On a previous post I talked about Harold Camping who has a program on Family Radio. While having no formal education in Scripture (his background is in civil engineering), he presents himself as an expert on the Bible, and particularly in predicting the Rapture (this is the belief that at a fixed point in time God will take the righteous directly into Heaven and leave Earth in the hands of Satan who will have his way with those remaining before God destroys the world). Mr. Camping predicted that the Rapture would be May 21, 2011 at 6PM.

This should surprise nobody but his deadline came and went without anything happening. For what it’s worth I texted a few of my chaplain colleagues at 6:15PM to make sure we were all still here (and we were). We were amused but not surprised.

Harold was surprised and definitely not amused. After hiding from his followers and the press for a few days, he announced that May 21st was a “spiritual” judgement day and the world will definitely end on October 21st. Since he predicted that he and his followers would be in Heaven by now, watching the rest of us dealing with earthquakes and other disasters, you have to figure it sucks to be him. I can only imagine what he will say on October 22nd.

Finally, here’s my question: before May 21st we were all warned that the Rapture could happen at any time. The message was clear: don’t sin because the Rapture could happen right after your worst sin. That won’t look good to God who decides who goes and who stays. But now we know that the Rapture won’t happen until October. Doesn’t that give us a free summer? Sin with abandon in June, July, August, September, and the first two weeks of October. Then repent by October 21st and be among the saved.

If I were the Las Vegas Visitor’s Bureau I’d be all over this.

By the way, Family Radio still has a web page announcing the end of the world on May 21st.

Am I sinning by laughing at this?