The Rapture is happening May 21st, 2011 - so deal with it.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2010/07/500x_screen_shot_2010-07-28_at_2.26.16_am.jpg

From the Nashville Scene:

People have been setting Rapture dates for a long time. Some 220 dates in all, by this site's count. Insular groups of faithful have waited with bated breath for hundreds of years, canceling credit cards and telling bosses to fuck off, only to watch the moment pass, their bodies disappointingly earthbound, their march of shame back into the office to beg that boss for their job virtually assured.

But for real, people, Family Radio, Inc.'s Harold Camping has got it right this time: May 21, 2011. Fans of Family Radio have paid for signs all over the country, according to The Tennessean, and Nashville's Allison Warden is taking care of us. Apparently there are 40 such billboards in and around Music City.

And the date: "It's a certainty," Warden said.

http://www.familyradio.com/images/rotate/End_of_the_World.gif

Lol at Save the Date. We don't want those hair appointments interfering with the return of Christ

Dude made the same claim back in 1996. His excuse was "i miscalculated".

Certainly, he's right this time tho!

Interesting timing. I've been reading Jonathan Kirsch's book about Revelation, and he makes the point that it's far more a Jewish work, than a Christian one, a point made by many, many others over several hundred years.

Good book, too: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/178-9679585-0908503?a=0060816988

xp These guys are always miscalculating!! That's always their excuse!

At least when X-Day failed to happen the Sub-Genii were smart, they were like "Uh, Bob told us it just got postponed."
(with heavy implied subtext that it was all just a fucking joke anyway, of course.)

Kinda wish it was the 22nd now so i could check out lame excuse.

This is a very educational link: http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

Some others here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming_of_Christ#Specific_date_predictions disagree.

so what exactly happens when jesus comes back? all the blessed go straight to heaven, but the rest of us just kick it? satan is our lord? 1,000 years of peace and prosperity? i can't remember.

At least when X-Day failed to happen the Sub-Genii were smart, they were like "Uh, Bob told us it just got postponed."

"The manual page of the ddate program claims that the Church "declared that it had got the year upside down" and that X-Day will actually take place in 8661.[3] The most popular explanation for the failure of the prophecy in the Church is usually summarized with the statement, "the calendar is wrong and July 5th, 1998 has not really arrived yet."

awesome pagan party (there will be murder, mayhem and all kinds of horrible deeds) until October 21, when the Earth will be destroyed by fire iirc

xpost

nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yDWXNKPtNw

wd be great timing, I won't have to decide on renewing my lease.

Numerology: If you divide 2000 by 3, you will get the devil's number 666.66666666666667.

Emm...

A False teacher named Shelby Corbett, of Bradenton, Florida has put up benches throughout town advertising the rapture will happen in 2007! She has little Bible knowledge and is tying to make money selling her book.

Much love for snarky fundamentalists.

Charles Spiegel, a retired psychology professor, preaches from a small town near San Diego CA that the ancient land of Atlantis will emerge from the Caribbean circa 2001 CE. Shortly thereafter, 1000 extra-terrestrials from "Myton" in 33 spaceships will land there and bring new knowledge to humanity.

This I can dig.

I wish it was 8 years ago so I could flood the thread with "Olio" videos

xxxxp thanks for the correction Shakey, I was going off hazy, incorrect memories. Those explanations are great and way better than whatever the fundies say when their predictions turn out wrong. Look out year 8661, the end is nigh!!

The date misses by just about 6.66 weeks the 30th anniversary of Blondie's "Rapture" hitting #1.

Salvation or triple your money back.

>>Charles Spiegel, a retired psychology professor, preaches from a small town near San Diego CA that the ancient land of Atlantis will emerge from the Caribbean circa 2001 CE. Shortly thereafter, 1000 extra-terrestrials from "Myton" in 33 spaceships will land there and bring new knowledge to humanity.

>This I can dig.

Wait, wasn't this concurrent with the Heaven's Gate/Hale-Bopp/Nike Cortez eunuch crew?

At least the new Britney album will be out by then...

xp (I have zero desire to ever live there again but damn I love SD's wacky mystical OTT cults, maybe I spent too many days surfing Swami's in the shadows of the Bahi'a or Self-Realization ashram, can't remember which one it is).

Swami's is awesome

My bday's just 10 days later. Can't Jesus wait 'til my bday?

shasta dude, i must've seen you out there. that was my north county zone (i am not north county)

unless you are v old like me i doubt it my broheemian blapsoddy

Heaven's Gate original website is still up btw
http://www.heavensgate.com/

http://www.heavensgate.com/img/hbhgtd.jpg

The group are long dead yet the domain is still going. How odd.

immortality is theirs

At what point of being alienated from modern life does this start to appeal to one, I wonder. What threshold do you hafta hit.

10 minutes of one of those housewives shows was enough for me

praise the lord

lol

Required reading for surviving the decade:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/1964_When_Prophecy_Fails_Festinger.jpg

So you believe the rapture is on May 21st? Then sign an official deed that transfers all your earthly possessions to the poor and the atheists on May 22nd.

so what exactly happens when jesus comes back? all the blessed go straight to heaven, but the rest of us just kick it? satan is our lord? 1,000 years of peace and prosperity? i can't remember.

― tylerw, Tuesday, January 4, 2011 6:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

p certain he's going to announce it in a supermarket and get arrested for making the mineral water section start to turn. his lawyer will plead insanity against his behalf, especially as he keeps saying he's fucking jesus, he gets scared as he's never seen cars or lightbulbs before, and he ends up in a mental institution trying to figure a way him & chief & some dude who thinks he's danny devito can miracle their way out.

it's pretty obvious that the rapture happened a long, long time ago and that all the real god jesus elect people have gone off to their promised reward, and the rest of us are going to be boiling around like lice in this dungheap for what remains of eternity.

So you believe the rapture is on May 21st? Then sign an official deed that transfers all your earthly possessions to the poor and the atheists on May 22nd.

― StanM, Wednesday, 5 January 2011 07:34 (7 hours ago) Bookmark

Best idea yet!

haha that reminds me of the Father Ted episode where all the priests were on the airplane that was about to crash. and one priest offered the advice "let's all just sit here and pray to god, he will save us" and all the other priests didn't look convinced.

but seriously, are we going to get bombarded with this type of nonsense the closer we get to 2012 or what

i don't think 2012 is the thing so much as obama being the antichrist via being a muslim african

I was able to clear most of my afternoon, but the morning is still pretty busy.

Here's the sign in midtown Atlanta I just took a photo of:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5044/5328087222_3627555703_z.jpg

is this why the birds are falling from the sky and fish are dying in the US?

jesus hates birds and fish?

good use of "cank" (,v., to troll) in that ad

so what exactly happens when jesus comes back? all the blessed go straight to heaven, but the rest of us just kick it? satan is our lord? 1,000 years of peace and prosperity? i can't remember.

actually want an answer to this question.

not because i believe the end is near, but because it shines a light on how certain groups of believers look at other peoples.

it's pretty obvious that the rapture happened a long, long time ago and that all the real god jesus elect people have gone off to their promised reward, and the rest of us are going to be boiling around like lice in this dungheap for what remains of eternity.

I would watch a movie based on this premise.

The Rapture is happening May21st, 2011 - so...

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z245/tapiola/wecanknow.gif

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51A12GRPD4L._SL500_AA300_.jpg
daniel, i think we all need to spend some time with this series for a look at post-rapture life? i think it is a documentary.

lol corey was just looking for a jesus deal with it gif.

jesus needs to wear those glasses when he comes back

also someone should start selling real "deal with it" sunglasses

oh i see it clearly now

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I_rRqZjTqu0/TLyY5SggbXI/AAAAAAAAAvY/OfqXrfYkdfQ/s1600/hellfire.jpg

the future's so bleak i gotta share hades

lolz

i mean, is that supposed to be it, really: jewish people (like me) are supposed to burn eternally, suffering in unimaginable ways, because we aren't believers? or is it supposedly more that we can't share in the joy and raised-consciousness that believers will feel?

Re what happens: I can't remember exactly?? But I think...There's a lot of suffering and plague and death and fire and shit, and somewhere in there the already-Saved are taken up and spared the final spasms and chaos of the apocalypse. Then once Satan and his minions are finally defeated by uh God's forces, he will remake the Earth or make a different planet/world, and re-install his creations on it. There's something about "a new heaven and a new earth" in there somewhere, only it would be perfect like God intended.

Basically makes the whole End Times thing seem an awful lot like watching contained ecosystem (like an ant farm...or a terrarium??) collapse and die because you didn't build it right, and then learning your lesson and making a new, slightly improved one.

yeah, that's basically as i recall it.

such an offensive and harsh view.

jewish people (like me) are supposed to burn eternally, suffering in unimaginable ways, because we aren't believers? or is it supposedly more that we can't share in the joy and raised-consciousness that believers will feel?

a little of both

"is that supposed to be it, really: jewish people (like me) are supposed to burn eternally, suffering in unimaginable ways, because we aren't believers?"

yep. in my environs, even what one would deem "mainstream" churches will say this explicitly.

There's something about a certain number of Jews getting into heaven, isn't there? Not very many, obv. Wouldn't want them cluttering up the place.

gotta have bagels though

I was thinking, cos everyone - even a die-hard radical Christian - has moments of doubt, how is this belief measured? Like, is it averaged out during your lifetime? Say you go through a bad period and you don't believe in Jesus, or maybe you don't believe in the physical Jesus but you believe in an eternal consciousness for a bit. Maybe they take every second of your life and add all the seconds you believed in Jesus and divide it by your lifespan, and if it's greater than 50% you go to heaven? Or maybe it should be more like 75%?

