Don't fret Mr. Camping, it's not the end of the world.

For many months now, Harold Camping and his followers have been putting up thousands of billboards, handing out pamphlets, giving radio talks, and even traveling across the country in a caravan of ad-covered vehicles to get out the word that the rapture was to occur at 6:00 PM on Saturday, May 21st.  Below you can see some of these unfortunate folk carrying signs with the dubious claim that "The Bible guarantees it!" (as though that were a selling point?)

For anyone not familiar with Camping's rapture predictions, or the Biblical sources he used to reach the date of May 21st, you can check out his "We Can Know" website here.  The site is currently down, likely due to high traffic, but I took a bunch of screenshots several months ago when I first heard about these guys, as I figured the content of the website would likely drastically change when the predicted date came and went without any supernatural events occurring.  You can check out the images below, which feature some of Camping's, er, "rationale" as to why judgment day would be occurring today.

Clearly Jesus didn't descend from the clouds, earthquakes didn't ravage the planet, and fire and brimstone failed to fall from the heavens, as pretty much anyone with the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality already figured was going to happen.

Camping and his followers will get all the ridicule they deserve in the coming weeks for being gullible enough to accept these claims, but today I won't be adding on much more.  Many of these people spent all of their money, ran up massive debt, quit their jobs, left their families, and abandoned their homes to go spread the word.  The shattered lives they will have to try to piece back together after today is far more of a punishment than I could ever give them with mere words, and I sincerely hope they will be able to find a way to return to a semblance of a normal existence.

What bothers me most about today is not Harold Camping or his followers.

On news stories, blog posts, religious websites, and even Facebook discussions, I've seen many Christians attempt to distance themselves and their brand of Christianity from Camping, claiming that no one can know the day when Jesus will return to Earth and rapture off the believers. They've frequently quoted Matthew 24:36, which states "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." I've even engaged in discussion with people who have gone so far as to say that these armageddon ready folks aren't actually "true" Christians at all.

Take, for instance, this post from the Grace Fellowship Baptist church, which derides Camping for making a prediction of the end times, while still maintaining that Camping is correct that the rapture will happen one day.  There's also the delightfully silly Rapture Condition website, which even has a daily rapture forecast (today's is a 2, or "likely rapture." Would they ever have a "5: Not Possible Today" forecast?)

While Camping and his followers have shown the dangers of religious belief first hand, it's not them that prompted me to write this blog today. It’s the Christians who disagree with Camping, not because of his belief that magic zombie Jesus would be descending from the clouds and taking the believers to an invisible heaven realm, but because he had the audacity to try to put a date on this absurd supernatural event that they *all agree will happen* at some unknown date in the future.

All Christians are complicit in this lie, and all are equally guilty here.

It is absurd for Christians to distance themselves from this movement, while still maintaining that it's core belief is perfectly reasonable. They are trying to have it both ways - believing the event will happen, but going out of their way to avoid putting a date on it so they can't ever be conclusively shown that their belief is wrong. They can forever say it will happen any day now, with all those wars and rumors and wars proving it's getting closer, and no amount of time will ever convince them that their faith was misplaced.

Honestly, it’s like hearing someone say “Oh no, no, we’re not like those silly people over there who believe in the boogey man. I mean, the boogey man is definitely real, but they think they know what bed he’s under! How ridiculous is that? Our religious text clearly says no one can know which bed the boogey man is really under, therefore those crazies aren’t *real* boogey men believers, and they give us a bad name!”

Camping has created an amazing case study in how open to interpretation the Bible really is, however. One would think that a book that very clearly says no one can know the day or the hour of Christ's return could only be interpreted one way.  But, like nearly every other passage in that entire "holy" text, 50 people can read it, come away believing 50 different things, starting 50 different denominations, and all believing with great fervor that God backs up their interpretation and disagrees with all the rest.  

If you read through Camping's writings, he uses other verses found throughout the Bible to show that the text in Matthew doesn't currently apply to believers, and that God really does say we can know when the end times will finally roll around.  For those Christians who may scoff at this notion, consider how much of a common practice this is in any denomination of Christianity. Plenty of Christians are willing to use later verses in the Bible to explain away why people no longer have to follow the earlier verses about stoning children to death, forcing rape victims to marry their attackers, sacrificing goats and splattering their blood on an altar, and prohibitions against eating shell fish or wearing clothes with mixed fibers. One of the most elegant solutions I've seen from Camping followers is to simply look at the tense of the verb in the sentence.  After all, it only says "No one knows the day or the hour," it doesn't say "No one can know the day or the hour later."

