A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now? A reporter tracks down the remnants of Harold Campingâs apocalyptic movement and finds out you donât have to be crazy to believe something nuts. For a while, their message was everywhere. They paid for billboards, took out full-page ads in newspapers, distributed thousands of tracts. They drove across the county in RVs emblazoned with verses from the books of Revelation and Daniel. They marched around Manhattan holding signs. They broadcasted day and night on their network of radio stations. They warned the world. That warning turned out to be a false alarm. No giant earthquake rippled across the surface of the earth, nor were any believers caught up in the clouds. Harold Camping, the octogenarian whose nightly Bible call-in show whose nightly Bible call-in show fomented doomsday mania, suffered a stroke soon afterward and mostly disappeared from sight. The press coverage, which had been intense in the weeks leading up to May 21, 2011, dwindled to nothing. The story, as far as most people were concerned, was over. But I wanted to know what happens next. If youâre absolutely sure the world is going to end on a specific day, and it doesnât, what do you do? How do you explain it to yourself? What happens to your faith in God? Can you just scrape the bumper stickers off your car, throw away the t-shirts, and move on? In order to find out, I got to know a dozen or so believers prior to the scheduled apocalypse. I sat at their kitchen tables, attended their meetings, tagged along on trips to Wal-Mart, ate pizza in their hotel rooms, spent hours with them on the phone. Then, after Jesus was a no-show, I stayed in contact with themâthe ones who would talk to me, anywayâover the following days and months, checking back in to see how or if their thinking had changed. What happened after May 21 matches up fairly closely with what scholars of apocalyptic groups would expect. The so-called disconfirmation was not enough to undermine the faith of many believers. From what I can tell, those who had less invested in the prophecy were more likely to simply give up and return to normal life. Meanwhile, those who had risked almost everything seemed determined to reframe the prophecy, to search the scriptures, to hang on to the hope that the end might be nigh. I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me this was a prophecy rather than a prediction, maintained that he had never claimed to be certain about May 21. When I read him the transcript of our previous interview, he seemed genuinely surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. It was as if we were discussing a dream he couldnât quite remember. Other believers had no trouble recalling what they now viewed as an enormous embarrassment. Once October came and went without incident, the father of three was finished. âAfter October 22, I said âYou know what? I think I was part of a cult,ââ he told me. His main concern was how his sons, who were old enough to understand what was going on, would deal with everything: âMy wife and I joke that when my kids get older theyâre going to say that weâre the crazy parents who believed the world was going to end.â In the beginning, I was curious how believers would react, as if they were mice in a maze. But as time went on I grew to like and sympathize with many of them. This failed prophecy caused real harm, financially and emotionally. What was a curiosity for the rest of us was, for them, traumatic. And itâs important to remember that mainstream Christians also believe that Godâs son will play a return engagement, beam up his bona fide followers, and leave the wretched remainder to suffer unspeakable torment. Theyâre just not sure when. http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5983/a_year_after_the_non-apocalypse
Do you want to hear something REALLY crazy ? Check this out...some folks actually believe this. In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no biological father being involved. The same fatherless man called out to a friend called Lazarus, who had been dead long enough to stink, and Lazarus came back to life. The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three days. Forty days later, the fatherless man went to the top of a hill and then disappeared bodily in to the sky. If you murmur thoughts privately in your head, the fatherless man, and his âfatherâ (who is also himself) will hear your thoughts and may act upon them. He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in the world. If you do something bad, or something good, the same fatherless man sees all, even if nobody else does. You may be rewarded or punished accordingly, including after your death. The fatherless manâs virgin mother never died but âascendedâ bodily into heaven. Bread and wine, if blessed by a priest (who must have testicles), âbecomeâ the body and blood of the fatherless man. http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2012/03/08/the-mormon-church-racism-and-mitt-romney/
lol. . . . Free , i remember you saying these were your last posts and lots here on ET were Elated, until you came back and we found out that the world did not end like they said it will..
In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no biological father being involved. -------------------------- In vitro fertilization.
you know vitro fertilization requires either a means to freeze the sperm or it has to be implanted in minutes or it will die. since we know they didnt have coolers back then who jacked off right outside the virgin mary? just one of the nagging questions that might occure to critical thinkers.
My point is, that for years people couldn't explain it ( or reconcile it with nature) but it can be done.