Or is it just as long as you believe in Jesus when you die you go to heaven? Hence you can be a death row murderer and repent right before your execution and still get your harp and wings and shit.

I guess these questions have to be asked of specific denominations. But maybe for most evangelical traditions, what is it?

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:4svZhZ6V951TRM:http://www.mushon.com/fall08/nmrs/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/get_out_of_jail_free.jpg&t=1

i really hope they play house of jealous lovers.

http://i53.tinypic.com/290v62u.jpg

Or is it just as long as you believe in Jesus when you die you go to heaven? Hence you can be a death row murderer and repent right before your execution and still get your harp and wings and shit.

i think that's exactly what it means.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2qvgoit.jpg

<3 that guy when he sings h8 him when he is just a dull crazy talky guy

Jews can go to heaven.... if they accept Jesus as the Messiah!
-- every Christian I've ever met.

Man that song was stuck in my head for *days* when I first saw that video. Now all I can remember is "we're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon," which isn't even the same song.

xp to marshy beardo jpg

looooool

love that the dude responds to some of the ppl who leave comments on his videos

my friend is doing catering for the rapture and he said he can get me free tics for heaven

u don't need no free tics. just believe.

I was trying to remember what kind of food is "tics"

http://www.labelcreations.com/images/tictacs.png

u don't need no free tics. just believe.

― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, January 5, 2011 11:22 PM (1 minute ago)

nah apparently this shit has been sold out since like the crusades

yeah that used to be true but now we (jews) are recruiting.

i would listen out for giveaways on local radio stations, i heard they have some on reserve for that

uh guys Tic Tacs are of the darkness and of satan... ya'll should be freshening your breath with these:

http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/images/imagesinterviews/letterman-testamints.jpg

i would listen out for giveaways on local radio stations, i heard they have some on reserve for that

― plax (ico), Wednesday, January 5, 2011

what can they offer you, really?

we will lower the interest-rates on your personal credit cards.

also fn animal shelters fucked this up by putting all those dogs down bc all dogs go to heaven and so they had to reshuffle any reserved space they had. you could be lucky and get bumped up to first class bc of this tho

Or is it just as long as you believe in Jesus when you die you go to heaven? Hence you can be a death row murderer and repent right before your execution and still get your harp and wings and shit.

I think that the general understanding is that as long as the repentance is sincere, and you genuinely accept Jesus as son of God and saviour of mankind, that's all you need. But that having done so doesn't mean you get to escape earthly punishments (ie you get into Heaven, but you still stay in prison/get executed beforehand).

i prefer the calvinist (?) think where you are damned or saved b4 u are born and fuck yr good deeds mfers

yeah, predestination -- god obviously already knows who really will accept him (he's god, he knows everything), so he already knows who gets into heaven. it makes sense but it also does not make sense.

nah its more that you can beg and beg but yr ass is gonna burn imo

can't recall the historical figure (martin luther, maybe?) who said that if a murderer, on his deathbed, sincerely accepts jesus, then he goes to heaven, but an honorable jewish man will burn in hell.

My childhood church believed in "foreordination" but not predestination –– confusing as hell, in a way, that whole church is fucked up about what free will is.

yah religion is totally fucked up and horrible

Well American Christian Fundamentalism is seriously fucked up, but I'm not gonna tar all religions as horrible.

yeah, i'm by no means anti-organized religion.

I thought this thread was going to be about the band The Rapture kicking off a new tour in May.

I can't say I blame people for believing this. I certainly wish the Rapture were coming sometimes.

not really looking forward to having my ashes trampled by angels while people laugh at me from the clouds
tho if bumper stickers are to be believed there will be some fairly nice cars up for grabs

can't recall the historical figure (martin luther, maybe?) who said that if a murderer, on his deathbed, sincerely accepts jesus, then he goes to heaven, but an honorable jewish man will burn in hell.

― Daniel, Esq., Wednesday, January 5, 2011 11:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

understandable considering martin luther was THE anti-semite until Hitler changed the game.

ilxor fap may 21st? we can all go to http://www.nightlife-london.com/images/heaven-night-club-london.gif

I'm going now
where there ain't no snow,
where they hung the jerk
that invented work
at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Y'all ready for this?

I've been ready to laugh at sad paranoid dumbasses all my life.

Forgot all about this. You know the great thing about the Rapture? If it doesn't happen, no biggie. In the off chance it does, who can deny it? The world engulfed in flames and my heathen soul damned forever, I'd be all, yeah, I guess I had that coming. Nothing I can do about it now.

do we have a time on the 21st, or is it just whenever?

of course, there is that bible verse about no one knowing the time of his return, so maybe that means you can know the exact day and year, but not what time.

I remember in the early 80s my dad had a friend who belonged to some cult that kept claiming the world was about to end. Guess what? When it doesn't your church's rep grows not-bigger. These kind of fireworks just don't help you, pedos and priests.

do we have a time on the 21st, or is it just whenever?

6 PM New Zealand time.

i'm going to be in the woods with a bunch of hobos, punks, and queers. which makes it more exciting.

You wont even notice anything happen! D:

I don't to be one of those guys who weigh in on threads just to say how rubbish they are, but does anyone else think it's a bit mean ragging on people for holding differing religious beliefs to their own? It's all very well going lol fundies, but there seems to be a lot of real vitriol towards them and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. Its amazing how un-liberal liberals get when it comes to this kinda thing.

i'm not a liberal, this isn't ragging on religious beliefs it's ragging on the wilfully superior & moronic.

And i've not even posted itt iirc

People are ragging on the wilfully superior . . . by being wilfully superior! I mean sure, the whole rapture business seems pretty dumb from here, but its no more fucked up than transubstantiation. I dunno, I don't think anyone comes off well here.

ha, maybe

Ps nobody but nobody believes transubstantiation

I'll put money on more people believing in transubstantiation than in the rapture.

Wuh? Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible to have followers, and make such a bold claim to them that the world is going to end, when all you've got is a bunch of BS "calculations" that you created out of thin air? Harold Camping isn't exactly Jim Jones or Marshal Applewhite, but he's pretty cult-y. When have leadership over people and you tell them the world is going to end on May 21st, and they believe you, you've done damage to them.

It's personal responsibility to live life in a sensible way, but there are a lot of vulnerable, impressionable people out there, and it's a shame they get caught up in all this bizarro stuff. So yeah, I think there is a problem with this.

http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1043

harder to define belief in the ?required? catholic concept of transubstantiation vs belief that 'we're ascending tomorrow'

it's a bit mean ragging on people for holding differing religious beliefs to their own

don't forget there's a political element to this; "christian fundamentalism" usually corresponds with things like "anti-abortion" and "anti-gay rights." even though this particular sect may not represent the US's christian majority, that majority still has huge influence over our government/political process and it's going to be sour to some ppl.

also, maybe they're just helpfully trying to get the word out, but when i see the four fucking "RAPTURE IS COMING" billboards on my way to work every day, it feels less helpful and more "lol sinners u mad?"

ya 2nd paragraph otm

The narcissism of rapture-readiness bugs me - these otherwise mediocre, unimaginative people think against all odds that the world ends with them, and that some deity approves of them (and by extension, disapproves of the same people they do). It's basically an ego wank taken to extreme proportions by the kind of people who are suspicious of 'book smarts'. Those who throw shade at reading and learning are nothing but manipulative assholes trying to prevent anyone close to them challenging their authority about anything.

While I don't believe in God, I know enough about religions and religiosity to identify these sorts of fundies as the Pharisees of the present day.

"christian fundamentalism" usually corresponds with things like "anti-abortion" and "anti-gay rights. - true, in which case there's enough to criticise them on right there while avoiding the mudslinging.

it feels less helpful and more "lol sinners u mad? - in which case, maybe I can suggest that the problem is with you, rather than them? Do you react the same way to burkas? (to pull an obvious and crude comparison out of my ass) I'm just a little uncomfortable with the idea that people can be religious, so long as they're not too religious.

And yeh, of course it's an ego wank, but that's their lookout. Getting annoyed by other people having a wank, ego or otherwise, doesn't seem awfully progressive to me.

Point taken about vulnerable folks being vulnerable tho, that is truly tragic, but I'm not sure its true to say that EVERYONE who goes for this is a crazy, unless we're saying that everyone who believes anything with no basis in fact is a crazy, and that's one can of worms too many for me.

it's more 'ppl can be as religious as they like, just keep it to yourself pls' more than anything else

Traffic into our nation's capital was unnaturally light this morning. Can safely attribute this to people wanting to get a jump on that notorious Endtimes Weekend traffic over the Bay Bridge.

Or maybe the rapture already happened and I'm one of the "left behind"? Maybe I should've gone to the beach today. Fuck.

xp idk, is the presence of a burqa the same passive advertising as a billboard? when i see a burqa, i'm seeing the existence of a person with certain religious beliefs that may include things that i don't agree with. but i don't think its purpose is to convince me to believe in them (maybe that's arguable, idk). a "rapture is coming" billboard, otoh, is trying to convince me of something: charitably it could be trying to convince me to get my shit together because the folks behind the billboard worry about my immortal soul; uncharitably it is saying "if you don't believe as i do, i guarantee you will burn in a lake of fire," which i think it's reasonable for me to get testy about.

also, christianity as a monolithic thing dominates and saturates american culture. you could totally argue that as a fringe group, these folks shouldn't receive the blowback that comes from non-christians fighting the christian paradigm in our culture. but if you're a member of a group that suffers under the influence of christianity in politics (women seeking safe abortions, for example), christanity ceases to be a passive thing to be respected and becomes something actively trying to interfere with your life.

