From the Detroit Free Press:
Really? After billions of years, the end of the world has to land on a Saturday?
On a weekend in late spring, no less.
But math is what it is. Harold Camping’s math, anyway. The 89-year-old, deep-voiced Christian radio broadcaster based in California has used the wealth of his network to frantically spread the word that an earthquake “so powerful it will throw open all graves” will hit at 6 p.m. Pacific time (9 p.m. Detroit time) today.
Camping’s prediction is based on calculations that Saturday marks exactly 7,000 years since Noah’s flood — and that means Judgment Day.
He has put up billboards all over the world to warn people. His followers, traveling coast to coast in caravans of wild-painted vans, spout apocalyptic doom.
According to the Family Radio Christian network Web site, Jesus will return in the ensuing chaos and destruction to rescue the true believers, who will ascend to heaven in the Rapture. Nonbelievers will remain to live in torture and torment, tsunamis and fire for five more months — until Oct. 21, when God will destroy whatever and whoever remains.
…snip…
This week’s frenzy, [some critics] say, is less about faith and more about pop culture and money.
When a recent caller to Camping’s radio show asked whether people sending money to spread the word would get their cash back if this thing didn’t pan out, Camping thundered: “This is going to happen. Millions will die. It’s going to be horrible.”
Some people are buying it. Some are even buying the T-shirt: “Rapture Ready.” It’s $18.90 — for a very limited time.
…snip…
Camping made a similar end-of-the-world claim in 1994. A management-labor dispute did stop the World Series that year, but everything else seemed to go on as planned.
With all this talk about Harold Camping, it seems that everyone has forgotten the other doomsayer. From The Wire at BUSINESS INSIDER:
Glenn Beck, who earlier this week announced a Restoring Courage rally in Israel saying “God is involved in man’s affairs, but so is the force of darkness,” and that the “very gates of hell” would oppose his attempts to hold the rally, thinks it’s silly to believe the world is ending tomorrow.
Beck devoted the first five minutes of his show today to explaining why the world is not ending tomorrow (the bible says no one will know the day). After which he introduced a panel of experts to confirm this.
…snip…
Somewhat ironic side-note: The reason evangelical Christians (Beck is a Mormon) are so fixated on Israel is because they believe that following Armageddon — during which all the disbelievers perish violently — it’s where Jesus will appear to lead his Christan followers into Heaven. Armageddon follows the Rapture, which is scheduled for tomorrow.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
Camping has been at this for quite a while, but Beck? A Mormon telling the Jews to be courageous?
Bottom line, both of these guys should be in padded cells.
hello lj41,
welcome to the raisin! 😀
not only do they each deserve to be in a padded cell, they deserve to be in a padded cell together! they soon learn what the opposite of heaven is.
Um… wasn’t the Rapture today? Well, according to the latest update, about 40 minutes from now, 6pm Pacific time? Or has Camping revised his estimate for the Hawaii Time Zone?
Besides, as the saying I use on a couple boards goes, “Don’t worry about the world ending today, it’s already tomorrow in Australia.” 😀
maybe the batteries in camping’s watch died (or were raptured), so he has to recalculate once again.
He’s starting to sound like the 3 Stooges. “Don’t worry, we always get it right the THIRD time!”
Or as the Bard said, “All the world’s a Stooge”. (OK, maybe I spaced a bit during English Lit.)
he’s 89. he doesn’t have to fool people for much longer. if they sue him, he’s got plenty of their money to pay lawyers to stall, so it’ll be years before it ever gets to court, so what does he have to worry about?
Oh, and you JUST missed being my 666th post! (On my current Email, anyway.) You got Number 667. Believe it or not, when I joined a new blog today, I got my 13th blog, and my 2nd topic on his blog gave me post # 666. That’s gotta have SOME significance! (Yeah, I know, I got WAY too much time on my hands! :D)
damn! 666 would have been perfect for this post! 😡
I’d like to see someone prosecuting Camping for fraud.
wouldn’t that be sweet? same thing for blechhh, too. unfortunately, the people they swindle are too stupid and/or deluded to testify against them. if they admit to themselves that they were played for suckers, their entire mental house of cards collapses.
Glenn Beck is “restoring” courage to Israel? Like Israel is populated with pussies? I hope the Israeli military busts some Krav Maga moves on his pasty ass for being such a prince (of dark ages) among douchebags.
i hope he steps on glass from broken bottles of mogen david wine. he doesn’t know the meaning of the word courage. he’s a sniveling little wuss.
Ya know, Nonnie, you have GOT to learn how to express how you really feel. Keeping your feelings bottled up like this just isn’t healthy! 😉
(Yeah, kinda like Cinderella’s coach. When midnight gets close, I turn into a smart-aleck. Well, MORE of a smart-aleck…..)
i’m working on it in therapy. 😉
I think Beck is just pissed that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert could out-do his DC turnout 10 or 20-fold.
blechhh is so desperate to remain relevant, especially now that his show was canceled. i don’t see roger ailes calling him to make special appearances very often.
Well, I can report that at 6:30 pm all is well in CA. Well, should say all is well concerning all them graves getting thrown open.
Guess tomorrow starts another drive by the radio network to raise $$$ to get a new fangled calculator.
glad to hear that all is well on the other coast, curtis. everything seems to be as normal as it usually is here. 🙂
“88 Reasons the Rapture Will Happen in 1988,” and its sequel, “89 Reasons the Rapture Might Happen in 1989,” as well as Hal Lindsay’s “The Late Great Planet Earth” are all jokes in Evangelical circles these days. Sadly, these jerks make lots of noise and make Christianity look ridiculous. (Because the idea of what we ACTUALLY believe doesn’t seem ridiculous enough to non-Christians?)
Beck’s mind-blowing arrogance, showing up in Israel to “restore courage,” is obscene. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in what way has that jackass ever shown any courage? He has bodyguards when he walks down the street, according to his own stories. Sounds to me like he’s afraid of his own shadow.
i was hoping you’d stop by, wken. i can’t say it any better than you have. but, that’s usually the case.
Well, I didn’t get raptured, so I had nothing else to do … ; – )
Several years ago, Beck was also telling a story about hearing a noise downstairs and coming down to investigate with two pistols and a shotgun on his back, etc.. I was reminded of some short-lived Western TV show (“Best of the West,” maybe?) in which the sheriff was out on the street talking to his kids without his guns. This little gang showed up, its leader covered in pistols.
The sheriff walked over and stared him down, and scared the mean-looking guy out of causing trouble. When his kids asked him how he did that, he answered something like, “I figure anyone who needs that many guns must be scared of just about everything.”
I’ve always thought of that scene when I see or hear of people overdoing it on weapons and the like.
when i was watching meet the press today, i kept hearing about how much courage eddie munst…i mean, paul ryan has. exactly how? he does the bidding of his corporate masters, thereby assuring himself a nice cushy job if he gets out of politics. he has a generous government pension for the rest of his life as well as medical coverage. so exactly what was he risking that makes him so brave?
“Courage” is used in a very Orwellian fashion these days.
hero is another word thrown around too casually. hyperbole (or hyper-bowl, if you’re bronzo the clown) is the order of the day.
i just saw that somewhere a couple of hours ago. hilarious!
Thought you & the raisinets would get a kick out of that vid.
Let’s hope Harold Camping does not claim to be partially correct because Iceland had a volcano blow & 50 mini earthquakes on Sat.
Iceland has volcanic eruptions on average every 4 years.
nope. it’s all or nothing. camping can’t claim anything, except perhaps, insanity.
Over at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News, I posted my own music video “tribute” to the Rapture. I always enjoyed Blondie, REM, and U2.
well, then you should provide a link, neon vincent, so people know where to hear the tribute.
Thank you.
that’s what i’m here for, cleaning up after all you kids. 😉
The world didn’t end in 1844 when Miller had his followers give away their stuff, get on roofs and mountaintops and wait. Then he claimed a one day error in calculation. Nope. To this day the Seventh Day Adventist claim his infallibility on all things, EXCEPT THAT. The JWs have predicted the end so many times I’ve lost count. This was never a big deal until Darby the brit came up with this “rapture” crap, definately not a word in scripture.
what’s that saying about being able to fool some of the people all of the time?
You know, it’s a funny thing about Scripture.
If people actually read it instead of letting other people think for them, we wouldn’t keep having these cultists come up and lead Christians into this kind of nonsense.
the same can be said of politics. if people actually took the time to really look at the issues and what politicians have done instead of buying the sound bytes, the campaign slogans, and what the corporate media is telling them, they’d be a lot more informed and better citizens.
In pretty much every case, information is your friend.
Slick marketing and slogans are designed to keep you from looking for it.
we live in the sham-wow era.
If the “thing” had happened and all the people who believed in it had been taken, I think this world might have been a bit of a saner place.
if all the people who believe that nonsense had been taken, this would have been a better world. however, if those people who actually deserved to be raptured had been taken, we’d still be stuck with the glenn blechhhs and the harold campings of the world. 😦
Word has it that Camping has disappeared. Maybe he was the only one who qualified for the Rapture? Although I’d bet all the money he took of his flock of morons (some of whom are now turning violent) vanished with him.
Well, why not disappear? He’s already got his payoff, and the con won’t do him any more good.
‘zactly!
he’s 89. how fast can he run, and how far could he have gotten? maybe he’s hiding under all his money.
I for one am very disappointed, I thought we could finally get rid of so many of those a-holes in the House and Senate. Damn!
i think they should have volunteered to be self-raptured from congress even if a real rapture didn’t happen.
Just get back from a train trip which passed through Salt Lake City. The paper outside my roomette that morning devoted and entire section to this world ending nonsense. A section not just a page. This is one of those times when only 2 words come to mind. Dumb Ass. Saw a funny cartoon once that read, “The world is not coming to an end, deal with it!”
hi trinity river! nice to see you again (especially under the circumstances 😉 ). this is just another example of a very lazy media. it’s so much easier to cover this nonsense than to actually investigate real news, such as people getting ripped off with the use of religion.
Yep. In his 1994 calculation he forgot to add 1994. Camping gets the quote from Bugs Bunny …. “What a maroon!”
i think bugs bunny got raptured. 😯
Oh no … say it ain’t so.
i hope i’m wrong, but i haven’t seen him all day. 😥
You mean Camping raptured Bugs? Thath dethpicable! (Do you have any idea how hard it is to lisp in text? :D)
yeth. yeth, i do.
Oh well, Camping was wrong, not like it’s the end of the world!
I love it! 😀
😆 😆 😆 😆
This one is too realistic and scares me. But the dollar sign on the cross cracked me up.
there, there, little spinny. don’t be scared. the imbeciles can’t hurt you.
i made that cross with the dollar sign a while ago, and it’s unfortunate how much use i’ve gotten out of it. so many hypocrites in this world ripping off the brainwashed.