Missed it by that much!
Posted on 05/22/2011 4:19:46 AM PDT by Cardhu
Given that the end of the world was supposed to be nigh, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that Christian doomsday prophet Harold Camping had shown some reluctance to take advance bookings.
The 89-year-old Californian preacher and radio host had prophesied that the Rapture would begin at 6pm May 21st in each of the world’s time zones, with non-believers wiped out by rolling earthquakers, as the saved ascended into heaven.
His refusal to schedule a media interview for the following day - “It is absolutely going to happen. There is no way that I can schedule an interview because I won’t be here.” - was being replayed by media as the world firmly stayed standing.
On the microsite Twitter, groups of atheists and sceptics were last night swapping tales of After Rapture parties, with one group, in Tacoma, Washington, branding their celebration “Countdown to Back-Pedalling”.
Mr Camping’s doomsday prediction wasn’t his first. He blamed an earlier apocalyptic prediction which passed quietly in 1994 on a mathematical error, last month saying: “I’m not embarrassed about it. It was just the fact that it was premature.”
This time would be different, with “no possibility” it would not happen. While across the United States, some devotees reportedly sold all their possessions and took to the streets to warn of the second coming of Jesus, in Britain, sceptical voices were louder.
After 6pm passed without incident in New Zealand and Australia, Stephen Fry tweeted: “Marvellous news! Rapture doesnt mean end of world; apparently all the planet’s imbeciles disappear in one go.”
Amid the sound of ruffled feathers he later added: “Calm down. Never said all Christians are imbeciles. Just those who think they’ll be raised up today. They do the faith a grave disservice.”
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Sadly, preacher Camping could not forecast his own death. At 89 it should have been a slam dunk. No prophet he.
Has anybody SEEN Camping, yet?
Hmmmmmm?
I keep telling everyone it happened on schedule.
No one was good enough to go.
Chances are that YOUR pastor has not been teaching you what the Bible actually says about eschatology either. Part of the problem is that the King James Version mistranslated certain key passages, which fortunately have been corrected in modern Bibles. But the KJV has misled English speaking readers for 400 years. See
http://prophecyquestions.wordpress.com/.
America's Most Wanted?
Missed it by that much!
SF Chronicle has a pic (can’t repro) of Santa passing out Kool Aid at Family Radio HQ in Oakland, one of many mockers and protestors. At Jonestown, Flavor-Aid (similar to Kool-Aid) laced with cyanide was passed out to followers of the Oakland-based church Jim Jones started (to this day the expression “drinking the kool-aid” means falling for propaganda, lies, etc.)
I promise you he won’t be sending back the money that old people sent him for whatever reason.
Could his broadcast licenses—a major part of his empire—be challenged or taken away? A radio expert on my Facebook quotes the following (what if this leads to suicides, etc.?):
>47 CFR 73.1217
No licensee or permittee of any broadcast station shall broadcast false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if:
(a) The licensee knows this information is false;
(b) It is forseeable that broadcast of the information will cause
substantial public harm, and
(c) Broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause
substantial public harm.
Looks like the Rapture worked for Camping, anyway.
And what about all those millions of believers’ hard earned bucks?
Who says you can’t take it with you?
;^)
My wife didn’t buy the story that only the beer got raptured after she went to sleep.
I cringe when somebody comes out and puts a day and time for the end of the world. The Bible clearly states that no one but God knows the time.
I also cringe when non-believers ridicule one who has made the prediction because they are also mocking God. There will come a time when God will bring judgment to the Earth.
I hope there is a good side to it: that people ponder the consequences of their unbelief.
I heard "Pastor" Camping has a net worth of $72 million.
Seems like this story is best filed under "Beware of the false profit"......
I wonder how many believers also believed in 1994. Two strikes on them. Now if Camping makes another silly prediction, will many of the same idiots believe again? And shouldn’t other citizens have the right to claim their material goods as punishment for their terminal stupidity? My car is showing a little rust above the rear wheel well, and I could use a replacement.
This personal interpretation end times left behind nonsense only feeds the liberal stereotype that Christians are simpletons, buffoons, and morons.
What makes it difficult for the rest of Christianity is the fact that those who subscribe to personal interpretation end times left behind nonsense are.
After his followers quit their jobs, drained their savings accounts, maxed out their credit cards and put their pets to sleep, I wouldn't blame Camping for wanting to keep a low profile.
Ping #20
****I also cringe when non-believers ridicule one who has made the prediction because they are also mocking God.****
Don’t fret. 2012 is just around the corner!
BTW, this book was written in 1881; you wouldn't believe how accurate it is!
In the late nineteenth century, Father Charles Arminjon, a priest from the mountains of southeastern France, assembled his flock in the town cathedral to preach a series of conferences to help them turn their thoughts away from this life’s mean material affairs—and toward the next life’s glorious spiritual reward. His wise and uncompromising words deepened in them the spirit of recollection that all Christians must have: the abiding conviction that heavenly aims, not temporal enthusiasms, must guide everything we think, say, and do.
When Father Arminjon’s conferences were later published in a book, many others were able to reap the same benefit—including fourteen-year-old Thérèse Martin, then on the cusp of entering the Carmelite convent in Lisieux. Reading it, she says, “plunged my soul into a happiness not of this earth.” Young Thérèse, filled with a sense of “what God reserves for those who love him, and seeing that the eternal rewards had no proportion to the light sacrifices of life,” copied out numerous passages and memorized them, “repeating unceasingly the words of love burning in my heart.”
Now the very book that so inspired the Little Flower is available for the first time in English.
Let the pages of The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life fill you with the same burning words of love, with the same ardent desire to know God above all created things, that St. Thérèse gained from them. Let them also enrich your understanding of certain teachings of the Faith that can often seem so mysterious, even frightening:
Jesus commands us to be ever-watchful for his return, and ever-mindful that we have no lasting city on earth. The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life is an invaluable aid to inculcating in your spirit that heavenly orientation, without which true human happiness cannot be found—in this world or the next.
That is a great article! You don’t know what a find that is for me, and answered many, many questions I’ve had about the issue of Revelations and Christ’s return for many years. This is, oddly, gives me a great sense of relief or just understanding. Thank you!
Thank you for the link Salvation
It’s a very detailed book. Look at the Table of Contents and you will see what I mean. We read it in our Spiritual book Club during Lent, but we really needed two months on it.
I have read two other books since Lent and am back to this one which I want to finish. I’m only on his fourth lecture — a little over a third of the way through the book.
The chapter on the anti-Christ was fascinating!
Pretty lengthy website ... definitely one for saving; even if you disagree with preterism.
Thanks so much! Would you like to post to the blog itself?
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