I think it's more a matter of degree, NotEnough. A person isn't necessarily crazy if they're easily taken in by something that gives their lives meaning, an escape, or whatever a person finds in what Harold Camping produces. Also, there are differences in having faith in a god, and believing that the world's going to end in a few days based on some ridiculous mathematical contortions from a person who claims that his personal ideas have divine foundation, which is a generally dubious claim in itself. It's something that should be taken in as a whole...

I think the problem here is actually that NotEnough is asking the wrong question. This thread is mocking the belief that the Rapture will happen tomorrow. Though I'm sure many in this thread would if given the chance, it is not mocking any other part of the belief system that these people hold. It is mocking a VERIFIABLE CLAIM. If this claim were to be proven true, I'm sure we'd all apologise. If not, then we were correct to mock.

What's aggravating is the narcissism and innate superiority. The people who believe the Rapture is tomorrow are a) already pretty convinced they'll be among the saved and b) already pretty convinced that I'm gong to hell. So fuck them for their divisive crypto celestial-eugenics.

Last week I had a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses come to my house, and I yelled at them. Why? Because a) I have a no solicitors sticker and b) they came to my house intending to convince me of my failings and, ergo, their superiority. (Which of course makes no sense, seeing as the Witnesses explicitly believe that heaven is limited to, like, 177,000 people, so why would they want to convert more people? You'd think that guest list was full already.)

But, anyway, it's the aggressiveness of the end-of-the-worlders that annoys. They can believe whatever they want to believe, but as soon as they want me to believe the same I think they're infringing on my personal mental space. They can go off to their bunker, hold hands and STFU.

Were the JWs women? Because according to their rules, women aren't going anywhere as part of the 144,000.. That's just for men.

You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LXuNpF6NVg

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20rapture.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LVQAU72G598/SfZJSpph6dI/AAAAAAAAAF0/_sWU_LMhXpA/S660/New+book+coverlarge.jpg

Notice of Rate Increase: Due to the increased activity associated with the May 21, 2011 Rapture prophesy we have increased our service rates for all new contracts submitted as of 1/13/11.

xpost Yeah, they were women. Not sure if they understood the fine print of their own religion.

Not be all colonel save-a-JW, but I don't think this is actually true:

Were the JWs women? Because according to their rules, women aren't going anywhere as part of the 144,000.. That's just for men.

Revelation talks about 144,000 being all men, but the JW interpretation includes women iirc.

Matthew 24:36 explicitly says you can't know when the rapture is. Christians who try to worm out of Matthew 24:36 should be roundly mocked by believers & nonbelievers alike.

My mom's family were involved with JWs when she was young and according to her, JW heaven is NO WOMAN ALLOWED. That's half the reason her father was persuaded to leave the church after nearly 10 years' involvement. To keep them nice and fucked off, my grandfather developed an interest in astrology.

Next time, tell them you'd talk to them but were just in the middle of doing a bunch of astrology charts. Then ask them what their signs are. They will RUN.

JD, anyone who uses the Bible as an emotional blackmail tool is probably blaspheming - or at least that's what I like to tell them. Along with 'if you want to inherit the earth, then STFU' and 'God is not your concierge. Get over yourself.'

My verbatim conversation with said Witnesses. Does it make logical sense? No. But then neither does going door to door trying to convert people. Plus, I was pretty annoyed.

"Hi, we're going to our neighbors to talk about the times we're living in, what with all these natural disasters ..."

"And what caused these natural disasters?"

"What caused them?"

"Who creates the weather?"

"Um ..."

"The All Powerful?"

"Are you saying God created these natural disasters?"

"I don't know. I don't talk to God."

"Oh, are you an atheist?"

"It doesn't matter what I am. I am what my parents were. If they were
Catholic I would be Catholic. If they were Muslim I would be Muslim.
But do you know why my parents are what they are?"

"Why?"

"God made them that way. And do you know what that really means?"

"What?"

"It means that we're ultimately all the same."

"So can we leave you with something to read?"

"No, I'm pretty much set. But good luck!"

Anyway, fuck Matthew 24:36, I know when the real Rapture is but I'm not telling.

My grandma's sister and her family are all JW. At least they all were until one of my 2nd cousins got divorced/excommunicated. Perhaps not coincidentally that particular 2nd cousin is the only one of them I'd ever met, and they were very nice.

But anyway, the JW book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained apparently says this:

"After Jesus died and was resurrected men and women could be set aside to become the `little flock' of 144,000 persons who make up the heavenly, spiritual nation of God, and who are to rule with Christ in the new heavens.

xpost

last ppl that came to my door trying to covert me were catholics.

They were fucked out the door of the secondary school later that week for confirming that god forgives all sins....

...except homosexuality.

This was is 2011 btw

Still want to know why any religion that limits the saved to 144,000 is compelled to go door to door an convert. Hedging their bets?

love this movie. wish i had a copy to watch tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmX7d9B20WQ

because every person you convert gets you a bigger house in heaven obv

Because if they can convince the whole population to buy a ticket, they will get the benefit of names-on-the-religion-membership-list whether or not they get onto the bus.

If the DJ at the bar I'm going to on Saturday night doesn't play Blondie, I'll be disappointed.

if I was DJing at the bar tomorrow I would coordinate where the record would slow down and skip at just the right time, and have the bartender start flickering the lights in the place, followed by a trumpet fanfare.

Great read here, not just about the Rapture but women's roles in churches, generational dynamics, the American experience, etc.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/may-21-the-rapture-meets-my-40th-birthday

xpost to jaymc/Neanderthal - LOL

I expect legions of babies to be born ~ 9 mo from tomorrow -- I preemptively blame Pitbull.

someone pls prevent Lil Wayne from making a song about this

even some of the ppl anticipating this are calling it Judgment Day, when Revelations CLEARLY indicates a time gap btwn the Rapture and JD. Wacky fundies should at least be literate.

Like that this is supposed to happen in rolling "6 pm" waves, we will look to you Britishes.

New Zealand supposedly gets it first.

the creator of this hoax will probably milk the 'time zone' angle as long as he can

surely will be 6pm jerusalem time

morbs, the group that actually are purporting the hoax are calling it Judgement Day, so that's why. they're claiming tomorrow is when JD happens.

I think it's too late for Wayne -- Pitbull is all over it and will get many many girls pregnant tonight. For all he knows, we may not get tomorrow, so we should do it tonight.

on second thought, he contradicts himself. big banner at the top says Judgement Day, 5/21/2011, then later on in the passage, he claims it's only the rapture that happens tomorrow, and the destruction of the world in October.

douchebag

Ps nobody but nobody believes transubstantiation

Really? This is totally weird to me! It has always seemed one of the totally reasonable bits of catholicism to me? I guess this isn't the thread for it, but why not?

godless Protestants

Another argument[19] that Camping uses in favor of the May 21st date is as follows:

According to Camping, the number five equals "atonement", the number ten equals "completeness", and the number seventeen equals "heaven".
Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.
If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 722,449.
The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.
51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.
(5 × 10 × 17)2 or (atonement × completeness × heaven)2 also equals 722,500.

LOLOLOLOLOL

i can't believe this dude has gotten so much pull even though he chalked up one fizzled prophecy already in the 90s.

he got away with that one because in the book where he predicted it, he used the easy out "oh but i may be wrong lols"

christian numerology is hilarious for sure, i just assumed that divination in all its forms was considered a heinous sin?

it is absolutely not true that nobody believes in transubstantiation - it may be true in more pervasively Catholic countries (I think an overfeeding of doctrine = rejection of more of it) but I can assure you that many American Catholics accept the doctrine of transubstatiation

Uh yeah ask P Z Myers whether or not American Catholics believe in transubstantion.

yeah I recall being instructed in catechism with a bullshit anecdote about SCIENTISTS analyzing the host after it had been sanctified and finding that it had actually-factually turned into THE FLESH OF CHRIST, it is definitely a thing that people believe

str8 to hell with that guy

xp

the person you normally know as yr cab driver....could actually be Christ

makes ya think

8 min into may 21st here.. no cars to loot.. yet

Rapture Excuse Bingo Card: http://i.imgur.com/zf7B9.png

Maybe the Rapture is happening and none of us know, because we're all damned? Makes you think, doesn't it?

Speaking of thinking, or not thinking, what kind of immature God would save some people and then trash the planet for everyone left behind? That's like prying the vowels off your keyboard when you get fired. Just a dick move all around.

choose your own apocalypse:

http://img.slate.com/features/endofamerica/default.htm

I got:

You are a bloodthirsty misanthrope. You believe mankind is stupid and fallible and that America will destroy itself in a bloody mess. You'll know you're right when: The United States succumbs to a torrent of Russian nukes; we clone ourselves, get bum genes, and die.

Best practical end of the world movie, btw, may be Don McKellar's "Last Night."

^^^ Yeah, that's great.

RESULT:

You are a bloodthirsty misanthrope. You believe mankind is stupid and fallible and that America will destroy itself in a bloody mess.

hm

oops, didn't even see that was peter's result too!

8 min into may 21st here..

God, as we all know, uses Greenwich Mean Time, not Godless Heathen Oriental Time.

I thought there was supposed to be a wave of rapture which hits each time zone at 6 pm. Pretty sure I either read that somewhere or made it up.

Making up stuff about the Rapture is what everyone does, especially those who believe in it, so feel free.

eh ok maybe yanks believe that bread turns into godflesh when blessed by certain types of employee.

Even the practicing catholics i know over here treat that one as strictly metaphor though.
My bad.

i wonder if even this will be unable to put a stop to the odd future thread

will regret not propositioning a couple office dudes today if this transpires

well, if there's any chance they would say yes, there's no way they'll be raptured.

Even the practicing catholics i know over here treat that one as strictly metaphor though.

^many catholics would say they aren't catholics then. that whole thing was one of the major issues of the original schism circa 1500

peter with impeccable logic there

Yeah bill well they'd self-define as catholic, I'm sure pretty much every catholic is to some extent a la carte irl

"I'd like the original sin but only give me a little guilt, please"

probably true. I have no dog in the fight, personally, as a heathen.

xpost

the guilt is like the service charge over here, mandatory and the root of much resentment and bitterness

catholics aren't allowed dogfight either iirc

Yeah, that goddam Vatican II ruined it for everybody.

proactive warning, anybody who piggybacks on that with an Electric Boogaloo joke is getting mad SBs, please belie'e dat

aren't some things in life more enjoyable with the requisite amounts of shame and/or guilt, though? like, aren't junk food alcohol sex etc more fun when they have an illicit tinge to them? like isn't it more fun to be a bible belt puritan with unmentionable desires than it is to be a euro-libertine strutting around on a nude beach somewhere? i'm asking because i don't know.

the first time I peed on the side of a Food Lion I got chills when I imagined it retroactively causing an extra nail in Jesus's hand....

what happened the second time?

i died

get back to me when you urinate on a Publix

kinda wouldn't change the decor much iirc

if there were a grocery store whose television ad campaign involved shots of people peeing on said store, i would so shop at such a place.

or a commercial where someone walks through the store like an emaciated bull in a china shop a la the video for bittersweet symphony

If you were God, would you start with the iPad 2?

hoping the employees at my local grocery store are a bunch of unrepentant atheists, i want some tortilla chips + hummus and i'm going to be super-pissed if they all made it to heaven before unlocking the door.

It's May 22nd in New Zealand, hooray! Time for a big ILX post rapture left behind roll call thread!

but wait, doesn't it start at 6 PM in New Zealand? according to the Bible, of course?

15 hours until ARMAGEDDON

but wouldn't that mean it's going to be on May 22nd in NZ since it's not May 21 anymore there already? Confusing!

Who'll drive the bus? Milk will be undelivered! Homework will be unmade! Prisons will be emptied! :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ_hrEdEsPs

i really hope Ric Ocasek is raptured

Nevermind, turns out it was just all buzz because Family Radio is going to announce a joint venture with this company today.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2v15gk2.jpg

praying to God I find that taco stand someday

I'm about to get on a Megabus, so this is no metaphor.

glad this isn't the sex droughts thread

hey guys how is everyone's apocaplyse going? i've got a muffin!

watchin true romance sall good

Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me are sworn against me.
For I have eaten ashes like oatmeal with a bit of butter and cinnamon, and mingled my morning coffee with weeping.

lived through cleaning the pipes to my bathroom sink, will surely be able to handle this armageddon nonsense

every moment spent with y'all is a moment i treasure!!!!!!!!!!!! \(^o^)/

big orgy going down later c u @ the moon tower

i'm still here, much to k3vin k.'s dismay i'm sure

Sign on Family Radio's front door:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/21/may_21_is_here/Picture_67.jpg

On the BBC they said, "while Believers are waiting for the end of the world, cynics are having end-of-the-world parties", surely it's not cynical to want to hope (against all reason and proof) that the world will still be here tomorrow?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbaWdyDipcw

Zero hour here. Burning in flames. Brb.

i assumed it was 6pm US time for some reason

'Cause that's when 60 Minutes comes on maybe?

thats what Lance Armstrong is banking on

In pub, blondie's Rapture on the jukebox. (Still burning in flames btw.)

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/247020_10150311163173332_726613331_9773002_4054336_n.jpg

The feeling of anti-climax here is strangely easy to supress.

was in the car, must have driv right by the rapture tbh

Nobody's gone! Either this hasn't happened or everyone has been replaced by identical copies.

or nobody qualified.

It's like those fuckin scratch tickets that come in the sunday papers tbh

Everyone who left is someone I wouldn't miss.

Has anyone done a thorough census on vagrants and refugees? Rumor has it that Our Lord loves such folks more than comfortably smug middle-class churchgoers.

Well if 144,000 people are going out of 7 billion (or even 300 million if only USians count as sufficiently godly) the difference is going to be hard to spot

144,000 out of 7,000,000,000 would be a whopping 0.002%, or approximately 1 in every 50,000, assuming all 7 billion of us have souls and are therefore eligible.

The passage that the Rapture's wiki page cites (1 Thes. 4 I think) says that the Rapture is supposed to take place after the Messiah returns and the dead are raised...

is there any news or reactions from those that were preaching this and driving round in those mobile advert home things?
or are the asking for their belongings back?

kinda hoping this isn't marked by a series of suicides and murders; sorta afraid some people are gonna die over this.

suicides, maybe. murders, highly doubtful

i could see people killing their kids.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20rapture.html

if you suicide, wouldn't you get to the hell bit quicker?
wouldn't be wise.

they'd have to prove malicious intent?

Kino Douglas, 31, a self-described agnostic, said it was hard to be with his sister Stacey, 33, who “doesn’t want to talk about anything else.”

“I’ll say, ‘Oh, what are we going to do this summer?’ She’s going to say, ‘The world is going to end on May 21, so I don’t know why you’re planning for summer,’ and then everyone goes, ‘Oh, boy,’ ” he said.

funny

The Douglas siblings live near each other in Brooklyn, and Mr. Douglas said he could not wait until Sunday — “I’m going to show up at her house so we can have that conversation that’s been years in coming.”

I feel like the charitable thing would be to avoid the subject. Let her save face, you're going to be family for years to come (unless the 2012 folks are right).

nah address her mental issues while it's opportune

dear rapture,
i am now hungry for a hamburger, please don't rapture away any of the people responsible for making my hamburger!!!
love, a sinner

1 hour to go, can't wait, I guess

Maybe it's happened and hell on earth is going to work and having to pay bills until you are to old to care about anything then you retire.

If you think about it, you go to work so you can save up and get a home to stay in when you are not in work, then you work a little harder to get a car to get you to work quicker. You then save bits of your wage to have a few weeks away from work somewhere nice which you do yearly.

ya starving outside really appeals when you put it like that

ha

halp!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-05-21-iceland-volcano_n.htm

thats not an off-the-cuff reply i think about this shit every sunday evening

you think about it happening to you or those it's happening to?

I wonder what I'd be doing right now if I actually believed in this shit.

xp i think about alternatives to work, tbh

Lottery?

i wrote an essay about winning the lottery for career guidance class in school, the shite of a teacher failed me.

I can hear a weird sound outside my window, no shit

that's me, sorry

Ah, then you are piloting an unusually low flying helicopter into RAF Northolt.

Probably taking Cameron to a place of safety 'just in case'.

I think the last 5 or so minutes of Awaken by Yes would be a good accompaniment, but it would more than likely be The Host Of Seraphim.

Nope, no rapture here but I've got to go to Rite Aid. May as well be the apocalypse.

5/21/11 =

http://www.artofobama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/hope.jpg

just a different set of idiots

Yes, let's drag politics into this. Great idea.

What StanM said earlier..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13487858

I forgot that mocking poor religionists was apolitical, UNCLEAN

xpost

I'm sure that volcanic eruption is just a coincidAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH

i really want to hear the excuses that they working on right now.
please get someone on the radio or tv defending the no show.

Also RIP StanM :(

I forgot that mocking poor religionists was apolitical, UNCLEAN

― the gay bloggers are onto the faggot tweets (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 21 May 2011 22:23 (16 minutes ago)

it is apolitical. This weird blind spot in your cynicism is so strange.

stranger than you thinking all Christians are retards

I'm not a cynic, you simpleton

why are you so unpleasant

knew I shouldn't have cashed in my IRA, took the 2nd loan on my house, put all the money up my nose, let all my insurance policies lapse, told my boss to fuck his mother, and euthanised my pets. *Sigh*

stranger than you thinking all Christians are retards

I'm not a cynic, you simpleton

― the gay bloggers are onto the faggot tweets (Dr Morbius), Saturday, May 21, 2011 10:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Your whole ILXor persona is based on being cynical and jaded about everything.

wide-eyed optimist Dr. Morbius.

expand yr vocab

"A person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative."

yeah what was I thinking.

he's a mets fan, cut him some slack

I'm a cynic too. Cynicism is a proper response to most of the world's events.

I'm a cynic too. Cynicism is a proper response to most of the world's events.

I'm a cynic too. Cynicism is a proper response to most of the world's events.

I'm a cynic too. Cynicism is a proper response to most of the world's events.

#rapture

WHOA

All these mini tantrums, tis the end i tell you.

The 77 board cognoscenti sent out their minions to do their bidding. The ILX hivemind cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from ILX's cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their display names and usernames. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of zings and hardsonning emerged Morbius, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimated by the messageboard elite and are ready to take on the challenges I Love Everything faces.

i really enjoyed rapture day. best saturday in a while.

why are you so unpleasant

I'm from New Jersey. If the world ended today, I would adjust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k-PYHvfK-o

Still here, still craving french fries.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TXG1Q1ADL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

where the old fellow who predicted it, and what are his reasons for stuff not going down?

