Overheard on Religious Radio
I wanted a break from Anna Karenina (still great, though!) and NPR had a call-in medical show, so I fooled around a bit and found a religious station running the call in show Open Forum with Brother Harold Camping. I hadn't heard "Open Forum" in years--I wasn't into it even as an evangelical, and to be clear, neither was anyone in my family--and while I expected to hear a sort of standard evangelical-to-fundamentalist Bible railing (it is, after all, a very long-running show on any number of Christian radio stations), I overheard sentence that simply blew my mind.
The subject was a discussion of Revelation 11:14, and whether Harold Camping sees that as talking about an eternal hell or if it can be part of an annihilationist interpretation. Camping is apparently an annihiliationist (no hell; at the end of time, bad people are just extinguished rather than tortured), but that's not even the point. He said--in passing mind you--the following sentence:
"This verse is talking about October 21st, 2011, when heaven and earth will both pass away..."
My suggestion: find out who listens to "Open Forum," and buy their houses. I think you'll find them motivated to sell.
The subject was a discussion of Revelation 11:14, and whether Harold Camping sees that as talking about an eternal hell or if it can be part of an annihilationist interpretation. Camping is apparently an annihiliationist (no hell; at the end of time, bad people are just extinguished rather than tortured), but that's not even the point. He said--in passing mind you--the following sentence:
"This verse is talking about October 21st, 2011, when heaven and earth will both pass away..."
My suggestion: find out who listens to "Open Forum," and buy their houses. I think you'll find them motivated to sell.
posted by Cowboy Dave Dickerson | 4:14 PM
4 Comments:
But if they really thought it was the end why would they want the money? Some people are crazy, both Christians and no-christians!
Did they get this idea from the Mayan calendar which has the "universe" ending in 2012 or thereabouts? Because I don't remember this number being kicked around in the Bible. It has to have been picked up somewhere, subsumed in the way that Christians are so good at doing with other people's religions, then spat back out as if it had always been there...
Angela, I think they'd want money to live well just before the Rapture--or to finally take that trip to the Holy Land or whatever other dream they've been putting off doing. That's what I'd do, anyway, and I don't think I'm that unusual. If I ever find I have three months to live, goodbye credit rating!
Brian, I'm positive that the number 2012 doesn't mean anything at all. It's just a guess being made by a guy who sees signs of the end all around him and is thinking it really can't last much longer, the way other people look around and think, "well, it's GOTTA be just another twenty years before the flying car."
What surprises me is that Rapture Ready's Rapture Index (just Google "Rapture Index") is at a fairly modest 168, not even the highest for the year (170), and down from 2001's record rating of 183. Of course I assume that the legalization of gay marriage, the election of a Democrat, the removal of a whole phalanx of Republicans from office, and the general worldwide love Obama seems to inspire will all be seen as dangerous omens. (Nothing a fundamentalist distrusts more than ecumenism and the risk of world peace!)
Oops! Left that last comment go unfinished. The final thought was "...so I expect the Rapture Index to climb really fast really soon. But I'll have more to say on this later."
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