Let's Try That Apocalypse Again...

Here we go again, folks. Remember Harold Camping, who predicted the Rapture back in May? We held a party to wish the world farewell, but then at the appointed hour absolutely nothing came to pass. Not that I really expected it to, you understand, since dispensationalism is basically a bunch of nonsense, but still, you never know. Camping's claim was that the Rapture, the completely non-Biblical series of events in which devout Christians get levitated out of their cars and stuff, would happen on May 21st and then the world would end five months later, on October 21st. That's this Friday. Camping is insisting that his end-of-the-world prediction will still come to pass, even though his Rapture was a complete bust.

He has now claimed Judgement Day did happen as he predicted and that the earthquakes he had warned of actually referred to people being shaken by fear at the thought of the world ending.

Mr Camping added God had chosen who to save on May 21 and that his decisions will become clear when the judgement period ends next week.

And he had some bad news for those people who had not already saved their souls.

'We can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011,' the preacher wrote on his Family Radio blog.

'On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21.'

In lead-up to his predicted Rapture, Camping's ministry spent an enormous amount of money advertising his prediction. Once it was shown to be incorrect, he announced that he would not be doing the same for the October date and so far has kept to his word. At the time I noted that Camping had probably decided that he would rather keep all further donations coming in for himself rather than spending them to alert the world, which means that this whole apocalypse thing might just be a big con conducted for the benefit of Camping and his Family Radio Network. Only time will tell, I suppose, and by time I mean the next five days.