Another Apocalyptic Failure

-- by Micheal

Harold Camping was absolutely sure, this time (not like last time) that May 21, 2011, at 6:00 p.m., the Rapture would occur. Hundreds of thousands of Christians would be miraculously taken off the earth, followed by five months of tribulation before the end of the world on Oct. 21st.

It didn't happen...again. That's not a surprise. Harold has been wrong before. What is surprising is how many people gave him even a scrap of credibility. Granted, we did not have people selling off their possessions and waiting on their rooftops, as was done in centuries past. But, Harold had mustered an awful lot of money from people who apparently believed him. All that advertising, full-bus decals? None of that comes cheap.

This week's scenario was not new, as I'll review in a moment. But, it has been awhile -- over a decade -- since the last end-of-the-world brouhaha, so perhaps we were due.

We all recall the Sturm und Drang over Y2K. End of the world, or at least massive chaos and reversion to the dark ages. Didn't happen.

Before that, our same Harold Camping had predicted that Christ would return between Sept. 15-17th, 1994. Didn't happen.

Before that, a Korean church plastered posters all over (I see one every day at I-93's Exit 4) announcing that the Rapture would come on October 28, 1992. Didn't happen.

Before that, a self-taught "bible scholar" named Edgar Whisenant published a book announcing that he had 88 reasons why the Rapture would happen in 1988. He sold 4.5 Million books! 4.5 Million! Didn't happen, but made him a lot of money.

Before that, the leader of the Jehovah's Witnesses church announced in 1974 that 1975 would be the end of the world. Wrap up your earthly affairs. This is it. Didn't happen. But then, they'd been predicting the world would end in 1914, 1925, 1941, etc.

I could go on and on, but I think you can see the pattern. This predicting the end of the world has been going on for hundreds of years. It was big in the 1800s. 1844 was supposed to be "It" or then again in 1874. The point is, people keep predicting the end of the world using bogus numerology to "unlock" prophecies in the book of Daniel and/or Revelation. Each doom-sayer is totally convinced that his (or her) calculations simply cannot be wrong. Whisenant even had the hubris to declare that "Only if the Bible itself is in error am I wrong." Way to go, Edgar. Take the Bible down with you.

All these geniuses burning the midnight oil to crack the Bible's code, yet each manages to come up with entirely different dates. Is no one learning from history? Is no one really reading the rest of the Bible? Quite a few times, we are told that no one will know the date. Read Matthew 24:36, Acts 1:7 and 1st Thessolonians 5:1. We're not going to know because we're not supposed to know. It's a "need to know" basis and we've been told repeatedly that we don't need to know.

Yet, every few decades, we get a new genius who can't read history nor reads all of his Bible and thinks HE is just smart enough to tease out the truth AND cannot be wrong. Such confidence inevitably attracts a crowd of people. We lemmings are suckers for a confident lemming who says "Hey, go THIS way!" It never ends well.

If you're a believer, I'm sorry, but we'll have to clean up Harold's mess. He's made the Bible look stupid along with himself.

If you're a smug atheist who thinks this is a good time to tweak your believing friends, chill out. A fool jumping off a building with feathers glued to his arms does not prove that man will never fly. It just proves he's a fool. You're still going to have some 'splainin' to do when your end comes.