Camping Out

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Garsh-darn-it, I’ve missed the end of the world again! I’ve been so busy lately that I hadn’t bothered to pay attention to that which really matters. So here I find myself in the post-apocalyptic world and still waiting for a bus. Was that all there really was to life? I mean, I just found out that the world was ending on the day of. Couldn’t I get at least 24 hours’ notice? (I wish we’d all been ready?) A group called eBible Fellowship, followers of the late Harold Camping, figured out that his prediction of the end for May 21, 2011 was only the shutting of Heaven’s doors. I’d been wondering where that draft was coming from. According to the Radnor Patch, the actual end of the world, according to eBible’s calculations based on Camping’s spiritual algebra, was yesterday. That could explain a lot.

Apocalyptic groups have often had a problem getting the exact day right. No surprise there, however, since the Bible says even Jesus doesn’t know. Historically, there have been a number of options available to the budding apocalyptist. You can simply go very quiet and hope nobody notices. You can commit mass suicide (not recommended). And others would seem to suggest that you can claim it did happen, but that we just haven’t noticed yet. That was the response of some of Charles Taze Russell’s followers when 1914 saw the continuation of the world, despite a war that has scarred it ever since. Maybe the world has ended many times before. Still, the rest of us still find ourselves too busy to notice.

Here it comes.

Hyakutake, 1996. My first comet.

Apocalypticism is most prominent among those groups that hold to a biblical dating of the world. If it has only been here about 6000 years, then its imminent end seems entirely plausible. Those who take a longer view, more on the order of billions of years, seem a little less worried. That’s not to say that the world couldn’t end. A reasonably sized asteroid could finish it for our species. We wouldn’t need a supernova to do us in. Still, we can learn something from the chiliasts. We can learn that introspection is not a bad thing. We don’t need to hoard weapons, canned goods, and water, but we can stop once in a while and ask if all this insane running around we all do is really worth the effort. Since the world has ended, I’m thinking I might slow down a bit. I’ve got a lot that I still want to accomplish, but given that it’s all over, what’s the rush? I just wonder if they’ll buy this kind of reasoning at work.

That’s All, Folks

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As May is now upon us, in keeping with the spirit of Beltane, we are being warned to make ourselves ready for the end of the world. At Rutgers Day on Saturday, the eBible Fellowship was out in force, handing out tracts declaring in no uncertain terms that this month will see the dissolution of all things. Now is the time to buy things on credit, apparently, but make sure the payments aren’t due at least until next month! I’ve written a few posts on this particular prediction before, but the flyers I received have helped clarify a few things for me. I wondered why the god of eBible Fellowship had chosen this year to end it all. It turns out that this is the 7000th year after the flood! Things have been going swimmingly for seven millennia, so it is time to call it all to a halt.

Reading further, I was amazed at how accurate the reading of the cosmic timeclock has become. According to the pamphlet, the Church Age ended May 21, 1988. At that time I was too busy trying to get into doctoral programs in Bible to notice, I guess. According to eBible, the Bible states that the tribulation began then and would last for 23 years. That does explain my career history. Reading the passages they cite, however, I just don’t see the numbers adding up. eBible claims that God stopped using churches in 1988, so if you’ve been spending your Sundays there, I guess the joke’s on you. It kind of makes me glad that I was never ordained.

Samuel de Champlain does not endorse eBible Fellowship

Intrigued, I decided to look at their website. For a temporary site there do seem to be a number of incomplete pages announcing that more is coming. There are podcasts about what to do in case you are not raptured on the twenty-first, as well as proof that the world is 13,000 years old, unlike the traditional Ussher date (his name is misspelled on the website). The group, which is based in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, states: “We are living at a time when the Bible is being highly exalted by God.” A classic statement of bibliolatry – I was not surprised to note that the King James Version is the one the Fellowship approves. I didn’t see that they calculated the fact that 19 days before the end of the world the KJV would become 400 years old. The only significant event I could find for May 21 of 1611 is that Samuel de Champlain returned to Québec from France. I sure I am missing the hidden meaning of that event, since crossing the sea is almost certainly a metaphor for the flood and Samuel is a prophet in the Hebrew Bible.