He's in California, so there's still time for the shit to hit the fan I guess.

I assume he's absconding with the money?

p. sure he's just a sad old man, and i'd feel bad for him if he hadn't fucked up the lives of so many other people.

I would feel bad for him if people hadn't sent him their life savings.

yes that is what i was saying

dear rapture,
my uncle just called and invited my whole family over to have cioppino tonight. please do not rapture him, my family, or any of the various fishmongers he might need to visit until after the cioppino has been prepared and consumed. xoxo

22nd May here...think I was cleaning my windows at 6pm.

thought cleaning windows would make me look quite virtuous if the whole rapture thing had kicked off.

Think if I was in Iceland, looked out of my window and seen this...
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/52883000/jpg/_52883353_012037477-1.jpg
...I might have thought - "oh shit".

I'd have not swore Ned, that's a sin. I'd have dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag

from Reuters:

In New York, retired transportation agency worker Robert Fitzpatrick was inspired by Camping's message to spend over $140,000 of his savings on subway posters and outdoor advertisements warning of the May 21 Judgment Day.

As he stood in Times Square in New York surrounded by onlookers, Fitzpatrick, 60, carried a Bible and handed out leaflets as he waited for Judgment Day to begin.

By his own reading of Bible, which was slightly different than Camping's, Fitzgerald expected the great worldwide event to begin at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

When the hour came and went, he said: "I do not understand why ...," as his speech broke off and he looked at his watch.

yeah i was thinking earlier that i'd like a follow up from the NYT about that family

:(

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22doomsday.html
Calls and e-mails to Family Radio were not returned on Saturday. The group’s offices near the Oakland airport were closed, but they still attracted a few onlookers, true believers and pranksters, including someone who put a handmade sign reading “Prophesy Fail!” on the front door.

this shit is basically a blueprint for how to break underrated aerosmith's heart

there'll be lots of these stories to help me cry abt stuff in the next day or so: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rapture-20110522,0,5118540.story

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/149748/20110521/how-will-harold-camping-respond-readers-react.htm

The International Business Times conducted a survey of 17,000 readers on Friday to gauge sentiment towards what could be the biggest story in the history of the universe. Slightly over 3 percent of respondents stood by Camping's prediction that the world would end at 6pm on Saturday.

It ended up being apocalypse…not.

another thing that's weird to me is that even if you believe as deeply as possible that the rapture was happening today, what good what it be to warn the whole word? wouldn't that mindset also believe that you've either done enough or not done enough to be 'chosen'? or were they just being good samaritans like "hey you're not gonna go to heaven tomorrow but you should at least know that the whole country is gonna catch on fire & sink into the ocean"

Wait, what? 510 readers of The International Business Times seriously believed the world was ending today?

actual biggest lol I've gotten from all this, ty

@J0rdan I think that is like the 10,000,000 dollar question & has to do with why people even believe in the first place, how it figures in their identity & in their sense of life as a narrative with purpose and meaning and importance

i agree strongly with whoever upthread (Trayce?) said that this was a sort of viral marketing scam for christianity.

and that some people are just shall we say UNCIRCUMSPECT enough to buy in.

that doesn't really take into account that this guy did this before, I don't think this is three-dimensional chess here really

ok basically I want to become a playwright just so I can write one about Robert Fitzpatrick. The staging is just crushing.

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when 6 p.m. came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

"I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "I don't understand it. I don't know. I don't understand what happened.

"Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here," he said.

man

yeah this is really sad

he spent a hundred and forty grand of his retirement money, I seriously can't stand it.

seriously hope the story gets out and some rich ppl get the dude his cash back

this (from aerosmith's la times article) was more of a bittersweet story, but it still tore me up a little:

Keith Bauer, a 38-year-old tractor-trailer driver from Westminster, Md., took last week off from work, packed his wife, young son and a relative in their SUV and crossed the country.

If it was his last week on Earth, he wanted to see parts of it he'd always heard about but missed, such as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Forest. With maxed-out credit cards and a growing mountain of bills, he said, the rapture would have been a relief.

On Saturday morning, Bauer was parked in front of the Oakland headquarters of Camping's Family Radio empire, half expecting to see an angry mob of disenchanted believers howling for the preacher's head. The office was closed, and the street was mostly deserted save for journalists.

Bauer said he was not bitter. "Worst-case scenario for me, I got to see the country," he said. "If I should be angry at anybody, it should be me."

I'm envisioning the play as maybe taking place in the parking lot outside Camping's silent locked office

a v cool documentary would have been to have followed a few of these ppl around from like march 11 - june 11

yeah I hope someone was doing it.

12:01 in Toronto--whew, close call.

seriously hope the story gets out and some rich ppl get the dude his cash back

― markers, Sunday, 22 May 2011 03:51 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Um, why should he get his money back?
It was his choice to spend it.

i'm sure some very rich lawyers will come to his aid

When I see how familyradio's offices can't be reached, I start to expect there's another Jonestown/Heaven's Gate news bulletin coming up.

And if this was a dry run for what the media and the internet will be like in the months before December 2012 then *sigh*

thankfully i think mayan devotees are not as big of lightning rods as evangelical xtians

Lost it @ work today when I saw the front-page headline of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"RAPTURE-READY
In the event of the Apocalypse, many local and federal agencies have developed preparedness plans. Or not."

this is below a large picture of the owner of a cemetery that takes up about 1/4 of the page, above which is the quote "If people walk out of the graves, that's kind of an ethereal matter. I don't know if we can do much about it. It's beyond our powers".

Philly Inquirer ftw.

http://i.imgur.com/dl58p.jpg

but of course, this was all just a test to see who was really faithful, it's so obvious now:

http://twitter.com/ebiblefellowshp/status/72118662684868608

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KsTQATINVQ&feature=player_embedded

seriously hope the story gets out and some rich ppl get the dude his cash back

Why? The guy's at best a fucking idiot. He'll just piss it all away again on the next thought that cruises slowly through his otherwise empty brain. I just don't know how he got that much money in the first place.

Do the atheist pet handlers have to give the unraptured's pets back now?

Maybe the pets got raptured, coz they led more blameless lives than their owners.

As I understand it they were only going to pick up the pets after the rapture.

http://www.aftertherapturepetcare.com and http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com are probably on their way right now, picking up left behind pets (animals don't go to heaven, apparently).

(I'm slowly starting to think these sites aren't even jokes anymore)

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llihd7DUZ91qbf3fao1_500.jpg

Is is not possible that Camping has been raptured and everyone else has been left behind?

Wait are we saying the fuckin T1000 was up in this

Whoever said their biggest worry was Jonestown style rapture enablement otm

naw man shit like that doesn't go down overnight. Jonestown had dry run white nights and everything, a cult can't go from "everything's gonna be cool!" to "no wait we have to kill ourselves!" overnight. A bigger risk would be a Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God type deal in Uganda where the charismatic leaders literally murder all their followers, but I don't think Harold Camping is really young enough to pull that off.

You have the best & strangest knowledge set.

You on blessed soil yet btw?

Wait, are y'all saying you didn't receive the Call? I'm posting this from heaven right now. It's great.

xpost - are you saying that Ireland was excluded from the judgment? No wonder tonight's show just happens to be there, then.

Josh, it was still on vibrate from during a Friday meeting at the office, 1 missed call, just some distant angelic whispers and giggles, then nothing. Oh well, maybe next time. Good thing I don't believe or I might have been disappointed now.

jeez, next year's going to be fucking unbearable.

Last 10 days of 2012 is going to be hilarious, mainly consisting of pointing and laughing at gullible people.

... from tge few mountain top caves where life still exists until food runs out.

(tge? the)

Beware the Mayo prophecy! The X-Files guarantees it!

I'm not gonna be the one to suggest that spending life savings on the 5/21 Rapture = culling the herd of some All-Star morons. Nope, not me.

xxxxpost
or stuck in your house watching 24 hour news countdown because of marshal law/curfews.

i'm on a mountain top, in mayo, in a church fyi. SortedLAD

gotta admit i did start shittin it when the picture disappeared and the screen went green for a few seconds during the scottish cup final.

Morbs otm. I feel sorry for some of these kids for whom the parents have ruined their lives but, well, here we are.

next year *will* be hilarious, that we can at least be certain of

The Mayos have said the world will end! Oh noes!

jesus what are lfc fans who believe in this gonna be like by 22nd dec?

will the prem fixtures only go up to december then?

nah, but the end of october's usually the deadline for reality biting tbf

http://tinyurl.com/3mnfxda

i kinda wish aliens would have arrived yesterday and taken me back to whatever planet i come from

You mean Germans? The Neander Valley is where it always has been.

this explains why it didn't happen.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/05/22/article-1389475-0C33B94300000578-599_634x680.jpg

Hero: Professional wrestler 'Macho Man' Randy Savage, who died yesterday, is spoofed to have elbowed Jesus in order to prevent the Rapture

We need a Dan Lacey painting to help explain.

I just want to say that it is my sincerest and most earnest wish that the descendants of today's humanity will be living far and wide throughout the cosmos when the time eventually comes that the Earth is actually destroyed by Sol as it begins to die and expands into a red giant.

We're stuck with each other until we become extinct through our own folly or natural disaster, and I'd rather like it if that never happened. There will never be a time when humanity is ultimately saved from a life of suffering. We can merely learn to suffer less and develop societies not born on the backs of exploitation and dehumanization. Earth is a terrible place because we humans made it that way, not because we were cursed by God or because Satan doesn't want us to be happy.

