A final word on the Apocalypse?

By the fact that you are reading this, I gather that you have not been raptured.  By the fact that I am typing this, you may gather the same about me.  And thus ends the debacle that was May 21 Doomsday.  Or does it?
Harold Camping is not the first, in the name of scripture, to predict a specific date for Judgement Day.  And despite Jesus's warning's against such predictions (and predictors), Camping's followers are not the first group to wholeheartedly sell out their possessions and lives in preparation for the second coming.  The Apocalypse has been incorrectly predicted time and again, by prognosticators both scientific and religious.  The founders of both the Methodist and the Seventh-Day Adventist churches predicted dates for the end of the world.  So despite Camping's failed prophecy, don't expect his followers to abandon ship just yet.

In fact, Camping has not abandoned his own ship.  In an interview with BBC, he maintains that the world has indeed entered into Judgement, though not with the kind of flare he'd expected.  The actual date for the end of the world, he maintains, is October 21, 2011.  So we will have to wait until then to see if he is truly correct.  The benefit for us here is that we get to continue Apocalypse Watch 2011 until that day.  The bad news is that, just as before, people craving escape from this broken world will continue to follow Brother Harold into deceit.

Props to Camping for hedging his bets.  While some of his followers have literally given everything they owned in expectation of the end, he awoke on May 22 still owning a private, for-profit business capable of sustaining him.  Family Radio is worth over $100 million, and I am guessing that won't be much different on the morning of October 22.

I have taken three observations  from this debacle.  First, the bible is an incredibly challenging book to understand.  Debates have raged since before canonization about what Christianity actually means.  I am thankful for the redemption brought through the Church, but I am saddened at the manipulation and confusion that has diverted millions from the goodness of the gospel.  I pray that we would be protected from those who use the scripture to promise health and wealth, to promote violence and to swindle the masses.

Second,  if you want to see how invested a prophet is in his own predictions, check his bank account.  Like Camping, both of the Wesley brothers, the founders of Methodism, individually predicted different dates for the end of the world.  Like Camping, their dates were wrong.  However, John challenged his followers that poverty was a call of the gospel, proclaiming that dying with anything to one's name was shameful.  Unlike Camping, John Wesley lived in poverty, and died with less than $20 to his name.  So long as your prophet projects the end of the world while maintaining a healthy pocketbook, you should look at him with mistrust.

Finally, people are incredibly forgiving.  As I noted before, failed end of the world prophecies have sprouted before into huge, international denominations.  Remember, despite Brother Harold's previous incorrect predictions in 1994, he still maintained a large following, not to mention a lucrative radio network run exclusively by donations.  Even if the world fails to end in October, don't count on all his followers to jump ship.

So keep coming back as Apocalypse Watch 2011 progresses.  And remember, even if the world doesn't end, we still have the end of the Mayan calendar, scheduled for December 2012.  Happy watching.