Rapt
Well, I'm still here. It's not 6:00 PDT yet, but I'm reasonably certain I'll still be here at 6:01. Oakland's religious seer Harold Camping was either working with faulty data or was just simply wrong. The graves have not opened in the midst of world-wide earthquakes, people have not vanished in large or even small numbers. The Rapture, as far as I can tell, just didn't happen. Either that, or God didn't want any of us, which, of course, would certainly be understandable.
The media was pretty restrained in its coverage of the Camping phenomenon, at least up to this point, treating the affair as just an eccentric blip in theological considerations. It's been awhile since we've had the announcement of the End Times in such detail, so the prediction did have some newsworthiness, but not much. Now that the scheduled time has passed for most of the world, the press has a bit more to say, either with snark or with some journalistic neutrality.
I'm still rather puzzled by some parts of this story, however. Millions of dollars worth of publicity for the event (billboards sprang up everywhere), were spent. Where did that money come from? And why was it spent that way? Did the advertisers really think the faithful needed to get ready? If they were faithful, wouldn't they already be ready? Was it all just a scam by some despicable hucksters? Or are people so overwhelmed by powerlessness they needed some kind of anchor, something that will keep them from the constant battering of vicissitudes?
Who knows. Certainly not I.
I'm just tapping away at the keyboard with one eye on the clock.
The media was pretty restrained in its coverage of the Camping phenomenon, at least up to this point, treating the affair as just an eccentric blip in theological considerations. It's been awhile since we've had the announcement of the End Times in such detail, so the prediction did have some newsworthiness, but not much. Now that the scheduled time has passed for most of the world, the press has a bit more to say, either with snark or with some journalistic neutrality.
I'm still rather puzzled by some parts of this story, however. Millions of dollars worth of publicity for the event (billboards sprang up everywhere), were spent. Where did that money come from? And why was it spent that way? Did the advertisers really think the faithful needed to get ready? If they were faithful, wouldn't they already be ready? Was it all just a scam by some despicable hucksters? Or are people so overwhelmed by powerlessness they needed some kind of anchor, something that will keep them from the constant battering of vicissitudes?
Who knows. Certainly not I.
I'm just tapping away at the keyboard with one eye on the clock.
Labels: Musings
posted by Diane at 5:30 AM
2 Comments:
Well, Camping said it was 6 p.m. (local time). There has been no notice of a rapture in New Zealand yet, so I'd say his calculations were definitely off. We'll have to see what the Family Radio web site says tomorrow or Monday. I was kind of looking forward to a Looting Party tomorrow. The Facebook page reported had some 500,000 people sign up for them.
Go to somegreybloke.com for a really good video about the rapture.
http://www.youtube.com/somegreybloke#p/a/u/0/hmX-lZOYcVA
According to a NY Times article today, Camping's Family Radio network has some $34 million in investments, assets of $56 million and mortgages totaling $29 million (lastest IRS filing). Ol' L. Ron and B.T. Barnum were right... form your own church and make a fortune, the rubes are ripe for the picking.
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