I just hope that this little moment gives some people pause to think that they are foolish to wait for God to save them from their joyless, crushing lives and should themselves take the initiative to improve the world around them. Think of all the money that went to those ugly billboards when it could have been spent in countless ways to immediately improve people's lives -- glasses for poor kids, cleft pallet surgeries, medical and educational supplies for the third world...

ARGH!!! If anyone is deserving of scorn and ridicule it is people who wait and hope for the rapture or some other world-ending event.

Someone just told me that a giant asteroid is slated to come within 20,000 miles of us on Friday the 13th, 2036 or so, massively messing with everything. It's got to be true, because it's based on science. Plus, it's all over the internet. Second thing that popped into my google field when I typed "asteroid!"

#1:
http://cdn.fd.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/asteroids_arcade.jpg

Bravo, viceroy. I wish I could share your hope for a better future, but I'm pessimistic.

Forget about a better future and just try to make some small part of the present a bit better. That has a decent chance of success and may even, who knows, improve the future in some way, too.

omg thank you randy savage. a gift that keeps on giving.

You on blessed soil yet btw?

for another twelve hours, yessir

lol kane at over the limit: "i'm already annoyed that the rapture didn't come yesterday"

Harold Camping emerges, is flabbergasted, looks to Bible for answers. Circle complete.

I was actually looking forward to seeing someone on tv squirming and struggling for answers, but thinking about it, it'd only annoy watching them defend it with "god works in mysterious ways" & "test of faith".

i wonder what their excuse will be when they die and realize they're merely wormfood

I recommend checking out the Edmund D. Cohen article, "Harold Camping and the Stillborn Apocalypse," regarding Camping's earlier end-of-times prediction. Cohen has a background in psychology in addition to having himself been an Evangelical Christian at one point, even attending Westminster Seminary. He discussed Camping extensively in his book The Mind of the Bible-Believer (a fascinating read, though much of it is extremely speculative, and not entirely convincing to me).

Link?

First part of it:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-16512847.html

Some things don't change:

All of the programming on Family Radio is designed to keep the self-indoctrination of the Christian ongoing. The teaching is strictly Calvinist-Reformed, and the music, while often bathetic, is never vulgar or totally tasteless. The success of Family Radio seems partly due to the relief it affords from the angry right-wing polemics and jangling "Christian rock" music now normal in Christian radio.

Full article here:

http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=cohen_1994

I have to disagree about the music on Family Radio not being tasteless, having suffered through some of it at my sister's house on occasion.

Obvious CYA possibility: the power of our prayers pushed back the End of the World. Though of course these nuts are looking forward to the end of the world, so I bet they're still bummed.

My theory is that the world did end, and that we're stuck here on this hell on earth. Which may seem fine, but only until you get to heaven and see that it's so much better, like borrowing your friend's brand new computer.

You know I just went to the Family Radio website for the first time and that is one ugly-ass page:

http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/graphical_frame.html

Look, if what Doctor Camping tells us is true, this site has been beyond the boundaries of our universe, of known scientific reality. Who knows where it's been, what it's seen. Or what it's brought back with it.

Doctor?

Can't you see I'm burning.

From Wiki's discussion section:

It isn't fair to compare Jesus to Camping. Camping's predictions comes from his exegesis of the bible. Jesus never had access to a Christian bible and may have been illiterate as well. So with all due respect to Jesus, he's no Harold Camping when it comes to bible interpretation. --JGGardiner (talk) 00:39, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I got to play a show in a Cemetery on rapture day. It was lots of fun!!!

a fascinating read, though much of it is extremely speculative, and not entirely convincing to me

i was wondering what you meant by this until i got to the last three paragraphs or so, which got pretty silly and awfully wishful thinking-ish imo

At some level, he must realize that the spectacle he put on is likely to have enabled many young people raised in strict fundamentalist churches to give themselves permission to see the absurdity of the beliefs in which they were raised. Perhaps Camping did by this roundabout means a thing that he could never have brought himself to do directly. Indirectly, he cut some followers whose minds were not totally dead loose from conservative churches and told them-in deeds rather than words-“Go forth and get a life.”

The Camping date-setting episode has a genuine element of tragedy lacking in the downfalls of various crass religious hucksters. He was someone of real worth who might have realized a very high potential but was brought low by a tragic flaw.

Or maybe he did realize his potential after all. Down through the years, skeptics and freethinkers seeking to resolve the supernatural truth claims of the Bible have either focused on internal text inconsistencies that Bible-believers are able to explain away, or attacked the plausibility of miracles claimed to have occurred long in the past, long since beyond the reach of empirical investigation. But Camping used biblical methods to derive an important prospective testable premise from the Bible. He put the premise to the test, and it failed. Camping labored for many years and ended up doing what skeptics have long labored in vain to do: he produced affirmative evidence that the Bible in its most essential truth claims is false. That was not what he meant to do, but that is what he did. If the Bible were true, then the world ought to have ended in 1994. Q.E.D.

up until that point, it was a good article

http://i.imgur.com/x7RjD.jpg

Robert Fitzpatrick, the MTA worker who gave his life savings of $140,000 for doomsday billboards, waits in Time Square for the rapture.

oh dear

I keep coming back to Viceroy's post upthread:

Think of all the money that went to those ugly billboards when it could have been spent in countless ways to immediately improve people's lives...

Huge, huge truthbomb.

omg at mustachioed man with goofy shiteating grin

There's video online with Fitzpatrick claiming he checked the math (!) and it agreed with Camping's. Hecklers jeering Fitzpatrick nagl, though, no matter what.

Aw, poor morons.

There's a 10-minute version of what Dan's talking about (taped with an iPhone so the video is [[[[[[[[[[____]]]]]]]]]]]]].)

Here's a more digestible version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzB0ZYi76ZI

funny how how unbelievably smug it is to assume that you're automatically among the chosen, which only represents 2%-3% of the population....imo all of the world should have hidden and pretended just that group was left behind...and also enlisted Kirk Cameron to make a cameo

Oh no, we forgot about the Gregorian calender switch in 1582, when ten days were skipped. Rapture's totally on May 31st, guys. Please send us some money.

Or, um, 1712 or one of the other years when various countries made the switch ( http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/gregorian.html )

Hecklers jeering Fitzpatrick nagl, though, no matter what.

considering this guy was preparing to fly up to heaven on a cloud of self-satisfaction while the rest of us were to be subject to unending horror i'd say he deserves all he gets

As much as I want to come down on the side of rational, sane-thinking adults everywhere, I'm just a tiny bit creped out by how we are all assuming these believers must all be self-satisfied, smug people and not just, y'know, people with different beliefs than us.

I'm assuming all believers are sad little people who find so little joy in the world that they harbor deep-seated psychological needs to believe in its imminent destruction

I am assuming that anyone who can point to a date when the Rapture occurs hasn't actually read the Bible.

thing is is that 144 000 ppl worldwide undoubtedly passed away or disappeared or what have you on May 21. if sad zealots still want to believe, they can: they were simply left behind.

isn't the actual end supposed to be six months after the rapture anyhow?

Robert Fitzpatrick, the MTA worker who gave his life savings of $140,000 for doomsday billboards, waits in Time Square for the rapture.

― Pleasant Plains, Monday, May 23, 2011 1:13 PM Bookmark

meanwhile hurting, who has given his life savings to the MTA, waited in Times Square for a train

(xposts) Yeah, in the 35 minutes since I posted my opinion on the heckling, I discovered Fitzpatrick published his own similar book, which makes him a bit more co-conspirator than simple, gullible dupe in this whole stupid saga.

don't really think that accusing people who've thought about it a bit and decided yes! i am a good enough person to sit at the right hand of god of being smug is particularly creepy or wide of the mark tbf

_Hecklers jeering Fitzpatrick nagl, though, no matter what._

considering this guy was preparing to fly up to heaven on a cloud of self-satisfaction while the rest of us were to be subject to unending horror i'd say he deserves all he gets

And i'd say you're a prick but w/e

Most hardcore rapturists (and doomsday cultists in general) are in some way profoundly mentally ill.

sure the cynics that foment these beliefs might be despicable opportunists and even smug hateful bigots, but the anyone anxiously checking their watch at 6pm was far more likely to be someone in p dire mental/emotional straits.

i figure that the rapture happened an awfully long time ago, probably w/in a few generations of The Historical Jesus' death. a few thousand ppl got swept up into the skies, and, the important work done, God just forgot about the apocalypse part. you have to assume that He's moved on with His (eternal) life.

the Apocalypse already happened; didn't you see "The Cape"

btw if penury, depression, and spiritual desolation is the punishment for being "smug" then man I don't even know

multi-xp

How self-satisfied they are would depend on how they emphasize different bits and pieces of the Bible in general and Revelations in particular.

iirc, Revelations specifically limits the number of the elect to 144,000, but it is hazier on the details of what happens to god-fearing, obedient Christians who fall outside that small number. Various parts of the four gospels and the epistles seem much more liberal in granting a place in heaven to anyone who meets a few, simple criteria, like believing in Christ's godhead and bodily resurrection.

If the Left Behind books are any guide to what most evangelicals think the Rapture will be like (and it has sold in the multi-millions of copies), then most evengelicals think they qualify for rapturing but the bulk of their neighbors do not qualify. This may or may not be accompanied by satisfaction, depending on how much they pity us unbelievers for our sad fate.

forgot to add public humiliation, and the scorn of self-satisfied message board posters.

