Before I begin: take a deep breath and relax, this is NOT A SUICIDE DIARY ENTRY. Life is definitely worth living. I'm even planning on going to London in 2012 to see some Olympic stuff. Greenwich Park, here we come.
That is, of course, unless the religious fundamentalists get their way...
...more below the fold.
These billboards, and others like them, are the work of Harold Camping, the founder and President of Family Stations, Inc. His websites at ebiblefellowship.com and wecanknow.com cater to those that actually find comfort in sentences constructed in the early 16000 1600's (lots of 'thou art's and 'for thee's) , they even have a Yahoo message group here attracting a few followers a week, and they're pretty adamant this will happen.
According to the front page of WeCanKnow...
Study the proofs that God has so graciously given in His Word showing us that these dates are 100% accurate and beyond dispute.
Scary stuff. Until you understand that this isn't the first time Harold has made a prediction based on an R.E.M song.
Harold Camping has finally gone completely off. Having proved himself a false prophet by predicting that Christ would return to earth on September 6, 1994, Camping continues to make false prophecies. His most recent one is the absurd claim that the Church age has come to an end, and the Tribulation has begun. God is through with the church, Camping insists. He wants all Christians to leave their churches and trust Family Radio to be the vehicle through which the gospel is preached to the whole world. (You can guess where Camping thinks you should send all your money.)
He even wrote a book called "1994?". Here's a part of a review.
In his book 1994? Harold Camping states the end of the world may occur this year, somewhere between September 15-17 (p. 531). He does not know the exact day because Scripture says "no man knows the day nor the hour" (Matt. 24:36). But according to Camping we can certainly know the month and the year that Christ will return.
The main glue that holds Camping's book together is numerology: that part of ancient mysticism that endeavors to find hidden truths locked in literal terminology through numbers. Mystical numbers are the keys that allegedly unlock the hidden truths concealed in literal language. The basic theory this system operates on is that God created a perfect world and a perfect word (the Bible) which exhibit precise numerical and symmetrical design.
Obviously not so certain that time, but at least he's changed his tune regarding how he can know (in direct contradiction to Matthew 24:36). One reviewer linked from Amazon says...
The correct title is 1994?, with a question mark. We used to listen to his radio talk show at work, and a caller once asked him "Didn't you predict the end of the world in 1994?" Camping pointed out to him that the title of the book has a question mark at the end. The world might in 1994. As it turns out, he was off by more than a couple of years.
But it's not Harold that worries me.
What worries me are his followers. In 1992, when his book came out, the internet was the domain of uber-nerds. People received chain letters as actual chain letters. And Harold left a little wiggle room.
Today, the wiggle room has gone. Harold is convincing the frightened of mind that this will happen, 100% guaranteed, and they WILL be Raptured on a Saturday in 2011. So what happens when they don't? And what happens when dozens of people flood that message board the day after to say "you still here? Didn't get raptured then, did you fool!"? There seems to be an increase of The Crazy thanks to the availability of consipacies, and it just takes one pissed off Left Behinder with an arsenal ...you can imagine the rest.
EDIT - you don't need to be an Einstein to know that web pages are as easy to change as typing in something new and over-writing the old version. Information disappears down the rabbit hole all the time on the 'net, so I thought I would do this.
This is a screen shot of the WeCanKnow website where the prediction is made, and the assertion that it's "100% accurate and beyond dispute".