The Rapture DIDN'T HAPPEN

There are two stories this week that have captured my imagination, and the imaginations of millions around the world too.

First up, we have the rather interesting suggestion that today (Saturday 21st May 2011) is Judgment Day. 6pm Pacific time, to be exact.

Now, you can forget thoughts of Cybernet and don’t be worrying about Sarah and John Connor, it’s not a Man-Made apocalypse where the machines turn against us. In any case, if it were I would be doomed and you along with me because we’re all connected to our potential enemy as you read this.

This is all the making of one man, a man who believes that he has “deciphered” the date of “The Rapture” – in the Biblical sense.

89 year old Harold Camping (you don’t need to look him up, just imagine an old guy with an imaginary friend and a book of stories that he likes to smack people around the head with – metaphorically of course) is the guy proclaiming that he has managed to calculate that the Rapture will begin today. And he’s managed to convince his small band of followers that this is the case too.

For those who were too busy jerking off to the male underwear pages in the catalog to follow the family to church back in the day, the Rapture is the Biblical version of the traditional apocalypse story, the day when almighty God whisks 144,000 of the good people away to heaven and leaves the rest of us to suffer as the world ends in a blaze of glory. Presumably, all us gay folk are imagined to immediately break out into orgies, isn’t that what they think we all do? So call around your gay mafia gang, haul that leather fetish wear out from the back of the wardrobe, get the lube ready and grease yourself up.

There are a few problems with Mr. Camping’s prediction though, the main problem is that the Rapture is like a ninja operation, no one is supposed to know when it’s gonna happen. Just like the Ninja, it’ll sneak up on all of us when we least expect it, and we’ll be watching all the good Christian folk vanishing before our eyes (if that’s how it happens). The next problem is that he’s done this before and predicted that it would happen in 1994. And when it didn’t he asserted that he’d got his calculations wrong.

And in other news…

It seems that perhaps the Pope is heeding Mr. Camping’s words and seeking a get-out, just in case he isn’t among the 144,000 righteous people to be saved. You know, our past can come back to haunt us, and if there are only so many places on that big bus into the sky the Pope needs to make some other arrangements just in case his own Hitler youth history makes him less worthy.

Now, you might think me suspicious and a bit “tin-foil hat”, but when I think of the Pope and his wealth, I imagine that perhaps he might have a secret lair and one of those rockets able to jet him into space within an hour. Perhaps there’s a defunct church somewhere in Rome where the steeple opens up at the click of a button and we’ll see that rocket departing as the Rapture begins? Dan Brown eat your heart out!

The Pope certainly seems to be making his plans by calling up to the International Space Station and making friends with the only Humans who would survive it.

The conversation was broadcast, but I would imagine there was a section they didn’t show, the few minutes where he suggested that he might pay them a visit, at about 7pm today as a matter of fact.

I have a question… on October 22, 1844, William Miller and Samuel S. Snow predicted that this would happen, and their followers believed so desperately that they gave up all of their worldly possessions in preparation for it. So has Mr. Camping perhaps suggested that his small band of followers do the same? And did he open a bank account for them to wire all their soon-to-be-worthless cash to? If not, he’s missed an opportunity. Long live capitalism! lol

BTW, I was joking about the gay orgies. We don’t need a threat of the Rapture to have a good time.

I’ll see you at 7pm when we can all point and laugh, while wearing fetish gear and slipping off our computer chairs.