Hello all you sinners! Those of us who have been left behind to our own hell on earth must now look upon each other with grand suspicion. After all, The Rapture was to have taken an elite group of saintly humans into Heaven’s glistening huge halo, right? Those who are left behind must be Satan’s children, so sayeth Harold Camping of the Christian-based Family Radio who set the world ablaze with the May 21, 2011 prediction. Okay, to be factual, Camping gleaned his information from the Bible, thus he didn’t actually create the details of Rapture but simply discovered when it would occur based on a mysterious “hint” only he could unravel.
The Rapture has been a wonderful punch-line and overall joke for weeks concerning how yesterday would be THE DAY. Not the final end, as that is called The Apocalypse – coming soon to the ground near you – rife with more earthquakes, general weather upheaval, and the Four Horsemen riding in from the sky in their heated glory. Or something like that. It depends on who says what about the difference between the two. One and the same?
If those well edy-cated in the Bible have differing views, then I’ll just go with whatever sounds right moment-to-moment. My seeming lack of detailed information is no different (in my opinion), than one person striking fear in the minds of millions through his own interpretation of the end of the world and making a tidy profit off his faux prophecy.
The truth that nothing of importance happened yesterday other than Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake doing a fun turn on Saturday Night Live’s season finale – and nicely done, I should add – has left “believers” baffled, let-down and feeling more than foolish for draining what was left in their Savings accounts to make signs to warn others of what was coming, or to keep Family Radio well-oiled and humming along until yesterday.
Others took Camping’s word to heart by committing suicide to avoid anticipated earthly chaos. A mother in California slit the throat and wrists of her two daughters as well as herself in an attempt to avoid Hell on Earth. Fortunately, the girls are well and the mother is now in jail. Nothing about that part of the Rapture story is funny. It is extremely sad, frightening and sick.
I wonder how Camping feels today? He has done this sort of pronouncement in the past. Mass humiliation is not an unknown part of his life. Nor is creating mass hallucinations in those who have been willing to follow the 89 year-old religious fanatic to their financial or earthly graves.
Debates rage on today regarding the sincerity or lack thereof of yet another religious zealot’s ability to slash a large black mark on the Christian religion. Is this man honest or a charlatan? Is he, as some people are suggesting, a masterful PR genius now that those of us who never heard of Family Radio until recently are quite aware of its existence.
I do feel sorry for those who have believed and have been deceived. With an eerie amount of political and weather-related tumult sweeping over the globe, it isn’t a total folly to be concerned for what the future holds.
The alarming part of the doomsday scenario is how easy it can be to play upon people’s fears with wild predictions of a specific date and time for prophesies written in a book that so many take literally without questioning the various author’s credibility. Religious historians and researchers admit that the Bible has been tampered with over the centuries. Chapters removed, writings of deeds coming from word of mouth written hundreds of years after events supposedly took place.
I do believe there is something to be said for having “blind faith” – I also believe that it isn’t a crime to question what is real or just human nature’s tendency to bend stories due to the proven fact that we hear only what we want to hear.
You know the classic example of how words can become muddled when passed from one person to another sitting in a circle? By the time the originator’s message returns to them, what once began as “I’m saying this to you to see what comes back to me” has become “Jose’ wants Cee-Cee to have a hysterectomy.”
Enjoy your Sunday. We have at least one more fun-day – don’t we?
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