And i'd say you're a prick but w/e

hi mum

anyone anxiously checking their watch at 6pm was far more likely to be someone in p dire mental/emotional straits.

kinda think throwing mental illness around makes you a better candidate for prickdom

nah

yah

let he who is without smugness cast the first stone

in my admittedly limited experience, there's a large area of overlap on the "smug asshole" and "mentally ill" circles. not that crazy people have any special claim to jerkdom...

who would've imagined an internet argument about the end of the world could possibly go wrong

this guys spent a fuck-ton of money to advertise an event that, by his own understanding, would be fairly obvious when it occurred.

i haven't been following this too closely because it's really stupid, has the guy been clear about trying to get people saved beforehand? is that the reason for all this publicity?

I don't have my dsm-iv ready to hand but if a person is taking seriously the belief that they are going to be witness and participant in something as wholly fantastic as the rapture, such that they liquidated their assets, stopped planning for the future, and are staring at the sky at the appointed hour, then that person is v likely mentally...compromised in a way that suggests pathology of some kind.

it doesn't actually. this has to be the first internet argument i've seen where someone's outraged about a lack of accusation of psychological problems

lol u believe in a man in the sky!! get the strait jackets!!

quiet you

this is not run of the mill religious belief. the True Believers that were ~convinced~ that the actual End of Days were gonna happen are no different from sandwich board dudes prattling on from a street corner.

in this v specific instance I think it's def appropriate to consider that actual mental illness was at work

well show us yr credentials and give us a DSM-IV diagnosis, otherwise perhaps stfu w/the internet expert routine

lol @ pulling the "stfu internet no-nothing" card on a dude in medical school who has worked in health care for years

Well, that'll show him who's boss.

also lol @ my inability to spel

is he a qualified psychiatrist? the 'medical school' thing makes me think perhaps not

seriously, when did you turn into such an ass?

physician, heal thyself. it's a perfectly reasonable request!

he's always been this way ime

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist. However if I had a patient tell me that, say, they were not planning on re-upping their prescriptions because the world was ending in a week, I would not think to myself "huh, welp I guess ppl will believe anything these days, keep on trucking," I would think "uh oh. this is probably something we should delve into a bit/refer to Psych because this is Not Normal"

gbx my shoulder hurts, whats wrong

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

Anyhow no, I am not a psychiatrist.

i'm sure weird behaviour might warrant a chat but it's not the same as actual mental illness

I'm as down on churches and bible thumping as anyone on the board, I think, but I took a little care not to join in the FB laffing-and-pointing this weekend because I think Asshole is just as bad a look as Zealot.

http://i.imgur.com/DGcyJ.jpg

the DSM is just a lot of descriptions; human behavior is rarely so neat. that's the whole point.

the line btw "warrants a chat" and "actual mental illness" is basically just a doctor looking at the evidence and checking the DSM!

dude, if you're going to say anything like that you have to present your credentials

whereas, if they spoke idly about the rapture happening ~sometime~ I'd just focus on the problem at hand and chalk it up to the many colors of the rainbow. when ppl start making drastic life choices on the suspicion that there is No Future, then that ought to give you pause, ~particularly~ if the ppl in question have been otherwise high functioning adults. this isn't controversial, btw! like basic psych 101 says "when ppl start liquidating their stuff, get worried about suicide/mental breaks"

Main problem I have is in everyone confusing this guy with 'Christianity' and using the rapture fail as an opportunity to say 'LOL Christians are stoopid' when in fact 99% of Christians probably think this Camping guy is out of lunch.

LOL 'out to lunch' not 'out of lunch'

this argument starts from the proposition that belief in wacky things is automatic cause to whip out the DSM, which is what i'm objecting to, not someone turning up at a surgery and announcing they're stopping their meds

i see what u did there dan

is he a qualified psychiatrist? the 'medical school' thing makes me think perhaps not

― Romford Spring (DG), Monday, May 23, 2011 2:49 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

you are aware that psychiatrists generally go to medical school first, correct?

btw the only reason we even got on this is because DG thought these ppl had earned our sneering derision for the crime of thinking they were special in the eyes of god and suggested that most of them probably had seem deeper issues than mere smug self-righteousness

and ~I~ suggested xp

when ppl start making drastic life choices on the suspicion that there is No Future

If you really believe there is No Future then why are you spending all your money and indulging in worldly things like billboards and promotion and stuff? Isn't all that good evidence that you are so strongly attached to Earthly existence and thus probably won't be liberated anyways?

Maybe they think they are like the Buddha who attains moksha but decides to remain in the cycle of birth and death to save others...

you are aware that psychiatrists generally go to medical school first, correct?

yes and that they have to finish before they're allowed to practice, crazy eh

Gbx otm but dg hilarious good work everyone

this argument starts from the proposition that belief in wacky things is automatic cause to whip out the DSM, which is what i'm objecting to, not someone turning up at a surgery and announcing they're stopping their meds

i see what u did there dan

this argument stems from the ifea that changing yr life dramatically, suddenly around a wacky belief is qualtitatively different from merely holding wacky beliefs.

really the best things about this argument are all of our typos

No Future Christian Gang Rapture Them All

I'm not believing anything any of you say until I see some CREDENTIALS

gee, ILE thread where even people on my own side repulse me....color me shocked

really the best things about this argument are all of our typos

They are...lefion

DJP if you're going to call out typos, we need a .gif of your English degree from an accredited 4-year university.

u really think Harvard uses gifs

I'd have to mail you a porchment

xpost dunno, didn't finish my graphics course

this argument stems from the ifea that changing yr life dramatically, suddenly around a wacky belief is qualtitatively different from merely holding wacky beliefs.

this is not what you originally said tbf

next month's wdyll should be everyone holding up their diploams

llo

MAu ft diploams - Birf Lu

_this argument stems from the ifea that changing yr life dramatically, suddenly around a wacky belief is qualtitatively different from merely holding wacky beliefs._

this is not what you originally said tbf

dude what this is exactly what I said. I was clear to point out the ppl I thought might not be all there were the ppl that had upped stakes and were staring at the sky with the honest belief that something was gonna happen. I specifically excused run of the mill religious belief a couple times

Oh he's having a go at mill runners now

believing that the rapture might/will happen: ok man
believing that the rapture might/will happen on 21 May but otherwise going about your business: hmmm
believing that the rapture will happen on 21 May and withdrawing from yr jobs commitments etc because you are certain that the end is nigh: we need to talk

srsly I would think that this would be a obv and rational POV!

your post

reluctant to sign onto this argt but as soon as somebody starts using terms like "actual mental illness" flags go up for me. mental health is a continuum - "mental illness" is not like rubella, where you either have it or you don't. because there's no such thing as "sanity" per se or any of that rot - there are thought processes/tendencies/patterns & personality types & so on that give a person difficulty in adapting to & dealing with the world around him, and these exist along a very broad continuum, and that's what "mental health" is, with "mentally ill" people being those whose ability to cope with day-to-day life in a way that's enjoyable & positive for them is impacted negatively by said thought processes, etc. Obviously this has limits on the "what's healthy?" side - as soon as what you need to feel good infringes on what allows me to feel good, conflict arises - but "mentally ill" isn't a toll-stop along the highway.

Are you all going to be surprised when you find out that young bordie is the returned jesus, and all you did was mock him ...

Jesus of Ramada Inn

xp as long as "DG" isn't a toll-stop along the highway either, because i'd fuckin hate to visit there!!

if someone told me they were gonna sell their house etc cos [trusted authority figure] told them [daft event] was going to happen at [future date], i'd try to persuade them that they might be wrong rather than section them is basically my point

yes. that is mine. if you want to split hairs about "hardcore rapturists" and exactly who was checking their watch and w/e, fine. but my post nearly right after about the DSM clearly picked out the group of ppl who had made some pretty drastic life changes more in keeping with a profile of metal illness than mere religious zeal

xps

i mean, if i had to stop and get gas xp

more in keeping with a profile of metal illness

Best typo yet!

fwiw, my comment on people being 'smug' enough to think they were one of the chosen few was just a general statement, not specific to those who abandoned their lives in anticipation. Like their proof that the rapture didn't happen is not that there weren't mass vanishings around the world, but that at 6 pm, THEY were still here, and obviously THEY were one of the chosen.

also gbx otm

reluctant to sign onto this argt but as soon as somebody starts using terms like "actual mental illness" flags go up for me. mental health is a continuum - "mental illness" is not like rubella, where you either have it or you don't. because there's no such thing as "sanity" per se or any of that rot - there are thought processes/tendencies/patterns & personality types & so on that give a person difficulty in adapting to & dealing with the world around him, and these exist along a very broad continuum, and that's what "mental health" is, with "mentally ill" people being those whose ability to cope with day-to-day life in a way that's enjoyable & positive /for them/ is impacted negatively by said thought processes, etc. Obviously this has limits on the "what's healthy?" side - as soon as what you need to feel good infringes on what allows me to feel good, conflict arises - but "mentally ill" isn't a toll-stop along the highway.

I get all this aero (and was hoping you'd show up), but the reason I brought up mental illness in the first place was because the activity of billboard guy and the family that sold everything and so on struck me as "unhealthy." Hence that hypothetical vignette: pt says I'm abandoning everything I know to join a doomsday cult, I get concerned that these are not decisions that have been made rationally and might represent some deeper problem that might cause this person problems down the road.

if someone told me they were gonna sell their house etc cos [trusted authority figure] told them [daft event] was going to happen at [future date], i'd try to persuade them that they might be wrong rather than section them is basically my point

This is a total detour but since when is Harold Camping a "trusted authority figure"??????? It's not like Billy Graham was telling people to abandon ship.

