Apocalypse Deferred

Thursday, May 26.  Our street is quiet as usual.

  It was about three years ago when I first heard of this.  A friend of mine asked me if I knew that Jesus was going to return on May 21, 2011. This surprised me.  He had told me he listened to Family Radio regularly, but I thought he knew better than to buy into any of Harold Camping’s date setting.  In fact, I thought Camping was done with trying to set dates after the 1994 fiasco.  I was wrong in both cases.  I watched the online debates between Campingites and, well, everyone else.  I watched as the day approached, while the campaigning by his followers caught the attention of the media and became a circus.  Needless to say, when May 21, 2011 arrived there was no rapture or earthquake.  For most people, it was just a regular Saturday.

  For the Campingites, however, it was a disappointment, maybe the biggest of their lives.  They were led to believe that the Bible guaranteed that Saturday would be their last day on earth, and after that, all their troubles would be over.  They supposedly had irrefutable evidence.  To many of them, it was inconceivable that they would still be on earth at this time.  Now they must pick up where they left off with their lives.  And they will have to look at the little souveniers of their campaign and wonder what they will do with them.

  The billboard on I-95 in Philadelphia was still up the next morning, still proclaiming May 21 as judgment day.  I would like to have taken a picture of it, but I was driving.  The judgment day proclamations were still up on the Campingite websites, although the main Family Radio site was unreachable due to heavy traffic. Then there are all the t-shirts, bumper stickers, and painted vehicles.   They now look like Christmas and New Year’s decorations that are still left hanging after January 2.

 I called my friend on Monday, but haven’t heard back yet.  I hope to talk to him soon.  I wonder what was going through his mind when Saturday passed uneventfully.  As for Camping, he made his position clear Monday night.  It looks like this is all over, but there are probably still some diehard followers now proclaiming that the rapture still happened, just not physically.  And that everything will still end as scheduled on October 21.