You know, it’s good to know I’m not the only one who went through that. I mean, the church I went to had good points about these being the end of days: Humanity now has the ability to, by choice, destroy itself, and the state of Israel was created. Still, it’s been nearly sixty years and not a lot of “progress” has been made 
The “Apocalypse”, from what I understand, is a bit of a misnomer, since the word itself simply means “revelation”, “unveiling”, or “disclosure”. A better question would probably be: Have the seals begun to open yet? Since the first four seals are supposed to destroy a quarter of the earths population, I’d say we’re nowhere close. When events begin to conspire for the death of 1.5 billion people, through “sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts” then things might begin to happen.
Revelation doesn’t give a specific event that starts off the opening of the seals. Many point to Jesus’ answers to the diciples’ questions regarding the time of the end to align with the seals, and thus find the statement regarding the “abomination of desolations spoken of by Daniel” to give credence to the idea that a seven year peace treaty (Daniel 9:27) is the sign of the opening of the seals. The peace treaty would then be broken half-way through and the temple sacrafices stop. So, three key things, according to this theory: Seven year peace treaty (between Israel and other Middle East nations?), a temple, and animal sacrafices. There are some Jews (and Christians) who are working towards a new temple and sacrifices in Jerusalem, but from what I’ve been told, they’re quite the minority.
Anytime any of these disasters happen, many who want the end of the world to come say it’s a sign. But nearly always the news says, “This is the biggest earthquake since 19xx” or “The worst damaged caused since 18xx”, which means it wasn’t a sign then, so why should it be a sign now? Arguably, the worst time in (recent) human history was WWII, yet the world didn’t end then, either.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure that Revelation even belongs in the canon, since it tends to show a “Circumcision Party” point of view (e.g. eating meat sacraficed to idols is wrong, only Israelites will be saved, God will rule the world with an iron fist, etc.), something Paul and much of the early church was against. Many were against it being included as canon in the first place. Be that as it may, I have to say, it’s a great final chapter to the New Testement, and has some really amazing imagery in it.
