SubscribeDecember 30th, 2010
what I thought was a joke turned out to be…
I was walking back from the coffee shop the other day and I noticed a bill board that said “The Lord is coming May 21 2011.” I started to laugh. I thought it was a joke, or a funny ad for some magic show coming to town. It turns out, though, the sign was put up by Family Radio. I didn’t notice that until the next time I saw the billboard, but when I did, it made little red warning lights go off. So when I got home I looked it up.
Jeez Louise. These guys mean it. They think some guy is coming on a white horse from the sky and putting most of through five months of torment before ending the world in October. Man, that sucks. I’ll just be eligible for an all-adult building and the world will end.
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)
Anyway, if you want to read about Harold Camping and his last (failed) prediction of the end of the world you can go here or here.
I know a man who is currently writing a book about this end-of-the-world narrative. It’s a needed book. What is it that drives us to listen to this kind of thing over and over? Because once Camping fails this year, unless he dies, it will just start up again later—he’ll just predict a new date, and acquire new followers. And of course, 2012 is up and coming with its non-Christian adherents of the end of time.
December 31st, 2010 at 9:50 am
Funnily enough, I’m going to spend the evening with a friend and colleague whose last (academic) book was about end of the world literature. Not quite the same thing as the second coming, but similarly portentous and catastrophic. I imagine it helps relieve the tedium of the same old same old, to fantasize the extremes of experience. But my money is on the same old same old continuing to happen, regardless.
Have a wonderful 2011, Mary, may it be full of reparations, pleasures, illuminations and other ordinary miracles.
December 31st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
How lovely, thank you. Ordinary miracles, yes! Those are the experiences around which life coheres.
April 23rd, 2011 at 9:47 am
[...] certainly true but mentally rebel anyway. Still, I know that when May 22 comes along and when Harold Camping‘s group find themselves still here, they will not renounce the silliness. They’ll just [...]