Rapture rescheduled for October 21; Apocalypse to cancel USC-ND game

Harold Camping, the nutjob blasphemer fundamentalist evangelical preacher and radio host whose prediction of a May 21 Rapture launched a thousand snarky tweets, isn’t backing down in the face of the…uh…evident lack of a Rapture over the weekend. Instead, he’s doubling down!

Camping says the world will still end on October 21, as he’s predicted all along. Originally, he said there would be a five-month period of Tribulations in between the Rapture (May 21) and the Apocalypse (October 21). But now he thinks everything is going to happen all at once: Rapture, Tribulations, Apocalypse. Boom. “The great earthquake and rapture and the universe melting in fervent heat will be happening on the last day – October 21 2011. It’s all going to happen on the last day.”

But wait — what about May 21, this past Saturday? What happened? Well, Camping says the Second Coming and Day of Judgment did happen on Saturday; it just took a different form than expected. He explains:

We were convinced that on May 21 God would return here in a very physical way by bringing a great earthquake and ushering in the final five months of the day of judgement and the fact is when we look at it spiritually, we find he did come. …

On May 21 2011 we didn’t feel or see any difference in the world but we know from the Bible that God brought judgement day to bear on the whole world – and it will continue right up until October 21 2011 when the whole world will be destroyed. …

When you study the Bible, you’re always learning. We had all of our dates correct. But God had not opened our eyes yet to the fact that May 21 was a spiritual coming – not a physical coming. … We didn’t understand the spiritual meaning of May 21.

So, why did God change plans, and decide to compress the Rapture and Apocalypse into a single fiery day of reckoning on October 21? Camping has a theory:

The great earthquake didn’t happen on May 21 because no-one will be able to survive it for more than a few days or let alone five months to suffer God’s wrath because everything will be levelled and destroyed after that earthquake and there will be no food or water to keep everyone alive.

The Bible tells us that Christ has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God is a very compassionate God and while the law of God demands that there has to be punishment it does not mean God is going to punish, and punish, and punish, and punish.

God hadn’t thought about the implications of the great earthquake before, I guess. Hey, the Dude’s got a lot on his mind, cut him some slack!

Anyway, the October 21 Rapture/Apocalypse prediction is an intriguing one for me, because, if all goes as planned (in my life, not in Camping’s delusions theology), I’ll be flying from Denver to Chicago that day, in order to attend the USC-Notre Dame game in South Bend the next day, October 22 — the first night game in 21 years at Notre Dame Stadium, and my first time back since 2006. The trip is my 30th birthday present from Becky, and I can’t wait.

But, alas, I guess this means I’ll never get to see that game, because the “universe will melt in fervent heat” before the Irish and Trojans ever get to take the field. D’oh!

This leads me to one inescapable conclusion, well expressed by former “Boi From Troy” Scott Schmidt on Twitter:

Heh.

On the bright side, if the timing is right, maybe I’ll get an awesome view of the Rapture from the airplane; I’ll have to be sure to get a window seat, and watch for Ascenders passing through our cruising altitude on their way to Heaven. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a front-row seat to the Apocalypse, whatever that would look like from above.

Oh, and one more bright side: no more #PANIC about the implications of turning 30, nine days after the Apocalypse! 😉