Still Here

Well, it's May 22nd, and we're Rapture free. No surprise, right? At least not to cognitive thinkers.

We joke about maxing out credit cards and quitting our jobs, taking vacations and spending all our money so that we'd be ready to go on Judgment Day. But the only real judgment is against the gullibility of those who would actually believe and blindly follow an 89-year old Evangelical radio broadcaster about a date specific Second Coming after blowing it multiple times!

For months, followers of the 89-year-old Camping, who previously wrongly predicted the rapture would occur in September 1994, have been warning that the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011.

My wife had a chat with the cashier at the grocery store this morning who was sympathetic to the man who'd spent his life savings to advertise Camping's May 21st prediction. Call me callous or cynical, but I can't find much sympathy within me for anyone who fell for this scam.

I'm not a religious person, but it would seem to me if you are a believer in the End of Days, that the whole point of being ready when Judgment Day arrives is that you've been preparing for a lifetime with good deeds, helping those less fortunate and living a honest, decent life so it won't matter when that day is.

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' ~Matthew 25:40

When the day comes, you've already "done the work" for lack of a better term. I don't think buying expensive cars, taking a final vacation and depleting your nest egg in the process is what "The King" had in mind. And it's hard for me to feel sympathy for someone who won't even think about alternatives.

The New York Post says the 60-year-old man has also self-published a book, entitled “The Doomsday Code,” based on the teachings of radio host Harold Camping who has (erroneously) predicted the apocalypse six times. When asked by the Post what he’d feel like if Camping happened to be wrong again, the retired engineer had this to say: “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it, everybody asks me that.”

To believe in crackpots predicting dates is just too naive for me to feels sorry the rubes who fell for it... and will fall for it again when the next prediction comes around.