Explaining the Rapture

Posted by BooMan | May 20, 2011 | 35 |

This is a notice that if you are living in the Pacific Time Zone, the Rapture will actually begin at 11pm tonight. I know it is supposed to occur on May 21st, but the truth is that it will happen at 6pm in every time zone. So, you know, it’ll start at the international time zone out there somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and then just kind of wind its way around the globe. When the first tremors are felt in Pago Pago it will be 2am on the east coast and by the time we all wake up China and India should already be gone. I wasn’t sure how it was all going to go down, but I’m glad I had it explained to me. It sounds like I’m going to be doing a road trip. California, here I come.

The end of the world will be at exactly 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, says [Harold] Camping, who along with his organization, Family Radio, are behind those billboards across the country forecasting the Rapture this Saturday. The Rapture, the Last Days, Armageddon and the Final Days of Judgment are all interchangeable. It’s when God will destroy the Earth to show his love for humanity.

Is that Eastern Standard or Pacific Standard Time?

Neither, says Camping, whom I interviewed recently for my online news show TYT Now. The Rapture is at 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, where ever it’s 6 p.m. first, with the “fantastically big” world-ending event taking place on a time zone by time zone basis.

That means we can expect the Rapture to start when it hits 6 p.m. at the International Dateline at 180 Longitude — roughly the [sic] between Pago Pago, American Samoa, and Nuku’alofa, Tonga. We’ll know it’s Judgment Day because there will be an earthquake of previously unprecedented magnitude, Camping predicts.

So, according to these calculations, the Rapture will actually begin like a rolling brown out across the globe at 11 p.m. PST on Friday, May 20th. “Everyone will be weeping and wailing because they’ll know in a few hours it’ll come to their city,” said Camping.

The nice thing about this is the forewarning. I don’t have to worry that I’ll die suddenly at 6pm. If people haven’t been dying for sixteen hours already in time zones to my East, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Feel better?

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

35 Comments

JimF on May 20, 2011 at 8:06 pm

La’ chaim.
Geov Parrish on May 20, 2011 at 8:28 pm

I’m trying to remember the last time atheists promoted something this ridiculous, and it went viral in the media. I’m not coming up with anything.

At least Camping isn’t burning a Koran or anything. Nobody will die over this*.

*With the possible exception of a few suicides, and I’m sorry, but that’s just more proof that Darwin was right.
- BooMan on May 20, 2011 at 8:57 pm
  
  I was thinking of buying some M-80’s and other loud explosives to set off at 6pm and freak out my neighbors.
Drew J Jones on May 20, 2011 at 8:29 pm

And when it doesn’t happen, we can just tell the Christians that either they didn’t pray hard enough or that God was feeling mavericky.
- BooMan on May 20, 2011 at 9:03 pm
  
  Don’t forget the traumatized kids:
  
  Freedom from Fear
  
  In the fall of 1968, a special meeting was called at the Kingdom Hall in New Albany, Indiana. Everyone was expected to be there. I sat in the front row with my best friend. We always sat there. We were ten years old and as good little Jehovah’s Witnesses, we believed that all new light sent to us from the Governing body was straight from Jehovah God. There was going to be new light passed on to us tonight.
  You could have heard a pin drop as everyone sat in anticipation waiting for the speaker to talk. He started by telling us of new light sent to all congregations world wide, from the Governing body in Brooklyn, New York. He said that in the fall of 1975 the great Battle of Armageddon would take place. He told how the society had come up with this date, but I was too young to understand. But I knew exactly what Armageddon meant. That was something I had heard about all my young life. But tonight, it seemed so real. I was so very scared. I automatically started to figure up how old I would be in 1975. I would be 17 years old.
  
  I can still remember the long ride home. It was a quiet ride, with each his or her own thoughts. Mom and dad said nothing to each other. Everyone’s face was emotionless. It was as if even my little brother and sisters, ages 8, 6 and 4 knew that something very serious was about to happen. Of course, they were too young to understand, but when I looked at their innocent little faces, my heart was aching. They’re so young, I thought, surely Jehovah will not let anything happen to them. Then I started to think of my unborn sibling that was due in a few weeks. I couldn’t keep from crying.
  
