Friday, May 31, 2013

FAIL-A-GEDDON Leaves Many With Full Shoes...and Redundant Pet Services

In the biggest Rapture Fail Date so far this week, the Harold Camping Crowd got Left Behind. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Heck, the group even commissioned billboards to announce the May 21st date to a generally indifferent public. Doom Dates? Well after Y2K failed to so much as delay anyone’s cable bill, very few people were willing to bet their entire eternity on the word of a guy most people hadn’t heard of before this year. This month, even.
But, it seems the Camping crowd was doing more than just informing the world that someone else would have to take in their trash cans next week. They were also FISHING for donations. Yep! Apparently heaven just might have a cover charge. You can’t be too careful when it comes to having a Saturday Night reservation at an exclusive club.
 
 
And how come these committed Christians seem to have only a perfunctory familiarity with Matthew 24:36: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” That seems pretty basic, it is in the Gospels, and uttered by Jesus himself. Since when did Harold Camping become a more important authority than the guy he’s supposed to be working for?
Seems, though, that Harold has flunked spiritual math. Apparently he consulted several Old Testament Books, cross-multiplied them with some New Testatment Scripture, and came up with a Rapture Equation that didn’t quite balance. Whenever someone picks an End of the World date based on biblical math, they don’t take into account that there is ALWAYS a rounding error! And not all these preachers are the math geniuses they style themselves to be, anyway.
Now all kinds of news media outlets are asking if this is going to shake people’s faith in Christianity. Well, it should certainly shake their faith in Haroldolatry. After all, the man had previously predicted a similar rapture in 1994. He is now onto his second mulligan! And many remember the Hale-Bopp black sneaker crowd that expected to board spaceships in conjunction with the appearance of the Hale-Bopp Comet in 1997. Unfortunately some of those people committed suicide when their ride failed to show up. They were determined to leave the planet one way or the other.
A group of Christians labeled “Millerites” after William Miller,a Baptist Preacher, awaited Christ’s return 1n 1843. When He did not appear on schedule, Miller insisted he would return 1n 1844. Again, nothing. Finally, the group was ready to be Raptured in 1845. By then everyone gave up. Still, it’s tough to be so wrong that people are still talking about you as an historical footnote.
So Camping was a failure. Fishing for money was successful, but wrong. That leaves Hunting. Which I’m sure they all will be doing next — hunting for excuses. So far it looks like the only thing that may have been raptured was his radio station’s transmitter. Or, maybe’s it’s just too embarrassed to continue transmitting. With luck, 200 million people DID get saved this weekend. Saved from Harold Camping. He’s not completely wrong, though. The world’s gonna end, all right. Just not when we’re expecting it to.
If you are inclined to donate money to “the cause” it is tax deductible. They are officially a non-prophet organization.