Tuesday, May 24, 2011

...Apparently Nothing

"Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a Rapture out of this hat!"
"Again? That trick never works!"

This weekend's failed Rapture was a learning experience for many, but evidently not for Harold Camping. On his latest radio broadcast he insisted that his original end-of-the-world prediction for October 21st was still on, even though his prophecied Rapture never happened.

During a sometimes rambling, 90-minute discourse that included a question-and-answer session with reporters, Camping said he felt bad that Saturday had come and gone without the Rapture he had felt so certain would take place.

Reflecting on scripture afterward, Camping said it "dawned" on him that a "merciful and compassionate God" would spare humanity from "hell on Earth for five months" by compressing the physical apocalypse into a shorter time frame.

But he insisted that October 21 has always been the end-point of his own End Times chronology, or at least, his latest chronology.

I was wondering in the back of my mind whether Camping would respond to the weekend's events by "discovering" that the Rapture is not at all Biblical (because it isn't), meaning he could still push his October date even without a Rapture to go with it. But I guess this professional evangelist doesn't know his scripture as well as I do (!), since he's doubling down on the date for a completely non-scriptural reason. God's so compassionate that he'll spare people five months of torment but then he's going to turn around and chuck a bunch of them into Hell for all eternity? Explain.

At least I'll get another party out of the deal.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

The second-best thing about all of this is the infinite number of "invisible rapture" memes cropping up on the internet.

The first-best thing about any end of the world is always parties :-p