Showing posts with label Rapture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rapture. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The incredible shrinking god of Harold Camping


Flannery O'Connor -- Southerner, literary great and faithful Catholic -- once wrote to a friend that "these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself."

That would reduce the deity of Family Radio's president, Harold Camping, to something on a subatomic level. You have to go pretty low to be understood by the 0-fer king of apocalyptic prognostication.

Monday was a day for irrationalizing in the Camping camp as the 89-year-old demonstrably false prophet explained that May 21 was a "spiritual" Judgment Day, and that we'll still all be Krispy Kritters come Oct. 21, just as he originally forecast.

Huh? As The Associated Press reporter no doubt discovered, a Camping you understand may well be a cause for alarm:

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

It's not the first time the 89-year-old retired civil engineer has been dismissed by the Christian mainstream and has been forced to explain when his prediction didn't come to pass. Camping also prophesized the Apocalypse would come in 1994, but said later that didn't happen then because of a mathematical error.

Camping's hands shook slightly as he pinned his microphone to his lapel, and as he clutched a worn Bible he spoke in a quivery monotone about listeners' earthly concerns after giving away their possessions in expectation of the Rapture.

Family Radio would never tell anyone what they should do with their possessions, and those who did would cope, Camping said.

"We're not in the business of financial advice," he said. "We're in the business of telling people there's someone who you can maybe talk to, maybe pray to, and that's God."

But he said he wouldn't give away all his possessions ahead of Oct 21.

"I still have to live in a house, I still have to drive a car," he said. "What would be the value of that? If it is Judgment Day why would I give it away?"

WHILE THE GOD of Harold Camping might be infinitesimal, so as to be understood by your average loony, my God is as big as the universe. (And I don't claim to understand Him. At all.)

And this little piss-ant of a false prophet -- he who has wasted big money and caused such widespread grief for those foolish enough to heed his mad teachings -- is going to have a lot of explaining to do upon his End of Days.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Half past the Apocalypse


It's half past the Apocalypse, Omaha time, and apparently we're all still here.

Omaha is strangely intact, and the awful, massive earthquake strangely absent . . . and I'm strangely unraptured. Don't they know it's the end of the world?

It ended in Family Radio's bank account.

Friday, May 20, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: Enraptured





While Harold Camping and his Family Radio devotees have been preparing to be caught up to Jesus in the sky today, I've been working on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, just in case.

I sincerely hope you find the program . . . enrapturing.

And if I'm still around, and you're still around, come Sunday we'll have us some fun.

And if I'm still around, and you're still around, and the Rapture-ready folks aren't anymore come Sunday, next week's edition of the Big Show will be broadcast via the facilities of KYFR, 920 on your AM dial, Shenandoah, Iowa.

Being that Mr. Camping and Family Radio won't have any use of KYFR anymore, we will be returning that frequency to rock 'n' roll for the duration.



I'VE EVEN got a slogan: "Rock around the clock while the world goes to pot." That's because Jimmy Buffett already took "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?"

It's not like we'd have anything to lose, being that eternal doom already awaited.

Anyway, enjoy the show . . . for whatever time we all have left.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there (or not). Aloha.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

The upside of the End of Days


Look on the bright side: Harold Camping could be right, and we might be raptured before a certain Omaha songwriter and
YouTube maven can compose again.


Son of a bitch.

The Tribulation has started ahead of schedule, and there may be no saving us now.