  From that day on, we were at the Kingdom Hall everytime the doors were open. We never missed a meeting. We were constantly in the field ministry trying to bring as many as we could into the “truth” before it was too late, all the while hoping Jehovah would look favorably on us a Armageddon. School work or material possessions were of no importance to us. Just the basic necessities, because the time was short. For the next seven years, the elders were constantly talking of how we should be working as hard as we could for Jehovah, so we would be prepared for Armageddon.
  
  The Watchtower and Awake had graphic pictures of what Armageddon would be like. I can remember sitting for what seemed like hours, looking and studying every detail in these pictures. The little babies being destroyed, old men and women sucked into the earth, people screaming with their arms outstretched, as if pleading for help. I did not see these as being wicked people like the society told us. I felt sorry for them. It broke my heart. I had nightmares all the time for several years. I worried constantly that myself or one of my loved ones might not be good enough to make it.
  
  I can still remember the first day of 1975. This was the year. I was a junior in high school. Everyone was anxious and we were all walking on eggshells. Everyone was careful not to do anything that could get them disfellowshipped, and also ones that had been disfellowshipped were doing their best to get reinstated. Every Thursday, it seemed there was someone getting reinstated. The time was getting shorter.
  
  I can also remember the date December 31, 1975. This is one of those dates that will be frozen in my mind forever. The Watchtower Society had said that they could not see beyond 1975. This had to be the day. Mom made all of us go to bed early that night. By this time, there were six children. I lay in my bed wondering what the world would look like the next morning. I never ever for even a moment doubted that the end of the world would come this night. While everyone that I went to school with were out celebrating the coming of the new year, I laid in my bed with tears in my eyes and my pillow over my head, silently praying. Please, Jehovah, keep my family safe, I prayed over and over, until finally I fell asleep.
  
  When I awoke the next morning, much to my surprise, everything looks the same. Nothing had happened. Armageddon did not come. I was so confused. What happened? Mom and dad, nor any of us kids talked about it. It was never mentioned. But something had happened. I didn’t realize it at the time, but a small crack had developed in the foundation of my belief of the so-called “truth”. This crack so small, that I didn’t know it was there, would grow to the point that one day I would be able to free myself from the bonds of the Watchtower Society.
  
  Jehovah’s Witnesses
  
  Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Watch Tower Society, calculated 1874 as the year of Christ’s Second Coming, and taught that Christ was invisibly present and ruling from the heavens since that year.[24][25][26][27] Russell proclaimed Christ’s invisible return in 1874,[28] the resurrection of the saints in 1875,[29] and predicted the end of the “harvest” and the Rapture of the saints to heaven for 1878,[30] and the final end of “the day of wrath” in 1914.[31] 1874 was considered the end of 6,000 years of human history and the beginning of judgment by Christ.[32] A 1917 Watch Tower Society publication predicted that in 1918, God would begin to destroy churches and millions of their members.[33]
  
  J.F. Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as president of the Watch Tower Society, predicted that the Millennium would begin in 1925, and that biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David would be resurrected as “princes”. The Watch Tower Society bought property and built a house, Beth Sarim, in California for their return.[34]
  
  From 1966, statements in Jehovah’s Witness publications raised strong expectations that Armageddon would arrive in 1975. In 1974 Witnesses were commended for selling their homes and property to “finish out the rest of their days in this old system” in full time preaching.[35] In 1976 The Watchtower advised those who had been “disappointed” by the failure of the predictions for 1975 to adjust their viewpoint because their understanding had been “based on wrong premises”,[36] but four years later the Watch Tower Society admitted its responsibility in building up hope regarding 1975.[37]
  
  Wiki
  
  1914 wasn’t a bad guess, since that’s the year World War One broke out.
  - Drew J Jones on May 22, 2011 at 1:16 pm
    
    The traumatized kids are the real tragedy. There was a story in the Boston Globe a few days ago about a family in which the mother and father blew the kids’ college funds because they were sure the rapture was coming. Also told the kids they weren’t going to Heaven.
    
