Tag: end of the world

How was the end of the world for you?

Did you know the world ended last Saturday?  I heard it was guaranteed.  Apparently God didn’t get the memo.

So basically there’s a “preacher” named Harold Camping who uses mathematical calculations supposedly based on the Bible to figure out when the Rapture and Apocalypse will happen.  He figured it would be May 21, 2011.  He’s not just your average garden-variety fruitcake, though.  He is rumored to have spent about $100 million advertising his “prophecy”.  He promoted it on 55 radio stations and 2000 billboards, plus all the free news coverage he got for it.

As you might have noticed, there was a lack of end-of-the-world events last weekend.  Seemed quite normal to me.  I thought maybe I just slept through it, but it seems like it would’ve been on the news had something of such epic proportions actually happened.  So it’s probably safe to say this guy was wrong.

In this day of extended news coverage, of course reporters asked this guy what happened.  How do you think he responded?

A) Admitted his mistake and apologized.
B) Said it was (another) miscalculation.
C) Blame it on Global Warming or Bush.
D) Pretend he was still right.

Well, A would’ve been the ideal thing to do, but that didn’t happen.  B is what he’s done before.  C is what some people do on all kinds of topics, whether it applies or not.  D is the craziest option, though that’s exactly what he did.  Camping said his dates were correct, that it was “an invisible judgment day” and the final judgment and destruction will happen on October 21, 2011.  He also said we cannot understand the Bible, which I thought was really ironic because he claims to be basing his “prophecies” on the Bible.  (Never mind that his prediction is unscriptural; he must have missed that verse.)

I heard of a humorous tweet about the whole thing:

If this Rapture doesn’t get started soon, my rental Ferrari demolition derby last night wasn’t as fun as I thought. ~ David Burge, 5/21/11

My favorite response so far to all the hullabaloo is this billboard that someone made after the doomsday prediction was proven false.  This is awesome.

Well played…

You can decide how the world will end!

Recently I came across a news article called Five Ways the World Can End.  (No, I wasn’t searching for it on purpose!   I just happened across it while surfing around. The title drew me in.)

Earth melting from the SunThe picture represents what may happen in about 5 billion years, when the Sun grows so large that it’ll be this close to Earth.   Obviously this will cause the ultimate global warming, and all life will end.  (Ironically, there are scientists already working on this problem, even though we have 5 billion years before it’s an issue.  While it’s good to prepare for the future, there are some other issues we might ought to work on first…)

The article lists some of the standard hypotheses, like a massive asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruptions, nuclear war, black holes, and the expanding sun.  Most of those sound like natural disasters which we would have little control over, except nuclear war, which hopefully won’t ever happen.  But then the article really surprised me.  There’s a link in the article that says:

YOU DECIDE: How Do You Think the World Will End?

We get to decide?!?  Awesome!   I always figured the end of the world would happen when God brings His final judgment to humanity.  Plus, I thought the end of the world was detailed in the book of Revelation in the Bible.  But this is on a news site, so it must be factual, right?  On a side note, I wonder how FOX News got exclusive access to let us vote on how the world will end…  They must’ve paid a LOT of money for the rights to that!

Anyway, I wanted to cast my vote, so I clicked on that link, but unfortunately the comments were already closed.  So I suppose the fate of the world has already been decided…  And that page didn’t even tell us what the winning option was!  Now we’re just left to wonder…