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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
The beginning of The End
This is going to have to be quick. One wonders, even, if there is any point in writing it, since the world is going to end today and there won't be anyone left around worthy enough to read it.
As difficult as this concept of the End of Days may be to grasp, it is still an over-simplification. The world is not going to end today, precisely. Today is just the beginning of The End. At 6 p.m. (local time) the rapture will begin. This will see every person in the world who is "saved" -- at least by the standards of Harold Egbert Camping, a civil engineer who doubles as a radio evangelist in the United States -- taken up into heaven.
New Zealanders, being either the luckiest or the most faithful -- one suspects it is simply an accident of geography and Greenwich mean time -- will get there first and get the best seats because the rapture will begin at 6 p.m. (local time) in every international time zone. God, apparently, thinks like a travel agent, but what this means is that at least half of all the heaven-bound will be sitting on clouds looking down before Winnipeggers even get to go.
It doesn't seem fair, but it is kind of the way a travel agent or, perhaps, a civil engineer might organize things for convenience sake.
The world itself won't actually end until Oct. 21. Between 6 p.m. (local time) today and then, those of us up in the heavenly bleachers will get to watch quite a show as the rest of the world -- 97 per cent of them is Egbert's cheerful estimate -- lives through a preview of hell; it's kind of like renting a DVD and discovering that it consists of nothing but trailers for Adam Sandler's film Little Nicky, but you can't turn it off.
The Antichrist will rule the world, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes and just a general nastiness of every description will sweep the world, graves will open, the dead will walk and everything will hurt.
It will be kind of how Torontonians imagine a Winnipeg winter or New Democrats conceive of four years in Canada under a Conservative majority government led by Stephen Harper. In other words, it's almost Hell.
But it's not quite hell yet. That doesn't come until after Oct. 21, when the world truly ends and all the non-believers -- all 97 per cent of us, according to Mr. Camping -- will be herded onto the down escalators headed for the fiery furnace. It should be quite a spectacle and, all things considered, if I had to choose, I think I'd rather be up in the clouds, even if it is in the bleachers, rather than down here enduring a metaphorical Winnipeg winter with a Mephistophelian Mr. Harper.
Before you panic and give away all your money and worldly possessions to someone like me (1355 Mountain Ave.) and head for a hilltop to await the rapture, you might want to reflect that End-of-Daysies prophets have been egregiously wrong before. In fact, not a single one of them -- with the possible exception of Noah, I suppose, but although he has a kind of unfortunate relevance in Manitoba right now, he actually prevented rather than predicted the end of the world -- has ever been right. If even one of them had, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now -- Hello? Anybody there?
Even our Egbert has been wrong before. Mr. Camping previously predicted that the end of the world would occur in 1994. When the Day of Judgment came and he found himself still here among the other 97 per cent of us sinners, he went back to his Bible and recalculated and came up with May 21, 2011, 6 p.m. (local time.)
I suppose that eventually someone is going to get this right -- even the lotteries are won occasionally -- but why today? Would even the wrathful, jealous God of the Old Testament really go this far out of his way to ruin the May long weekend, not just for the sinners but for the saved as well? Surely he would wait until sometime on Tuesday -- by then, a lot of us will be willing to go anyway.
The list of false prophets is long. Mr. Camping figures prominently on it, but it also includes Charles T. Russell, the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who led his followers to a hilltop in 19th century America, only to troop down again the next day, despondent and disappointed and still earthbound; the Renaissance mystic Nostradamus, who pretty well has the whole calendar covered; Mormons, Christian fundamentalists, even Muslims -- all have predicted the End of Days. Primitive societies with barely organized religions have anticipated it, husbands who lingered too long in a bar have hoped for it, but all have been left with what the followers of one doomsday prophet called The Great Disappointment: When it was all over, the world was still with us.
And that, when you think about it, might not be such a terrible thing. This world isn't so bad and it could be a lot better if everyone worked a little harder at making it so. People who grab on to the lunatic theories of people like Harold Egbert Camping appear to be troubled. These predictions pretend to be based on the Bible, but as the old saying goes, even the Devil can quote scripture. The Bible, in fact, instructs Mr. Camping and the rest of us that the "day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night," and we should be ready at any time
Psychologists tell us that End-of-Daysies grab on because they like the idea of embracing collective salvation and avoiding individual responsibility. That's so 21st century that it's scary. It's a wonder the hilltops aren't crowded with people who don't want to get involved. There may be pie in the sky when you die, perhaps, but there is also pie here on Earth. The problem is, we have to make the pie ourselves. I'm planning to make one at 6 p.m. (local time) this evening, but before that, just in case, I think I'll head out to a long-overdue confession, just in case tonight's the night.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 21, 2011 A18
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