    It was like somebody had written a script for a Christopher Hitchens documentary or something.
    
    Fortunately, the kids seemed pretty sharp and were shrugging it off. But I suspect they’re among the best-adjusted to their parents’ idiocy.
Richard Bachman on May 20, 2011 at 9:02 pm

So it’s going to be just like New Years Eve, huh? THAT IS SO COOOOOOL!

We can watch the dead start rising at 2:00 AM somewhere in the South Pacific and follow it around the globe as it gets closer and closer to us. Is Dick Clark doing a Rocking Rapture Show? Gotta check that schedule before I hit the sack. Maybe he can interview some of the people who are left behind to suffer through the torment of the next few months until the actual end of the world comes later this year!! That would make for some killer TeeVee.

Hey, there’s a cemetery about a mile down the road from me. I think I’ll pack a cooler and a video camera and head down there late tomorrow afternoon to make sure I get a good look at this once in a lifetime experience.

Since Halley’s comet was such a bust when it came through a few years ago, I’m sure this will more than make up for that disappointment. If there’s one thing that fundie Christians stress to we heathen infidels, it’s that god doesn’t disappoint.

Bring on the show!!! Jeebus, strut your stuff!!!
Richard Bachman on May 20, 2011 at 9:22 pm

You know, we all joke about Harold Camping and his small band of looney followers, but the fact remains that there are tens of millions of people in this country who are members of Christian denominations which believe that the rapture will actually occur. They are no different than the Harold Camping’s of the world. They simply state that only god knows the time of the rapture. That is all that makes them different from Camping. Not much of a comfortable distinction there, now is it? But their belief in it’s reality is no less fervent than that of Harold Camping. They are just as delusional and irrational in their beliefs, and many times are much more fervent in their insistence that we accord this crazy view with respect and deference, in the same way that we respect proven scientific theories.

These churches are on every street corner in every little nook and cranny of this country. And they preach the same nutty rapture doctrine as Camping. They are considered respectable within their communities and, for some reason, we obligingly look past this crazy doctrine that they hold. So we can all have a good laugh tomorrow when we wake up, still, to a world full of fundamentalist Christians. But we should take a minute to consider that this rapture doctrine will still be held as fact within a large segment of many mainstream Christian churches. And in many cases, the members of these churches are the ones getting elected to positions within local and state governments and on local school boards. And that, I don’t find at all funny.
- BooMan on May 20, 2011 at 10:09 pm
  
  Here’s a sweet list of fail.
- MNPundit on May 21, 2011 at 3:48 am
  
  Well for one thing, my understanding is that most Christian denominations do not actually believe stuff Camping says will happen will literally happen. But even assuming they do, you still have an obligation to be responsible to the world around you and not abuse it or ruin it for future generations, same as ever.
clearskies on May 20, 2011 at 10:01 pm

My brother, who is not a dummy and not a fundie (he’s an engineer with a law degree) but he does believe in the existence of ghosts, in ESP, in past lives, in alien visitations via UFOs, and in the possibility of a world-ending disaster (in descending order of wackness). People believe all sorts of crap with little evidence. In my brothers case, I think he likes to think about this stuff because reality is boring, so he spices things up a bit.
clearskies on May 20, 2011 at 10:04 pm

Also, water witching. And maybe ESP should come after past lives….
- BooMan on May 20, 2011 at 10:10 pm
  
  If it rains any more here I am going to start believing in a Second Deluge.
  - clearskies on May 21, 2011 at 12:37 am
    
    I say, whatever floats your boat. Which you may need.
ejmw on May 20, 2011 at 10:16 pm
wilderness wench on May 20, 2011 at 10:44 pm

Frankly, I think it’s really all about sexual repression.
Don Durito on May 20, 2011 at 11:16 pm

Sun Ra sez: “It’s after the end of the world. Don’t you know that yet?”
GreenCaboose on May 20, 2011 at 11:21 pm

The rapture is in the same league as the “72 virgins”.

