The End...?

It's October 22nd.

The world did not end yesterday.

I was going to post something sarcastic, but then I found the following in a newsletter from Randy Cassingham's THIS is TRUE. He said it much better than I could, so read, enjoy, then go subscribe to his newsletter yourself.

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WHAT, YOU DIDN'T NOTICE?! The world ended today. It did too! Because some jackass said "The Bible Guarantees It!" you KNOW it happened. Because, you know, it was guaranteed! By the Bible!

I refer, of course, to Harold Camping. His prediction of "rapture" on May 21 flopped when nothing happened. I ran the story in TRUE, and in a blog post titled "The End of the World: 2011 Edition". When nothing happened, Camping retorted "IT DID TOO!" (which may be a slight paraphrase): May 21 really was Judgment Day, he insisted, and God has done all the reckoning He needed to (despite Camping preaching that the world WOULD, in no uncertain terms, end May 21 in a giant Earthquake; God apparently decided to be much more subtle).

Camping's own employees didn't buy it, by the way: "I don't believe in any of this stuff that's going on," a Family Radio receptionist at their Oakland headquarters told CNN in May, "and I plan on being here next week." But, she said, some co-workers did actually blow their life savings on nice cars or vacations in anticipation of the world (nay: the entire universe!) ending, because, you know, God would want them to have a nice ride to Armageddon. The receptionist noted that "about 80%" of Camping's own workforce didn't believe his prediction, and admitted that the calendar she keeps had lots of appointments scheduled for well after the supposed Armageddon.

So why did Camping change it to today? Apparently He (God, not Camping) needed to process a bunch of paperwork, which would take a few months, and the world will really, Really, REALLY end October 21. And this time he means it!

Yet YOU didn't even notice you're dead now. That just shows how observant you are!

Well of COURSE Camping is a whackjob. You know that as well as I do. My point is that he was able to convince scads of followers to quit their jobs and blow their life savings on spreading his message of the end of the world. Repent! Hurry! Time's almost up! Of course few listened to the gullible fools who now are jobless and broke in the worst economy since the Great Depression. Yet still, millions of people -- let's call them "lesser fools" -- STILL LISTEN to Camping's radio stations and the horribly errant words of a false prophet.

And why does THAT matter? I've actually heard people say that since the world is ending, we don't need to take care of it. OK, so Armageddon didn't happen THIS time (or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or the time before that, or [repeat literally hundreds of times!]), but SURELY it's coming really, really soon, so why worry about pollution, or climate change, or dumping old tires in streams, or living in a way that's sustainable for our children, their children, and the generations to come? They'd rather think that God made the world ...so that we could screw up His creation. This makes Biblical sense (or even common sense!) ...how? The bottom line becomes: if God *doesn't* destroy the world, WE will. Yeah, surely THAT is what God would want for his creation!

So my contention, as stated in my tagline on the first story on Camping, is that those who believe this garbage are fools, and "every rational person on Earth" knows it. It takes a pretty big ego to think the world will end in your lifetime.

But hey, don't worry: when I said it's the end of the world "2011 edition", you can count on another prediction in 3... 2... 1....


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