Revelation and the End Times

On December 31, 1999, I was at a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house. We were having a great time, but just underneath the surface of the fun was a bit of apprehension. For nearly a year, it seems that all we had heard about was Y2K, the theory that as soon as all the computers in the world needed to read "2000," they would shut down because they could only read the "0" and would not know how to interpret that information. As the clock ticked toward midnight on that night, we sat around the t.v., watching Dick Clark in Times Square, wondering if the lights and t.v.'s and computers around the world would suddenly fail. As we know, nothing happened that night, or any other night since then. The problem, however big it might have been, was fixed, and our computers were saved.
Y2K is certainly not the first time that a prediction of the end (in a big sense) has been made. It is most certainly, however, one of the least significant. Throughout time, predictions of the end of the world have been announced, and for the most part, the book of Revelation has provided the catalyst for those predictions. Here are a few of those predictions:

1) Otto III predicted that the world would end in 968 based on the occurance of an eclipse (Rev 8:12)
2) Pope Innocent III predicted 1284 as the last year by taking the number 666 (Rev 13:18) and adding that number to the year that Islam was founded.
3) The Jehovah's Witnesses predicted 1914 as the end of the world based on a prophecy in Daniel 4, which is roughly equivalent to Rev 5:12). [http://www.smu.edu/smunews/revelation/predictions.asp]

It seems that the more we try to understand the events, natural and man-made, that happen in our world, the more people turn to the Bible for answers. In many cases, we would consider this a good thing -- look to God, revealed in the Bible, for help in our times of need. In some cases, however, looking to the Bible for answers only provides more confusion, especially when we turn to Revelation to predict the end of the world as we know it. As we begin our study of Revelation, I would like to know what you have been taught about this book. What good is it? Why is it in the Bible? What can it tell us about the end times?