According to Harold Camping, today is the Rapture, which means it is the day on which true Christian believers will be taken up to heaven, while the rest of us (some 97%) will die in a massive earthquake. It is the end of the world. We’ve already discussed the folly of believing you can predict earthquakes in an earlier blog. This is even crazier. Of course, it’s hardly a mainstream Christian view, but Camping does have a number of followers. He has already predicted the Rapture once, in 1994, but now claims that was an intermediary stage.
Camping plans to stay at home close to a tv and radio so he can follow reports on all of us heathens in the rest of the world as we die horribly. That’s nice.
My favourite part of the article is the mention of an enterprising man named Bart Centre, who has set up a business where people pay him to look after their pets following the Rapture. He told the Wall Street Journal they would be disappointed twice, “once because they weren’t raptured and again because I don’t do refunds.” You’d think it would have occurred to them that if they’re raptured and Bart Centre isn’t, he won’t be around very long to take care of their pets, but that doesn’t seem to have crossed the minds of the 250-odd people who have hired him.
Here’s some advice for those who believe they might be raptured.