The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
It’s one thing to believe, in a sort of vague and non-specific way, that the world will end one day. It’s another thing to believe that it’s going to happen on Saturday, May 21st, 2011, which is what Harold Camping, a dogged and committed Christian broadcaster from Oakland, California, believes with all of his might.
It’s a complicated math problem, of course, to crunch the numbers in the Old Testament and come up with a date certain for the End Times, but Camping has done just that. Even more, he’s convinced untold listeners of his Family Radio stations – found on short wave, internet, satellite, and everything else – that Saturday, May 21st is Judgment Day.
Hundreds of them have taken to the highways and back roads of America to spread their message of doom and redemption. Traveling across the continent in ragtag convoys of RVs and old busses, they’ve got barely a week left to evangelize the population into renewed faith, atonement for sin, and general preparation for the fiery end of the world. On the one hand, it’s a tough sell. On the other, it’s a lot easier, probably, when you’re working with a firm deadline.
But it would have to be organized for a Saturday, wouldn’t it? Saturdays are sort of Universal Days Off. It would make marketing it a lot easier if Harold Camping could crunch the biblical numbers one more time and come up with an apocalypse that coincides with the start of the week, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, but there have been many Monday mornings when I’ve prayed for the end of the world. Saturdays, not so much. On Saturdays, I like to go to the beach.
It’s easy to mock the followers of Family Radio. They seem so credulous and naïve. And how utterly un-strategic of them to pick a definite date! To put all of their credibility chips on a week from Saturday! But are they really so odd?
Here's what I wrote about the topic of the end of the world, on Ricochet, a few months ago:
A lot of us have something we’re afraid of, something huge and apocalyptic and on the way. If you live out here, in California, it’s The Big One, the 11.3 earthquake. It could be some giant asteroid crashing into the earth. Survivalists and people like that – you know the type: prepared for the apocalypse, hideout in the desert, stockpilers of canned tuna and chlorine tablets and cross-bows –don’t even bother to predict the actual specifics of the civilization-ending calamity they’re preparing for. Just call it “The Event” with alarming vagueness. The Event. Doesn’t really matter what it is, exactly: earthquake, bio-terror, computers become self-aware, super-big meteor, flesh-eating virus, the rise of the apes – whatever. It’s the event, and it comes, and for the next couple of years we’re all living in huts and hunting squirrels. And that’s what they all agree on: we don’t know exactly what kind, but there will be an Event. You can count on that.
The followers of Harold Camping don’t bother with the aftermath of their version of The Event. In their view, the deserving will be spirited up to heaven, and the undeserving will suffer the fires and volcanoes and earthquakes of the end of the earth. It’ll be like the movie “2012,” I guess, but with no one left to root for. All the good guys, apparently, will already be in a better place.
Again, it’s easy to make fun of the Christian Doomsday Caravaners. Maybe they’re paranoid and unhinged. But when you think of all of the terrible, destructive things that can happen – and do happen – anywhere in the world, what, exactly, is paranoid? Who, exactly, is unhinged?
So, a confession: I get an email, twice-daily, from the International Society of Infectious Diseases. It’s called the ProMED email, and it lists in excruciating detail the various diseases that have been reported, worldwide – all of them, human, plant, and livestock.
Why did I sign up for this? Beats me. But I think it’s because I travel a lot, and one of the things I’ve noticed is how close we are, all of us, despite living in nice neighborhoods in a nice country, to a lot of scarier, dirtier places. By close I mean: a guy from a remote village in China or Africa or wherever has a strange infectious disease – maybe he got it from livestock; maybe he got it from a weird insect; maybe he just got it – and he gets on a train or a bus and coughs on a passenger who gets on a plane with a layover in Frankfurt and infects the airplane seat and every surface he touches, which is touched by a guy flying to JFK, who infects a guy who lands at LAX and before you know it, New York, Los Angeles, and Frankfurt are all petri dishes of some odd, unexplainable, and probably disgusting disease.
And all of this happens in twenty-four hours. A previously unknown disease from a previously remote place suddenly hits the big time: millions and millions of people to infect, overwhelming the health care systems on two continents.
Harold Camping reads deeply into the Old Testament and comes up with the end of the world next Saturday. I get an email from a global NGO and I scan it for the first sign of an odd disease somewhere I’ve never been to, somewhere I’ll never go. But we’re both looking for the same thing. We’re both looking for a little advance notice, a little “heads up” that the end of the world is nigh. Camping and his followers are going to use that extra time – which they pinpoint at about seven more days – to save some other souls, which actually shows them to be, despite their eccentricities, awfully goodhearted folks. Personally, when I get a ProMED email that seems to spell The Event, I’ll use the time to save my skin -- head for the hills and wait it out.
