This is off topic, but too good to resist.   Did you know that the world is going to end tomorrow evening?    Yep.   According to Harold Camping and his followers, we’ve got less than 24 hours.   Or rather, believers have less than 24 hours before they are all swept up to heaven.   Us non-believers will have to endure 5 months of war, famine, earthquakes and plagues before the earth is ultimately destroyed sometime in October.

The other day I saw a homeless guy on the subway carrying a sign that said, “Judgment Day May 21, 2011”  but he was still asking for money.   Maybe he thinks they’ll be short on food in heaven  (or maybe, and this is just my guess, someone paid him to carry that sign around).

How do the believers know the end of the world is just hours away?   Mr. Camping apparently worked it out using the Bible.   In a convenient ‘pick and choose’ kind of way which totally disregards the part where Jesus says (in Mark 24:36, for those of you who are interested)  in reference to the second coming, “But of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”    If you’re going to believe it, shouldn’t you believe all of it?  Of course, Mr. Camping originally predicted that the world would end in 1994, but he says he has new evidence which makes this predication – or prophecy, as he calls it – a certainty.

Ok, but what happens to his followers when they wake up on the morning of May 22nd and they’re still here on earth?   Some of them have quit their jobs in anticipation of this event.    Will they still follow Mr. Camping?  Will they call their places of work and say, “Sorry about that whole quitting thing – the Rapture didn’t happen so can I have my job back?”

I was talking to my friend Kristin about it this evening and she said, “Well what if it started to happen and you said, ‘oh, I believe now’ – would you be saved?”   Good question!  Is there a deadline by which you need to become a believer and if you miss it, you’re out of luck?   Like, if the clouds part and you see Jesus, that might be enough to get you to change your mind.  Would he then say, ‘too late buddy!’ and leave you here among the heathens?

Joshua and I will be going out to dinner tomorrow, which he says should put us in a good position to watch all the people flying up to heaven before we take in a movie.  Do you think the theaters will stay open?   I’d hate to think I waited one day too long to go and see “Pirates of the Caribbean:  On Stranger Tides”.

Bottom line is, I’m pretty sure the Rapture isn’t happening tomorrow afternoon (or ever), but if it does and the internet goes down as a result,  you might not hear from me for awhile.    That’s ok.  As R.E.M. once said, “It’s the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine.”