Michael Cosgrove - I guess I'd better write this article quickly just in case The Rapture engulfs my apartment block before I get a chance to finish it. That's the problem with raptures, they are like policemen - always there when you don't want them. Worse, I have already booked my summer vacation and paid for most of it.
Not that I have anything against raptures per se mind you, it's just that I wasn't invited to vote for or against this one so why should it apply to me? As someone who enjoys a spiritual dimension to his life but does not believe in organized religion I am a sort of one-man religion, so if I decided to do a rapture it would just apply to me. Fair's fair after all.
But no, here we have Howard Camping, a fringe evangelist who, bored after retiring from his job as a civil engineer, has used his ability to impress people with complex mathematical formulas in order to try to ensure that my neighbor (who happens to be a very pretty young lady in her mid-thirties who....but I digress) will not be able to pick up the shiny brand-new car she was due to collect next Wednesday. Or should I say she would be able to, but only if she converted to Camping's belief, which is that although he and his paid-up believers are going to be drinking champagne and eating vol-au-vents with the big G at six this evening, all Jews, Muslims, Catholics and pretty much everyone else are going to find out what it must be like to die in a nuclear bomb blast.
And it's not as if he were the first. It seems that any old Tom Dick and Harry these days can have the bright idea of giving the world something to look forward to. All he needs is an Internet connection and enough net-savvy to know how to get his prediction up there on the first page of Google search results. Let's face it, Raptures just ain't what they used to be any more and they will all be forgotten tomorrow. Oh for the days when rapturers' predictions would be talked about hundreds of years later.
One of the better known of the early rapturers was a guy called Daniel, who wrote a book which claimed that the church would be threatened by whores and savage animals just before judgement day. No-one believed him though, and quite rightly so. I mean, would you believe anyone who can't prove when he was born, never mind where? Think Obama! Dan is said to have lived at various times between the 2nd and 6th centuries. But he never even produced a short-form birth certificate, never mind the long-form version that Obama did, so he was a dud.
Then there was a Jesuit called Francisco Ribera who wrote a book on bible prophesy in the late 1500's. But his idea was that whereas all god-fearing Christians would go to heaven in his version of The Rapture, the rest of us would have to stay on Earth and fry. Most major publishing houses refused his book though - and quite rightly so - because it was elitist and a crafty attempt to get people to join the Jesuits or die. Not a nice guy, and I wouldn't leave my goddaughter alone in his company.
Next up were the Millerites and their Great Disappointment. Slated for 22 October 1844, thousands of believers gave all their stuff away to poor people and waited at the Rapture bus stop for their bus to come, but it didn't arrive on time, but they waited anyway, just in case it had been held up in rush hour traffic. However, darkness fell and the bus still hadn't arrived. One or two people asked about alternative transport methods but the trains were on strike and the nearest airport was 55 miles away. In fact it finally turned out that the bus had been cancelled due to a busted cam-shaft so they all went home looking a little silly. The story doesn't say if they asked for their stuff back the next day.
The Seventh Day Adventist Church came up with an original angle though at the beginning. Very clever indeed, you gotta hand it to them. Their line was that Jesus had in fact already returned but that because we were all so bad and evil we were blinded to it. That was a brilliant piece of marketing, worthy of the best of insurance sales techniques in that it was difficult to prove that its wrong. Still, this is my favorite Rapture idea because at least we know that the world is not about to disappear in a cataclym of gigantic proportions. They have watered that one down a little though and now say he has yet to arrive (another late bus?) Still, at least they aren't packing the rest of us off to oblivion.
I would like to tell you just one more little rapture story. The Guardian informs us of a woman in America called Abby Haddad Carson who is a Rapture believer, although her children don't believe. One of those children, Grace Haddad, says that "My mom has told me directly that I'm not going to get into heaven." Now isn't that nice? I mean, what kind of person would tell her own children that? Why doesn't the mother stay with them to the end like any normal mother would? I have snitched on her by writing an email to god, advising him that he should refuse to grant her entry if this thing happens. I haven't received a reply yet, but then again he never replies to me so I'm not surprised.....
There are many more Rapture day predictions of course, but like I say I can't make this article overly-long because I want to put it on the Internet in time just in case. And if The Rapture actually does go ahead as planned and you are one of those who goes to heaven, just remember that I wouldn't have liked it up there anyway because there's no sex, drugs, Jack Janiels, rock and roll, good restaurants or anything else I like to be had there. Not only that, I have been informed by a highly-placed contact that none of my friends would be admitted. Most of all though, my contact adds that there aren't even any Rapturists to poke gentle fun at up there because big G has passed a law which outlaws all dissent. No way man, that is so bo-ring. On balance, I think I'll stay here, sin as usual, take my chances and wish those of you who shall be heavenbound at six the best of luck...!
