And Now, the Backpedaling
(Alternate title: Invisible Rapture.)
Harold Camping, who got his fifteen minutes of fame predicting the end of the world this past Saturday, has started the backpedaling.
In a rambling discourse to reporters outside his Family Radio International office, Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer, indicated he had misread the signs in predicting that the faithful would be lifted up to Heaven Saturday, leaving sinners to suffer through five months of disasters until the Earth was consumed in a fireball on the End of Days.
God did “bring judgment on the world,” on Saturday, he said, but there will not be any terrible buildup to the end. When it comes, it will happen quickly, he said.
Funny how a “spiritual” apocalypse looks exactly like an apocalypse that isn’t there. I guess he doesn’t want to consider the alternate possibility: that he’s a superstitious fool who thinks that a many-times translated mishmash of writings from the bronze age has any bearing on the modern world. That would be too simple.
Last time he predicted the end of the world, his excuse was that he’d forgot to carry a two or something. This time, it’s that something happened, but we didn’t see it because it was invisible. I’m disappointed. Both of those are tired old excuses that have been used time and time again by previous prophets of armageddon. Would it have been too much to expect him to spend some time coming up with something new? I suppose it was.
