Due to the overwhelming influx of responses to HOW I’LL SPEND JUDGMENT DAY (5/25/11), we had to rush to press the best and brightest. Thanks to all those still around to comment. Sinning bastards.
Perfection.
—Kacey Morabito
Thanks, man. The image of you dancing with your little girl to AC/DC and singing at the top of your lungs really puts a hopeful spin on things :) Hope we’re all still here on Sunday.
—j. young
“I Survived the Rapture, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
—Your Muslim Neighbors
God fails to deliver yet again. He really has some performance issues he needs to address. Perhaps a career counselor could help.
—Ken Ashby
Actually… Harold Camping should not be taking all the heat for this… as 5/21/2011 @ 6:PM is actually Biblical… as the day of “completion”… looks like God was a no-show…
Respectfully,
Theresa
I just started a batch of Burpee Big Boy Beefsteak tomato seedlings a couple of weeks ago, and they’ll be ready to transfer to pots next week. Who do I write to, to get an extension on this? The people at Burpee said they couldn’t help me.
—Jimbo53
Because one man misses the mark it does not give you license for your boasting and lack of respect for the creator and contempt for the word of God. Judgment is surely coming for all some day and every idol word will be scrutinized and paid for.
—Mickey Ventura
We survived Camping. But now the real problems begin. This world is on it’s own doomsday collision course that may not be so easy to laugh off.
—Frank West
What hacks me off about Camping is not his views on the Rapture, but how they take focus OFF the most pressing matter in this situation—that none of us are guaranteed to actually SEE it! All we truly have is right now, this very moment in time. If we keel over and die right now, what does it MATTER when the Rapture takes place?!? “THIS is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” As Christians (those of us who actually ARE Christian, and not simply wearing the T-shirt), we’re called to live every second as if it is our last… because it may very well be. We’re called to be instant, in season and out, ready to go at a moment’s notice for whatever God’s got planned. When we fall to a guy like Camping—who, in all fairness, may actually have believed his own line—we take our eyes OFF that immediate urging for righteousness and set a future deadline on it, as if we’ll live to see our prediction come to pass. I would have been ECSTATIC if Camping had been right, but right or wrong, his prediction was irrelevant.
—Jeremy Bullard
Here’s what I wrote to Family Radio wecanknown.com a few months ago:
I am a Systematic Logician and Systematic Theologian. Your forecast lacks critical Biblical scholarship, sufficient probability with sufficient statistical confidence. If you are absolutely certain, then please give me favorable odds (100 to 1) on a wager. I will wager you up to $250,000, depending on what your wager, up to $25,000,000 (that’s 100 to 1). Both wagers must be held in escrow or equivalent, including whatever property (at current market value) each party makes available. I will make legal arrangements after we both provide verifiable evidence of our respective wagers. If your prediction is correct, you lose nothing and gain heaven. Otherwise, you lose your wager. Awaiting your response.
As you might imagine, I’m still waiting.
—Joe DiGiacomo, North Carolina
Well now that we all have more time to complete our Bucket List perhaps the folks at Sachem Bank (IDO) can complete their capital campaign. Hey, maybe this guy will become political adviser to Newt or seek Glenn Beck’s job. He is a bit old to be a Celebrity Apprentice with the former IMF Chief.
—bankalchemist
Camping’s prophecy is correct, depending on how you look at it. Since as we all know words and expressions in the bible are mostly symbolic and metaphorical, there will soon come a time when the whole world will discover that rapture which is purely spiritual has began taking place.
—Martins Enow Agbor
Firstly, I want to thank you for giving me some decent insight into this mindset that the Family Radio followers all seem to share–this mindset that, prior to reading your story, I had ABSOLUTELY no empathy with or understanding of. It baffled me (and honestly still does) that people could have the audacity to believe that this world could end in a matter of ONE day, brought on by the hand of some jealous and insecure deity.
Your article has helped me to understand a bit further this strange mindset. It seems many folks just need someone who appears wise and peaceful to ease their personal flaws and fears, and something to believe in that makes the chaotic and epic entropy that occurs in human culture seem like something predetermined. I do tend to empathize with these notions.
Now I do not normally go about telling people outright that they are wrong, but since evangelicals have made it their life goal to inform people who think slightly different from them that they are, in fact, incorrect, I am going to tell you flat out: you are wrong.
The world will not end on October 21st, 2011. The only prophecy that will be accurate about the world ending will be a self-fulfilling one. It will take many years for the world to end, as it took many years for the world to begin and become what it is now. No book or man can predict the exact date that will happen with the technology that exists right now.
Harold Camping’s biblical “calendar” is wrong. The world did not begin in 11,000 B.C. as Camping and his followers seem to wholeheartedly believe. There is plenty of evidence that shows the contrary. Anyone who suggests this has no rational concept of geological history or has not been in the field themselves in attempt to obtain a rational concept of geological history.
There is no Judgment or “Judgment Day.” To think that God is jealous and gets angry at humans for acting in a certain manner is ridiculous, selfish, and irrational. This is an idea completely fabricated from the confused temperament of Man. There is far too much universe out there for any higher power to be concerned with what happens on this small planet.
Most importantly, the Bible is a book, and thus written by Man, not God. It is the word of Man, and not any higher power. To think that a higher power would communicate to us in our own Man-made languages is just idiotic, and once again selfish. If there is a higher power, Man was NOT created in its image, as Man tends to be irrational and impatient, and humans do not have the brainpower to comprehend most of the amazing physics that all add up every second to create this somehow self-sustaining Universe.
Your story is touching, and I am from around the same area as you, near Route 84 in the Hudson Valley (Newburgh, NY). Unfortunately, the only salvation any of us will find is our own that is achieved through living well and selflessly in this life alone. There is nothing after this life, and you should be good to people not out of fear of God (which is equal to the biblical equivalent of a “sin” in my own opinion), but because every person has a thoughtful mind of their own, that requires physical, emotional, and physiological needs to feel happy and comfortable.
Thank you.
—Chris R.
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of Deep Tank Jersey, Fear No Art, Trailing Jesus and Midnight For Cinderella.