Wingnut fundamentalists are the same in every religion. Nucking futs.
GreenCaboose on May 20, 2011 at 11:49 pm

Seriously, I was trying to explain this to my teenagers and I said “well, these people imagine that they will be swept up into a heaven with every imaginable comfort while the rest of us (to my wife’s annoyance my 4 kids have all decided the whole God thing is a con game — I swear I didn’t tell them this, they got to that conclusion on their own) will be left in unimaginable hell for 6 months or so until the world ends, then we go to real hell.

After describing this to them I suddenly realized just how incredibly selfish and self-centered those rapture assholes are. It’s just like the extremist muslim assholes who believe in the 72 virgins shit (as noted above). I mean, these people are thrilled with the idea that they will lord it over the vast majority of the people on the earth who will experience (in their theory) unimaginable tortures.

Yeah. That pretty much sums up your Republican base right there.

Now, after this fails I home some enterprising Democrat comes up with some way to convince them all that the REAL rapture day is, oh, November 4, 2012. So there isn’t any need for them to vote or send in an absentee ballot or anything.
DaveW on May 21, 2011 at 12:02 am

After NPR spent way too much time bending over backwards to treat these loonytunes as if they were sane, they owed it to their listeners to give the self-styled prophets some more interview time on May 22. I’d enjoy hearing about how some computer bug spit out the wrong date.

Also about how the truest of the true believers intend to get along now that all their stuff is gone. I know, we should be compassionate and all, but when you think about it, the arrogance of folks so sure of their own righteousness, and the unworthiness of just about everybody else in the world, is astonishing. Especially in a cult that makes such a fuss about “humility”.

See ya all tomorrow. Or alternatively, have a nice trip.
ejmw on May 21, 2011 at 12:20 am

Actually I think the most ridiculous part of all of this is that people believe that God cares about time zones.
- Geov Parrish on May 21, 2011 at 1:41 am
  
  Or that a prediction including a provision for time zones is based on a book written almost two millenia before they were invented.
- CabinGirl on May 21, 2011 at 6:48 am
  
  I know – like God has to pace himself or something…
- BooMan on May 21, 2011 at 10:15 am
  
  well, if he created them, why wouldn’t he care about them?
  - ejmw on May 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
    
    Wait, people actually think God created time zones?!?
Hurria on May 21, 2011 at 4:02 am

It’s 1 AM here on the West Coast. Does that mean I missed it?!
- BooMan on May 21, 2011 at 10:14 am
  
  Probably. It’s six o’clock in a lot of places already and no rapture.
  - sidewinder on May 21, 2011 at 12:52 pm
    
    “… It’s six o’clock in a lot of places already and no rapture. “
    
    Oh, I don’t know .. I’m feeling pretty good. 😉
    - steppy on May 21, 2011 at 3:51 pm
      
      And it’s five o’clock somewhere, so drink up.
  - DaveW on May 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
    
    But don’t forget, USA Number 1. Surely we, as God’s chosen people would get to be first in line. It’s hard to give up on the hope that the neighbors might get scooped up.
- melo on May 21, 2011 at 2:04 pm
  
  maybe even the braindead who believe in the Rupture weren’t holy enough, so no-one floated out of their boots. damn…
  
  god’s just too fussy to take up anyone from this ship of fools. we’re all hellbound together, ain’t that the cutest thing?
The Voice In The Wilderness on May 21, 2011 at 6:44 pm

18 minutes to go. Since I was saved in a fundamentalist church as a kid and once saved always saeved, I just want to say “Goodbye, Nice to know you. Hope I don’t get a nosebleed passing Pluto”.
- The Voice In The Wilderness on May 21, 2011 at 7:04 pm
  
  Damn! 6:03 and I guess I’m not on the way to Jupiter and Beyond. Could Jesus’s watch be off?
AP on May 22, 2011 at 6:39 pm

Hey! You heathens still here?

:<)

I couldn’t resist. Just couldn’t. 🙂
- Indianadem on May 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm
  
  Hey AP, where ya been so long? You been missed.

Explaining the Rapture

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BooMan

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