Apocalypse Not: Where’s the Rapture, Harold Camping?

To quote a lyric from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, “Hello, Hello? Is there anybody in there?”

As predicted by those of us with more than two brain cells, the Rapture did not arrive and the righteous (as if there are any) did not vaporize and ascend into heaven, leaving the wicked behind to perish on a burning earth.

Harold Camping, the prophetic (or is it pathetic?), wizened, decrepit dispensationalist whose mathematical findings concluded that billions of years on earth will somehow end on a Saturday… in Spring no less?!

Indeed, Camping (who looks more like a Bingo Caller than a prophet) prophesied the world would end at precisely 6pm on Saturday, May 21st  (God is a real anal-retentive,  punctual supreme being) and the “saved” (manipulated) would gradually ascend into the sky like church-going projectiles. Meanwhile, the wicked among us would be left to endure a series of earthquakes, floods, and war  until ultimately perishing in October. Well, it’s a good thing we already have all those things.  

Of course that momentous hour as now come and gone in Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and throughout East Asia, and there hasn’t been a single report of any human being ascending into heaven.

Daniel Boerman tweeted: “I’m from New Zealand, it is 6.06pm, the world has NOT ended. No earthquakes here, all waiting for the Rapture can relax for now.”

 So either Mr. Camping’s math is more questionable than George W. Bush’s WMD intelligence, or the denizens of that part of the world simply aren’t worthy. But which one of those conclusions could it possibly be??

As May 21 drew nearer, donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions of dollars on more than 5,000 billboards plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the non for profit reported that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million.

Surely the criminally gullible, weak-minded fools who handily gave Camping’s Family Radio Network — a network with $72-million or more in assets, according to reports– their hard-earned money on billboard advertisements and mass media in order to warn the world population of the impending Rapture must be livid over the Apocalypse Not. Then again, it’s safe to assume that these miserably uninformed loons will make apologies for Camping and rationalize some of the most preposterous reasons as to why it did not happen.  Maybe God was too busy trying to find Barack Obama’s real birth certificate? More likely, god is working with a team of attorneys on suing scare-mongering charlatans like Harold Camping for slander and libel.

The 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the ludicrous pronouncement has gone completely silent. The Oakland, California, headquarters of the network of 66 U.S. stations, which has international affiliates and had posted billboards around the country warning of a May 21 Judgment Day, were shuttered with a sign in the door that read “This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!” In fact, Camping, whose deep voice is frequently heard on his radio network expounding the Bible, could not be reached immediately for comment on Saturday.

Perhaps he’s loading all of his money into his rocket ship and preparing to depart earth to hoodwink the gullible extra-terrestrials of nearby Mars?

Mr. Camping is no stranger to making transparently false religious pronouncements about the demise of the plant. In 1994, Harold Camping first  made his patently false eschatological tendencies known by predicting that the world would end Sept. 6, 1994. Fortunately nothing happened, but more unfortunate is that Camping was able to prepare to once again cause mass hysteria with his brimstone  rhetoric and, worse yet, rob the ignorant masses of their riches. This type of posturing, whether deliberate or inadvertent, is without a shadow of the doubt the most atrocious type of manipulation. Mr. Camping and his followers might want to consider ‘refudiating’ their post-millenial dispensationalism and– dare I say– actually heed Jesus’ teachings and try and make the planet a better place by working to prevent global warming and the plundering of the planet by sinister and greedy oil tycoons. But in the mean time, it might be best if Camping and company seek out the biggest rock they can find (since that’s probably what they can afford) and collectively crawl under it. The adults of the world have work to do and can no longer be bothered by such fantastical frivolity.

By Michael Hayne