Harold Camping holds about as much credibility in the Christian community as William Cooper did in the political community...he's a fringe loonie

^OTM, and a point worth bringing up as much as possible.

Still dont understand why you are selling your house to get money if you are not going to be on the planet anyways.

Xps to myself I suppose "profoundly mentally ill" was a bad choice of words

I think Camping also has to answer for his direct cause of bad humor that will probably not cease for several months/years

been trying to tell u that xp

it sounded more like you were trying to tell him he shouldn't suggest mental illness unless he had a degree

http://images.buzzillions.com/images_products/05/98/men-degree-antiperspirant-deodorant-invisible-solid-cool-rush-2-7-oz_1163536_175.jpg

I think in general the whole little spat sounded like *tinkle tinkle tinkle*

well i am in general a fan of qualified doctors making diagnoses xxp

I get all this aero (and was hoping you'd show up), but the reason I brought up mental illness in the first place was because the activity of billboard guy and the family that sold everything and so on struck me as "unhealthy." Hence that hypothetical vignette: pt says I'm abandoning everything I know to join a doomsday cult, I get concerned that these are not decisions that have been made rationally and might represent some deeper problem that might cause this person problems down the road.

I agree w/this, fwiw. But I have a much broader view of what constitutes "mental health" than I did when I was in the biz - I feel like if a bunch of people believe something that makes them all happy & doesn't impact anybody negatively, then they should follow their bliss: "mental health" is whatever gives you a joyful life on this planet. But that said, I think that people who sign onto apocalyptic stuff seem, to my only partially educated mind, to be expressing a need for something profoundly lacking in their lives. As a Didion freak, I call that thing "narrative," but Maslow might have called it "meaning" - I do think, essentially, that an apocalyptic mindset is essentially an expression of a need for the world to make sense, and a "failure" (dodgy word, but best for this sentence) to have constructed that meaning from within one's own life, which I'd consider the ideal situation.

for some reason I keep imagining Phife Dawg going up to Camping and going "u bettah get some toilet paper cuz ya theories is butt"

and having said all that I feel zero guilt about lols at anybody who by the time they reach middle age hasn't interrogated their own leanings hard enough to immediately check themselves when they start thinking the world's going to end, because thinking you're going to be alive to see the end of the world seems to be a profoundly narcissistic way of thinking

maybe the world did end, and this is purgatory.

Ppl win the lotto

like I said:

I'm assuming all believers are sad little people who find so little joy in the world that they harbor deep-seated psychological needs to believe in its imminent destruction

"John Waters proves this world is a cesspool, come get me Jeses"

and to me as a (woefully unqualified) clinician, I see an apocalyptic mindset as something that might prove dangerous to a patients health (or others!) at some time in the future. I'm sure some rapturists have adjusted ok in the wake of the non-even but I'm sure others are having crises of faith that may actually be putting them at risk of suicide, major depression, etc.

also fwiw apocalyptic belief seems to be a tiny corner of social psychology, so it's not like wildly off-base to believe that anyone that truly thought we were gonna get iced on 21 may was in some way a couple deviations from the mean

goddam iPhone typing

At least those things are things people do to themselves? Not that it's not sad and I don't wish them some joy out of the lives they already have, but...thinking more about the KIDS of that family that stopped saving for their kids' future college educations and stuff.

Those things = suicide, major depression, belief in teh apopcalypse.

As little sympathy as I have for the idiots who actually thought the Rapture was going to happen, I do think the billboards stuff was a sincere (if spectacularly inept) attempt to save other souls--warn people that they only have a short while to sort their shit out and be saved.

And looking at that video, Fitzpatrick seemed like a pretty joyless, unhappy guy--eating his sad little meal on his own, riding the train to Times Square looking pretty miserable. I would have expected someone honestly convinced he was about to meet God to look a little more cheery. Not a lot of smugness on display.

what was he eating? black beans and a fish stick? only god knows now

black beans and a fish stick = signs of profound mental illness

sign of a dude watching the calories- did not really believe obv

the worst part about believing in the rapture is that unless you want to be left behind on account of that messiest of sins, gluttony, your last meal on earth is gonna be pretty boring.

INSTALLING RAPTURE.
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Rapture not found.
EVENT "Rapture" cannot be located. The rapture you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

I want to know what Kirk Cameron thinks about all this

Oops, October

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

Oops, October

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/53ucxtl.gif

oh for fuck's sake

this fuckin guy

I'm assuming all believers are sad little people who find so little joy in the world that they harbor deep-seated psychological needs to believe in its imminent destruction

phrases like "sad little people" make you sound like Hugo Kalmar which is nagl

I am assuming that anyone who can point to a date when the Rapture occurs hasn't actually read the Bible.

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Monday, May 23, 2011 6:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ truth Wormwood

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." - Matthew 24:36

That's OK then.

Has anyone straight up quoted that phrase to Camping in an interview? Someone must have. I'd love to know how he skirted it?

He (or they, I don't know) tackle that throny subject right here...
http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/nomanknows/nomanknows.html

Basically he's saying that because he's a Wise Man/True Believer, the Truth has been revealed to him and the rest of you just aren't Wise/True Believers enough.

Or...

The Bible is the living Word that requires the Holy Spirit to open the spiritual understanding of the person reading or hearing the words of the Bible. Therefore, since it was not God’s plan to open anyone’s understanding of many truths of the Bible until very near the time of the end of the world, it is only now that exceedingly important Biblical truths are being understood.

Sorted.

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." - Matthew 24:36

Guys, has it occurred to anybody here that Harold Camping actually saved our asses and continues to PREVENT the apocalypse by figuring out when it's gonna be and then Jesus has to keep postponing it to make it a surprise??

Jesus? I blame his dad.

Same dude.

I had that same thought, Hadrian

Oh, right, that's what it was. We just completely "misunderstood" all of his billboards with May 21, 2011 clearly printed on them. Our bad.

not to be all save-a-dummy but he was saying HE and his organization misunderstood, not that we misunderstood

gonna laugh when the world doesn't blow up

Oh lol, blame my skimming before coffee on that one.

Follower Jeff Hopkins said he spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping's May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 100-mile round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least $15 on gas each trip.

"I've been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I've been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car," said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, NY. "I was doing what I've been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I've been stymied. It's like getting slapped in the face."

o_O

I would like to use a King James Bible to beat these people around the head. It could be the most meaningful and accurate interaction with Scripture some of them will ever have.

Every new story that comes out about these guys is like all of humanity getting slapped in the face.

basically Camping's saying that the Rapture happened and since none of us took the thorny path to salvation we all are left here to wait for the earth to burst into flames, Camping included...

methinks that in a thread so concerned w/ the psychic harm that his prediction has caused, this cannot be seen as anything but a dick move, as the message has changed from "kiss yr terrestrial existence goodbye" to "abandon all hope, ye are damned"...one can only hope that Camping's inability to get himself raptured will severely undercut his credibility among his followers as God's own appointed messenger...

also fun (irrelevant) fact: the number "144,000" getting batted around this thread...those are all Jews. Twelve thousand from each tribe. (Rev 7:4-8)

That's the magic Jehovah's Witnesses number, yes?

i'm sure there's gotta be some sort of allowance for harems, serving men, camels etc per each of those dudes tho right

Dudes i did see a UFO on Saturday at around 6pm, I swear. Maybe that was the 1/50,000 rapture people in my area?

guys

what if Camping IS Jesus?

jesus is camping...in my yard!

wait nope that's a homeless dude n/m

that's how he shows up iirc? Big test 4u

what if camping is the antichrist O_O

read yr malachi, the antichrist will be the next pope iirc

OTM

I'm totally gonna find any believers in the October date and find them on eBay or Craigslist...I could get mad swag, tho I bet they're selling some shitty cds/dvds

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/254135_2087482467507_1258547521_2568647_4098158_n.jpg

Have there been any interviews with camping since this happened? Or, er, didn't happen?

Close enough:

Harold Camping, the Family Radio minister who inaccurately predicted that the world would experience Judgment Day last May 21, has suffered a stroke.

Camping, the 89-year-old head of the Oakland-based evangelical media company, suffered a stroke on Thursday night after a radio broadcast and was taken to a local hospital, according to a message posted on a Family Radio-oriented Yahoo group by Charlie Menut, station manager of Family Radio affiliate WFME.

oh shit guys

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1020/Harold-Camping-avoids-press-despite-end-of-days-prediction

happy rapture everyone, let's make this one count

I wonder if this is the real reason they gave my son off school today. "Professional Development Day", my ass.

In the bathroom this morning I said to my wife, "Imagine if the Rapture actually does happen today and the only person who gets caught up in it is Ghaddifi?" This disturbed her.

^^ House of Jealous Lovers

so this guy is just really bad at math?

he's really good at convincing desperate people to send him money they don't really have to spare

Hope he's wrong again this time - I'd hate to have to remember my birthday this way

Anyone around? Did we make it through?

. . .

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/17/radio-preacher-who-predicted-doomsday-dies/?hpt=hp_t2

Mary

Why are atheists coming down on a man who did nothing to harm them?
Why is this like coming down on gays who do it in the privacy of their bedrooms or dungeons?
December 18, 2013 at 10:40 am | Report abuse | Reply

"Strong likelihood" that this is it, folks

http://ebible2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/strong-likelihood-tract2.pdf

(ignore other thread bump. and this one too.)

wait did this actually happen and we're all dead now

i'm at a loss as to how you missed it