The link between standard Christian belief and Harold Camping's belief doesn't end there however. Consider those verses that clearly state "this is a permanent law for you, to be observed by all generations." There are many such laws in the Bible that Christians no longer follow, such as Leviticus 3:17, which issues a permanent edict against eating fat.  Much like you'd think the phrase "No one knows the day or the hour" wouldn't be open to interpretation, it would seem like the phrase "This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation, wherever you live" also wouldn't be open to interpretation.  And yet, were I to point this or any other similar verse out to a Christian, they would happily explain to me why the phrase "This is a permanent commandment" doesn't actually mean "This is a permanent commandment."  For Christians to deride Camping for doing this, while they themselves do it on a daily basis, is hypocritical in the extreme.

Isn't it odd that this supposedly omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (every at once) being can't be bothered to come down here and settle the matter, plainly and openly telling people which interpretation is right, and which is wrong?  Is baptism in Jesus's name required for salvation?  Can you lose your salvation?  Will there be a seven year tribulation or only months-long tribulation? How many people will get raptured? Is speaking in tongues and casting out demons still supposed to be done by the faithful?  Ask those questions to 10 Christians, and you will get 10 different answers, all with Bible verses backing up their position.


It shouldn't be hard for God to pop down here and let Camping (and the rest of us), know whether or not his interpretation of verses is correct, and yet he remains silent on the subject.  While Camping now has two failed rapture predictions under his belt, there's no doubt in my mind that it won't dissuade him and others like him to continue setting new dates in the future.  God's silence on the subject is rather odd, considering how easy it would be to put a stop to this nonsense if he disagrees with it.


What's even more damning about the Christian deity's silence is how greatly Camping's claims impacted the lives of both Christians and non-believers. Take the Haddad family. The parents of this family believed today would bring the second coming of Jesus, while the children wisely wanted nothing to do with such claims.  These parents have irredeemably changed their children's lives for the worse - going out of their way to tell their kids they aren't going to heaven (just what every child wants to hear from mom!), dragging them through ridiculous streetside demonstrations for something they completely disagree with, and even failing to save any money for their college tuition, since they saw it as a waste of time, what with the world ending and all.


Other people have been completely financially ruined and destroyed relationships with family and friends, all in the name of God and his message. It should have been perfectly within this God figure's power to have warned all these people not to leave their jobs and spend their life savings on false teachings, and yet he actively chose not to.  They joyfully ruined their lives, believing that they were following God's word and that God fully supported their actions. I would submit that such a being could not be considered to be either "loving" or "good," which are two qualities Christians frequently attribute to their deity.

During my discussions with believers and skeptics about the failed rapture, I've noticed that Christians don’t seem to realize that nonbelievers probably want the rapture to happen even more than they do. Personally I would love for the rapture to occur, and I hope that if it did, God would be in a very generous mood and decide to take absolutely anyone with sincere religious beliefs up to heaven, rather than just the members of one denomination of Christianity.

Imagine a world with no Fred Phelps and his family picketing the funerals of dead soldiers with hateful signs. No Pat Robertson blaming terrorist attacks and natural disasters on people’s sexual practices. No laws taking away people’s civil rights because of the words of Bronze Age goat sacrificers. No Pope telling the people of Africa to stop using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. No children dying because parents think prayer is a better option than medicine. No blocking of stem cell research funding due to religious beliefs so we can finally get on the road to cures for diabetes and Alzheimer’s and spina bifida. No groups launching rockets and strapping bombs to their chests because God told them this particular stretch of desert belongs to them. No people giving stupid amounts of money to Scientology to find out the whole thing was really about galactic evil lord Xenu all along. No groups deciding women can’t hold positions of power because the invisible wizard in the sky has a penis and not a vagina.

I’ll take that world over this one any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

And to finish off, I'll leave you with this little slice of animated rapture awesomeness: