aka ‘the boy who cried wolfpocalypse’

as i sat in theatresports [improv comedy group i belong to] class last nite and people were joking about the whole rapture thing or lack of thing, it was a little frustrating to see how christians [to be seriously not confused with Christ-followers though] had once again managed to give the group a bad name… a laugh-out-loud point-and-mock bad name…

but this time it was a truly ridiculous premise – Harold Camping, a California preacher and registered loony toon claimed that the rapture would occur May 21, 2011 and that the world would be obliterated by a fireball October 21 [he is now claiming that he made a mistake – again, as he had predicted the end of the world in 1994 – and that the correct date is October 21 for the rapture – however he also says that he won’t give away any of his possessions before October 21] and was left hiding out in a motel with his wife when nothing happened…

it’s not so much that he ‘just made a mistake’ – he was never even in the same playing fields as someone who could have possibly gotten it right…

in Matthew 24.36 Jesus says this, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

so basically Jesus is saying that even He doesn’t know when the end is going to happen [difficult one maybe with our Jesus is God understanding, maybe He was simply talking about while He was living on earth as a human] and so no one else will. as in the days of Noah people will be going about their stuff – eating, drinking, watching bad movies – and then suddenly Boom, or maybe Whoosh!

what makes the whole thing a lot worse is that the big kook had a bunch of little kooks:

“Follower Jeff Hopkins also spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping’s May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 100-mile round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least $15 on gas each trip.

“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I’ve been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car,” said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, NY. “I was doing what I’ve been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I’ve been stymied. It’s like getting slapped in the face.” [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_apocalypse_saturday]

The only problem with saying “I was doing what I’ve been instructed to do through the Bible” is that Jeff clearly missed the part of the Bible that said ‘what you are doing is futile because no one knows the day or the hour’ and this whole story demonstrates once again that when the bible is misused or abused it can lead to good people being manipulated to do stupid things.

and the danger of ONLY receiving your feeding from someone else… if you had only just read the gospels Jeff, you would have clearly and obviously known that you were following the wrong guy… a large percentage of the church has adopted the lazy culture of being spoonfed from the front [as opposed to reading and studying and knowing scripture for yourself, at the same time as receiving scripture from others who have studied it and speak it well] and because you don’t read the Bible for yourself you have to believe whatever gets dished out to you and to misquote Helen Zille completely, “you get the biblical teaching you deserve.”

as a Christ-follower, there is one aspect of this story that we can take seriously. no, we will never know the exact day or hour, but in terms of urgency, in terms of living the life-to-the-full that Jesus spoke of, in terms of making an impact on the world and living in obedience to God and what the Bible actually says, we should live each day as if we suspect the rapture could happen today. Plan as if you’re going to live 1000 years but live as if you’re going to die tomorrow, i think someone said. Something like that.

love God, love people, take care of those in need, leave the billboarding to someone else…