5 Things To Know: Judgment on the Rapture, End of Times Claim Reviewed

The Internet is abuzz with talk of the Rapture, which according to Harold Camping, 89, is less than 24 hours away, and so, too, the town of Greater Brandon.

Google searches at 10:15 a.m. May 20 showed 12.6 billion results for “Judgment Day,” 23.3 billion result for “Rapture,” 38.9 billion results for “Endeavour” and 36.6 billion results for “Space Shuttle.” (Not to worry about priorities, though. “Lady GaGa” topped them all, with 324 billion results, followed by “Justin Bierber,” a close second, at 321 billion.)

Judgment Day has been a popular topic of conversation recently for Pastor Steve Barber of Landmark Baptist Ministries in Greater Brandon at 6021 Williams Road in Seffner.

“I just had someone talking to me about it in my office,” Barber said in a telephone interview May 20.

Still, he cautions, “No one knows the date or time Jesus will come. No one knows the mind of God. It’s sad that some people claim to know Him and put Him in a box.”

Diana Kinnee works at Ave Maria Christian Gifts in Brandon, a Catholic gift shop off Bryan Road. She said she has seen no increase in the amount of traffic at the store as a result of the latest doomsday prediction.

"I think Catholics are more informed about such things and are not that easily deluded,” she said. "In fact, we have been kind of laughing about it here. I think the people who are taken in by that don't really know their scripture.”

Jason Spotz is the pastor at Oakwood Baptist Church in Brandon, 540 South Oakwood Ave.

"I feel no one knows the date and time when Jesus will come,” he said. “I don’t think anyone knows the date or time of his coming as this group is making out. It could be today. This is just a small group calling themselves Christians and it kind of gives other Christians a black eye.”

As the day unwinds to what Camping would predict is a world of no better tomorrows, here’s some things to consider:

• 1. — First, what is the Rapture? One answer, according to Maureen Dowd, “Rapture and Rupture,” a 2002 opinion piece in The New York Times: “There was a time in Washington when the word ‘rapture’ was used to refer to rapscallion senators chasing exotic dancers, or a president enjoying a pizza with an intern. But now, when you hear the word ‘Rapture’ whispered in political circles, it refers to the biblical version of a terrible final war in Jerusalem between the forces of light and darkness and the consequent ascension of ‘saved’ Christians, snatched up to Heaven from their cars, computer terminals and food courts.”

• 2. — Stephen O’Leary, associate professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, is the author of “Arguing the Apocalypse,” published by Oxford University Press in 1994. In a “Speakeasy” blog posted by the Wall Street Journal, O’Leary takes on “the public failure of prophecy” and questions why “the bitter experience of such disappointment would leave people no alternative but to admit error and come to terms with their lives without apocalyptic hope.” O’Leary asks: “What will happen to Harold Camping and his followers on Sunday, May 22, when they are faced with the bitter realization that their predictions of the Rapture and the Last Judgment are mistaken?” The piece looks at other such disappointments of public prophecies, including William Miller and the Millerite movement of the 1804’s (which O’Leary notes eventually led into what is now the Seventh-Day Adventist Church]. O’Leary notes, too, Camping’s prophecy that Jesus Christ would return to earth in September 1994. 

• 3. — The Atlantic writer Tina Dupuy, in “The Rapture is Not Saturday, It’s Tonight,” concludes that Camping is right about there being an end, “it’s just that his calculations of the timeline are (as per usual) just a little off.” Dupuy interviewed Camping for her online news show, TYT Now, in which Camping reportedly said the Rapture is at 6 p.m. May 21, wherever it’s 6 p.m. first, which means, using the International Dateline at 180 Longitude, that Judgment Day kicks off for Floridians at 11 p.m. May 20, according to Dupuy. The thing about Camping, she notes, “is that, like all doomsday prophets who get a following, he’s charming.” The author, who interviewed Camping, said the president of Family Radio used the recent earthquake in Japan as an example of what the Rapture will be like, and that “Judment Day will make that ‘look like a Sunday school picinic.’ ” Camping, according to this article, uses as his yardstick Noah’s flood, pegged in his view at 4990 B.C., and then writes about his calculation, which Dupuy then concludes: “In short, if you add two and subract for leap year (noting there is no year zero), then multiply by three (because of the Holy Trinity), then you have something infallible. See, he’s done the math. The math is in the Bible. The Bible is infallible. Discussion over.” But, of course, it’s not. As Dupuy notes: “It’s the magic of arbitrary facts – they start to support themselves after awhile.”  According to Dupuy, Camping in 1992 wrote the book, “1994,” in which Camping contended that the end would likely happen in September 1994, but it could be before 2011, or possible in 2011, or somewhere in between. “I asked Camping is he regretted writing the book, if it now hinders his credibility,” Dupuy writes. Camping reportedly answered: “I’m not a bit embarrassed by that. You know anytime we’re learning — and the Bible is really complex.”

• 4. — Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are the authors of the "Left Behind" series of Bible prophecy novels, a set that includes, “Left Behind,” “Tribulation Force,” “Nicolae,” “Soul Harvest,” “Apollyon,” “Assassins,” “The Indwelling,”  “The Mark,” “Desecration,” “The Remnant,” “Armageddon,” “Glorious Appearing,” “The Rising,” “The Regime,” “The Rapture” and “Kingdom Come.” LaHaye on the Left Behind Website claims that Camping’s May 21 prophecy, that Jesus Christ will come to rapture believers, “is not only wrong but dangerous.” On Camping’s prophecy that God will destroy this world on October 21, LaHaye states: “This is not only bizarre but 100 percent wrong!” So, does LaHaye have his own views on end times? Three signs will precede the end of the world as we know it, LaHaye writes with Jenkins in the book, “Are We Living in the End Times?” Those signs:  one-world government, one-world economy and one-world religion. LaHaye gives his own (albeit much broader than Camping’s) date of the end of times: “While no one knows the day or the hour when Christ will return, we have more reason to believe He could come in our lifetime than any generation before us.”

• 5. — As for Camping himself, the Website wecanknow.com implores readers to “take your time and browse through the teachings of Harold Camping.” Again, his prophecies are that the rapture of believers is set for May 21 and that God will destroy the earth October 21 (which, as of this posting, doesn’t leave time to take too much time for browsing). As of this posting, and according to the wecanknow.com contentions of Family Radio, EBible Fellowship Bible Ministries and The Latter Rain, the end is less than 24 hours away.

Which begs the question, if this were the end of times, how would you spend these last precious moments of life as you know it?

Landmark Baptist plans a fish fry May 21 starting at 11 a.m., but nothing special for what some believe marks the start of the end of times.

As Barber put it: “If Jesus comes tomorrow that would be great but I plan on living a 150 years.” His sermon for Sunday’s service: “When He comes He will still be on time.”

Atheists are planning to hold parties, according to BBC Mobile, which notes among such planned events, the “Rapture After Party in North Carolina.” Among the other events noted: “Countdown to back-pedaling” in Tacoma, Wash. This pieces notes as well an atheist and entrepreneur in North Hampshire, whose business, “Eternal Earth-Bound Pets” offers a service for watching over pets left behind. The owner, Bart Centre reportedly charges clients $135 to have their pets picked up and cared for after the end. “They would be disappointed twice, he told the Wall Street Journal,” according to he BBC piece. “Once because they weren’t raptured and again because I don’t do refunds."

One suggestion, whether the end is nigh or not, it to grab a bucket of popcorn and watch one of the 10 Best Doomsday movies, as rated by Ranker.com:

• No. 1 — 20 Years After
• No. 2  — 2012
• No. 3 — 2012 Doomsday
• No. 4 — 28 Days Later
• No. 5 — 28 Weeks Later
• No. 6 — A Boy and His Dog
• No. 7 — A Sound of Thunder
• No. 8 — Armageddon
• No. 9 — Battle for the Planet of the Apes
• No. 10 — Beneath the Planet of the Apes

As for the 10 worst, on the site’s list of 98? That would be, from worst to better:

• No. 98 — When World Collide
• No. 97 — When the Wind Blows
• No. 96 — Waterworld
• No. 95 — War of the Worlds
• No. 94 — Wall-E
• No. 93 — Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
• No. 92 — Twelve Monkeys
• No.91 — Tooth and Nail
• No. 90 — Titan A.E.
• No. 89 — A Tidal Wave

RELATED READINGS:

• Apocalypse Now? Christian Rapture Fiction and the End of the World (Guardian.co.uk)

• They are Sincere. But Are They Sincerely Wrong? (aftermay21.com)

• The Huffington Post collection of Rapture articles