The Rapture Is Coming

~ Laura

Harold_camping-2011 I assume that you all know that the Rapture is coming and that you've adequately prepared for the big day. 

According to Harold Camping, Saturday is the big day. 

The Rapture is at 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, where ever it's 6 p.m. first, with the "fantastically big" world-ending event taking place on a time zone by time zone basis.

That means we can expect the Rapture to start when it hits 6 p.m. at the International Dateline at 180 Longitude — roughly the between Pago Pago, American Samoa, and Nuku'alofa, Tonga. We'll know it's Judgment Day because there will be an earthquake of previously unprecedented magnitude, Camping predicts.

So, according to these calculations, the Rapture will actually begin like a rolling brown out across the globe at 11 p.m. PST on Friday, May 20th. "Everyone will be weeping and wailing because they'll know in a few hours it'll come to their city," said Camping.

How one man has prepared. 

How I'm preparing: Not doing laundry. Gin and tonic time! 

 

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “The Rapture Is Coming”

  1. “What if this present were the world’s last night?/Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell/The picture of Christ crucified, and tell/Whether that countenance can the affright.”
    Which is a good way to live, although I highly doubt that this is indeed the world’s last night.

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  2. In my teens I was apparently a magnet for fringe group pamphleteers, and so I have a few for the October 1988 rapture date. I did notice the billboards for the May 21 date go up in Spanish around the neighborhood and on the freeway a bit over a month ago. (And in my neighborhood, they really should have been in traditional Chinese, but whatever. The local Catholic parish is also mostly Taiwanese. I’m not sure they really did demographic thinking before paying for it.)
    But another note: seriously, The Atlantic? “The 5” Freeway? What an odd stylistic thing to do. I’d either use local usage, or just standardize it, instead of making it look awkward like that. (Also shows that the author’s not from northern California, where they just call it 5.)

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  4. I don’t think your pets get to participate in the rapture. But, apparently, you can buy insurance for their care, post-rapture:
    http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/05/10/atheist-creates-jobs-saving-pets-after-the-rapture/
    “All contracts must be paid upfront, and are good for 10 years. Centre told Bloomberg that he doesn’t believe in the Rapture and will therefore never have to actually render the services he offers, but he is offering something of great value to Christians: peace of mind, for only 92 cents a month. “If we thought the Rapture was really going to happen, obviously our rate structure would be much higher,” Centre quipped.”

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  6. You know, these people have enormous faith in the calculations of Bishop Ussher and the theological soundness of the whole time zone system. What if God wasn’t down with Gregorian calendar reform, for instance?
    I’m with you on the gin and tonics and laundry avoidance – much better use of our time!

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  9. If this rapture doesn’t work, there’s always the end of the world predicted by the Mayan calendar in 2012.

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  10. I still go by the 1052 date (Japanese Buddhist theories of the apocalypse). It’s been the end of the world as we know it for a long time already (and I feel fine).
    Oh sure, scoff. But you can’t deny things were better before the Normans invaded England!
    (By the 1052 calculation, the world will finish ending in 11052. So they have plenty of time to be proven right.)

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  11. Hey, my daughter new about the Mayan one — when I said the world was supposed to end this morning, she said “No, it’s in 2012.”
    She hadn’t heard about May 21st.
    (Not going to make a big deal about ends of the world that haven’t happened yet, ’cause the little boy was a little bit worried when I started talking about predicted endings of the world).

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