Not to brag, a voice in the back of the bus said, but “this is the fifth end-of-the-world I’ve survived.”
Clearly, using the Bible to predict when this old globe will disappear in a ball of fire has its flaws. It is equally obvious that past failures don’t discourage the next generation of prophets.
Harold Camping’s latest sortie had the end-times beginning Saturday and coming to a flaming finish on Oct. 21. By then all the good people would be safely in Heaven and the rest of us would become toast. The five months in between would be full of earthquakes, tsunamis, wars and pestilence. (Sunday’s tornado in Joplin would qualify. But will the next lovely spring day bring frowns to the faces of the faithful?)
If Camping quits the doomsday game, others will step up. Some, like Camping, will be utterly convinced they have discovered an awesome, awful truth. And because they are without guile, will convince others — thousands of others if they have access to a radio network, as Camping did, and does.
And in a free, rich country like ours, the True Believers will spend millions on billboards, newspaper and Internet ads, quit their jobs and stand on street corners preaching, as just happened in New York and other sophisticated cities this past couple of weeks.
These are uncertain times and in uncertain times the insecure look desperately for certainties. What, tell me, can be more certain than a date positive for rising to Heaven in the Rapture? Or being consumed by the final fire of an exploding earth?
Camping’s delusions gave him his 15 minutes of worldwide notoriety, provided catchy headlines for the newspapers, were great fodder for late-night comedians — and also did a world of damage to those who followed him over the cliff, gave up jobs, sold assets to help pay to warn the public and turned away from family and friends who rejected the predictions as foolishness.
Camping still has his radio stations and his millions. A pitiable number of those who bought his vision were left in penniless misery staring at an unexpected future devoid of hope.
What is the message from this sour sideshow? There isn’t one that holds. That is why the guy on the bus survived all those other world endings: there is always an audience for wild-eyed prophecies and there are always wild-eyed prophets. If he were a modern Methuselah he could have bragged of 50 such survivals.
Knowledge is the only vaccine that might be effective. But mere facts make thin armor against the furies called up in the name of an almighty deity. With that admission, I predict with absolute confidence that everyone of today’s Register readers will live through at least one more end-of-the-world, complete with earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues, wars and $5 a gallon gas.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
