Articles in Rapture
Jim Bakker: Special Offer
Jim Bakker is one of those disgraced televangelists. I wondered about the markup on his $3800 product (found in his Love Gifts department):
Actually the price is in line with what Amazon charges… so I guess his main aim is to get you on his mailing list as someone with $$. Even so, he must be expecting a major disaster/rapture of some sort, and perhaps he is seeking to profit from those who won’t be saved by God/Jesus?
If anyone knows why he is selling survival supplies, please let me know… It feels hypocritical.
Harold Camping Wrong Again
This won’t come as much of a surprise, even for Christians, or even for his many former followers. The world did not end on Oct 21 2011.
The good news is there’s a new writer on the 2012 scene. While he is all-skeptic (and I’m half-skeptic, but concerned about all the real possibilities for 2012), his blog is very well written and fully-referenced. Here’s what Justin Deering has to say about Camping at 2012Delusion.com:
Yes, he’s gone into hiding. This is in stark contrast to the high-profile Project Caravan just a few short months ago, in which Camping’s followers left their families and their jobs, gave away their possessions and their pets, got into buses and RV’s and toured the country, warning everyone who would listen of the impending doom and plastering billboards everywhere along the way.2 The followers, based solely on Camping’s predictions, were extremely vocal with their message: Repent, before …
Harold Camping Receives Major Award
Well, perhaps not major, but the Ig Nobels are certainly famous awards. This year, as announced at the end of last month, the joint recipients of the Mathematics Prize were the following people, each of who predicted, and got wrong, the date for the end of the world:
Dorothy Martin (1954)
Pat Robertson (1982)
Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1990)
Lee Jang Rim (1992)
Credonia Mwerinde (1999)
Harold Camping (1994 and 2011, and still maintains that the real end will be on Oct 21 of this year)
None of the honorees were in attendance at Harvard to receive their reward… Full list of winners at the official Ig Noble site
Important (?) Dates Leading Up To Dec 2012
Obviously Dec 21, 2012 is the date we all have in mind. Even so, amongst the various researchers of 2012 and end times, these dates are also worth noting:
Aug 22 2011 (+/- 3 days) – magnitude 5-7 earthquake, lower South Island, NZ – according to Dr Reg Roberts
Late Aug 2011 – According to Mitch Battros of Earth Changes Media, Mayan elders say the last 10 days of August will reflect the prophetic predictions from ancient text. He believes an increase in solar activity will be the cause, and a tsunami could be the result. Or nuclear war between Pakistan and India.
Sep 27 2011 – Comet Elenin, Earth, Sun in alignment. The last time this occurred, we had the Japanese quake…
Oct 21 2011 – Harold Camping predicts rapture
Oct 28 2011 – Carl Johan Calleman sees this as the pivotal date of the Long Count calendar
May 27, 2012 – Ronald Weinland predicts …
Harold Camping / Christchurch Quake
Sad news today – 89-year-old Harold Camping the failed doomsday prophet, has suffered a mild stroke. He is recovering but not making any radio broadcasts, the future of which are unknown.
More heartache for Christchurch folk, with a 6.0 earthquake causing more damage but thankfully no fatalities – although dozens were injured. As the NZ prime minister said, they “are over it”. With the eclipse less than two days away, a much larger quake somewhere in the world could occur. It has been a month since the last 6.5+ earthquake.
Prophet Will Profit
As it happened, Doris Schmitt, the NY widow who left $250K to Harold Camping got her timing all screwed up. If her intention was for the preacher to use her bequeathment to advertise his doomsday, it would have arrived too late. Yes she died a few weeks prior to May 21, but the money takes some time to filter through. Or, did she predict his prediction would fail, and that he’d need some cash to replace all of his billboard costs? Who knows, but if anyone feels a similar urge, I (kinda) predict a nasty earthquake for the middle of this month.
A Few Doomsday Updates…
CDC on the Zombie Apocalypse
You heard right, the US Govt Centre for Disease Control now has a page devoted to surviving a zombie outbreak. Word quickly spread and the servers crashed!
…a typical CDC blog post might get between 1,000 and 3,000 hits. The most traffic on record had been a post that saw around 10,000 visits. By the end of Wednesday, with servers down, the page had 60,000. By Thursday, it was a trending topic on Twitter.
How typical! In the event of a mass outbreak of something, the CDC servers are unlikely to be up and providing information when we really need it. Say after me – “the government will not help you when you need them the most”.
Rapture Services
Not services at the church, but rather sneaky ways of getting some bucks out of believers. One US business, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, promises to look after your pets (pets don’t get …
New Camping Doomsday Date: Oct 21, 2011
Harold Camping has re-emerged with a new date. He says the May 21 date was accurate, and there has been a spiritual change, although he did get the part about global earthquakes wrong. Apparently God has spared us 5 months of hell, but we will all still die (or go to heaven) on Oct 21. This time the destruction will be a fireball.
For conspiracy theorists out there, this new date could be evidence that Camping is a puppet. He has chosen the same week as Carl Johan Calleman, the Swedish author who, according to his own personal reworkings of the Long Count calendar, foresees a spiritual transformation on Oct 28. Could it be a deliberate attempt to steal some thunder from Mayanist predictions? Or is the plan to convince us that Mayan and Christian end dates are both wacky? I guess the proof will be if Fox News interviews Calleman…
BTW, …
NYC Author Advertises May 21 Judgement Day
Robert Fitzpatrick is the author of The Doomsday Code (available at Amazon, where people ask why he doesn’t give the book away for free…), and has just spent a whopping $140,000 promoting the subject of his book, rather than the book itself.
Plastered over New York subway cars (1,000 placards) as well as bus shelters is his warning of Judgement Day on Saturday – as deduced by Harold Camping, who got it wrong last time he made such a prediction:
Camping has predicted the end of world once before – on Sept. 6, 1994. When the sun rose on Sept. 7, Camping admitted he might have had that one wrong.
Still, Fitzpatrick remains convinced the beginning of the end is coming next week.
“It’ll start just before midnight, Jerusalem time: It’ll be instantaneous and global,” he said. “There are too many scriptures talking about ‘sudden destruction.’”
While Jesus Christ returns to Earth and all non-believers burn …
May 2011 Doomsday Predictions
May 11, 2011: Planetary alignment to cause catastrophic earthquakes. Story is big in Italy. Prediction supposedly made by Raffaele Bendandi (who died in 1979), but has been denied. Science says that the gravitational effects of alignment cannot cause earthquakes, and this is correct.
May 21, 2011: Judgement Day according to Harold Camping of FamilyRadio.
…the group’s billboards have been erected in more than 40 countries, including Turkey, Iraq, Mexico, Zimbabwe, India, Poland and Russia. In Canada, the ads have appeared in 17 cities from Halifax to Vancouver…Caravans of volunteers are also handing out pamphlets, mostly in the United States. A small contingent is scheduled to arrive in Calgary this Friday and Vancouver next Tuesday.
…Mr. Camping has been wrong before. He wrote a book predicting the world would end in 1994. Family Radio now says that “important subsequent biblical information” was not known at the time.
Of course all these stories do is the …
Biblical scholar: Rapture on May 21, 2011
Interestingly, whereas the Bible Code book is all about encoded information in the Bible predicting events, this prophecy for the date of rapture holds no clues from the Bible except the (supposed) date of Christ’s death, and Harold Camping’s personal interpretation of certain words. Here is how he solved the puzzle:
By Camping’s understanding, the Bible was dictated by God and every word and number carries a spiritual significance. He noticed that particular numbers appeared in the Bible at the same time particular themes are discussed.
The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.
“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”
Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused …
