The Rapture is Upon Us, Again

Hide your kids, hide your wife.  Judgement day is upon us… Maybe.

According to Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping, 89, May 21 marks the day Christ is scheduled to return to earth and cleanse it of its sin (also known as The Ratpure, The Apocalypse, Judgement Day, etc.).

But why May 21, 2011?  What is so special about this date?

Camping has told multiple media outlets that he calculated this particular date by using math based on biblical scripture. God said to Noah in Genesis 7:4, “Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”  Indeed, in scripture the flood occurred 7 days after it was first prophesied in 4990 BC.  However, the “seven days” can also mean seven thousand years, because “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  Thus, seven thousand years later is 2011.

Of course, this isn’t the first mention we’ve heard of the day to end all days.  Camping himself had first predicted The Rapture to end all life in 1994, some 17 long and healthy years ago.

NASA engineer Edgar Whisenant published a best-selling pamphlet in the summer of 1988 called “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988”.  And at the turn of the new millennium, only 11 years ago, newspapers and media were absolutely frenzied with headlines that read: The End is Here!

Yet life goes on, as it always does.  And so after May 21 has come and gone, what can we take away from yet another failed prediction?

The impending Apocalypse has other interesting aspects. For conspiracy theorists, it can be a lucrative opportunity to create new controversial documentaries.  For the rest of us, it can be a good reminder to live life to the fullest.  If the world were to end next week, what would you have wanted to do more of?

Images by futureatlas.com via flickr.