As you’ve no doubt realized, the end of the world isn’t going to bring out the best in me. But be honest now: will it bring out the best in you?
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Jul '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Saturday? Oh, thank God! I was really dreading my colonoscopy....
Edited on May 18, 2011 at 10:54pmMar '11
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
In the words of the Irishmen to William Wallace in Braveheart: "God tells me he can get me out of this mess, but he's pretty sure you're..."
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Rob Long
To put all of their credibility chips on a week from Saturday! [...]
Harold Camping reads deeply into the Old Testament and comes up with the end of the world next Saturday....
No, Rob, not next Saturday. This Saturday. Which means you've got two and a half days left.
There've been billboards proclaiming 'Judgment Day, May 21, 2011' all around San Francisco for months. Ever since I saw the first interviews with Harold Camping, I felt really spooked out. Not because I believe that someone could calculate the end of the world (I don't), but because it's always alarming to me when someone purports to be so sure of something so outrageous.
I guess I believe in lots of things that people might find alarmingly outrageous too, but I comfort myself in knowing that I'm going on a little more than a crazy calculation of my own invention.
May '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Kenneth: Saturday? Oh, thank God! I was really dreading my colonoscopy.... · May 18 at 10:52pm
Edited on May 18 at 10:54 pm
TMI
Dec '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
We in the Society of Climate Scientists don't get the point you're trying to make, Rob.
Jul '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Trace Urdan
Kenneth: Saturday? Oh, thank God! I was really dreading my colonoscopy.... · May 18 at 10:52pm
Edited on May 18 at 10:54 pm
TMI · May 18 at 11:07pm
TMI?
Nov '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Kenneth
Trace Urdan
Kenneth: Saturday? Oh, thank God! I was really dreading my colonoscopy.... · May 18 at 10:52pm
Edited on May 18 at 10:54 pm
TMI · May 18 at 11:07pm
TMI? · May 18 at 11:18pm
His end is nigh...
Nov '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
It's a perfect opportunity to study cognitive dissonance again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
Moreover, if prophecy succeeds on this occasion, there will still be plenty of cognitive dissonance to study among the heathens!
May '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
They pour over the Bible for clues and yet always manage to skip over Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
The angels of heaven are clueless but these clever guys have figured it out.
Sep '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Saturday is the Shabbat. God can't destroy the world on His day of rest.
Anyway, Harold Camping made predictions about 1988 and 1994 and nothing happened then.
Jun '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
In Montana a number of years ago, Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) also predicted the end of the world at a specific time. In a prescient move, given the current CDC concern about zombie apocalypse preparedness, CUT had its members buy certain items for their own kits. At the time, I worked at a K-Mart and we always saw 'em coming with their lists of kit items. Now, the only thing I remember from the list was safety pins. For some reason, they were all going to need lots of safety pins. Maybe that was how they planned to put the world back together.
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
EJHill: They pour over the Bible for clues and yet always manage to skip over Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
The angels of heaven are clueless but these clever guys have figured it out. · May 19 at 5:08am
My son pointed this out to me. I guess all that Catholic school tuition I've paid finally came in handy.
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Rob, I'm not saying I believe, but I'm not paying any bills until next week either.
Jun '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
FYI--It didn't happen.
Oct '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Harold Camping's not as bad as Boston sports fans, all of whom think every loss by any of the big four teams IS the end of the world.
Oct '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
EJHill: They pour over the Bible for clues and yet always manage to skip over Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
The angels of heaven are clueless but these clever guys have figured it out. · May 19 at 5:08am
So this means it could be...Friday??
Feb '11
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Saturday is also my wife's birthday. Talk about pressure to get a good gift...
May '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
Depends. What do they say at the First Church of Rebecca Black?
Aug '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
EJHill: They pour over the Bible for clues and yet always manage to skip over Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
The angels of heaven are clueless but these clever guys have figured it out. · May 19 at 5:08am
They also seem to conveniently avoid such passages as this:
"I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” - Deuteronomy 18:19 & 20.
I believe I'd be a little more circumspect when prefacing my thoughts with "Thus, saith the Lord..."
Dec '10
Re: The World Comes to an End on Saturday, May 21st.
The sheer hubris of Camping and his followers....we were sent some of their 'information' and I read it and could not get over the fact that they would ignore the fact that Christ himself said he didn't even know when he would return, nor the angels...just God the father, and yet conveniently these people have been given a direct conduit to God himself....uh huh, sure...can we say "False prophets"?