a confusing bit of doublespeak explaining the tragic and massive earthquake that struck Japan last week:

BECK: We can't see the connections here. Now look, I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes. Well -- I'm not saying that he -- I'm not not saying that either.

Par for the course, it wasn't remotely clear what Beck was saying, or not not saying. But his comments tracked earlier invective from the likes of Pat Robertson -- who claimed in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti last year that Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” and has “been cursed” ever since -- and religious conservatives -- who once claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for America's alleged sins.

After Beck's comments kicked off a firestorm of criticism, he attempted to explain them, saying that even if the earthquake was viewed in the context of the Book of Revelation, the earthquake should not be seen as a punishment, but instead as “just a signal that these are the end of days,” adding, “Are they? I don't know.”

Today, Beck made clear that he, for one, thinks these are, in fact, the latter days.

Beck started off with a prophecy, “We are entering a new time”:

There is profound evil growing on the Earth, and a lot of it is coming from the Middle East, but there is a lot of it also that is coming from the ideas of Marx and Communism. It is evil. Ronald Reagan said it, and no one has said it since. It is evil, and it always destroys religion. Always. It always tries to wipe God out. Always.

Now Beck has come under resounding ridicule from across the political spectrum for the unhinged theory that labor unions were conspiring with Marxists and Islamists to bring down governments in the Middle East and install a Caliphate that will spread through Europe and eventually topple the West. He has often couched this in the language of a growing evil that is spreading.

After reiterating that a profound evil coming from the Middle East and Marx to wipe out God, Beck laid out a plan to fight back:

There must be a revival in this country. And a true - not going to church - a true revival, where you become an evangelist for a living God, you expect miracle in your life and elsewhere, and you are an evangelist for freedom, not man's rights.

Forget about your rights. Connect with your responsibility. Your responsibility is to stand up for freedom, because those are God's rights. He has loaned them to us to protect them for his will to be done at a later date. I don't know what it is. I don't presume to know the mind of God, and I also don't presume to know the calendar or the Timex of God, either.

But I believe there is a God, and if you believe there is a God, then you believe that he is a loving father and that he will warn his children.

And in fact, Joel Richardson, part of Beck's rotating cast of Apocalypse peddlers, recently opined that recent earthquake activity is a warning “pointing to the soon coming of the return of Jesus.”

For his part, Beck likened these warnings to internal alarm clocks, which he said are ringing out to signal that God's rights are being taken. He continued:

Now, does it mean that this is the book of Revelation end of days? Well, as a guy who happens to go to a church that has Latter Days in its name, yeah I think so. So I want you to know that on the outset. Yes. I think these are the latter days.

But how many days are there, I don't know: God's days, God's calendar. I've never seen it. He's never shown it to me. His day might be another thousand years. People have been saying that God or Jesus is returning for 2,000 years.

I'm not going to tell you he's coming tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, or the next year -- in my lifetime -- because I don't know.

Could he? Yes. Yes. Again, he doesn't send me his train schedule.