Debunked doomsday prognosticator Harold Camping finally answered the door of his compound last night to sheepishly acknowledge that the apocalypse was late. Harold Camping, the 89-year-old fundamentalist radio preacher who erroneously predicted that the Rapture would happen Saturday night at 6 p.m., told a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle that he was "flabbergasted" the Rapture didn't happen. "It has been a really tough weekend," said Camping.
And how are Camping's still-earthbound followers coping? Well, anyone easily persuaded the world would end at a specific date and time—instead of the less climactic Apocalypse-In-Process we see unfolding every day—probably doesn't have much trouble coming up with a rationalization for its postponement. "Judgment Day has come and passed, but it was a spiritual judgment on the world," one believer told NPR. "There is no more salvation. Salvation is over with. The fact is we have 153 days, and on the 21st of October, the world will end." Another says we were spared because of the prayers of Camping's flock, and that God "delayed judgment so that more people could be saved, but the end is 'imminent.'"
But a rival Rapture group was less forgiving; gathered outside Camping's compound yesterday, they urged mankind not to give up on eschatology just because of that charlatan Camping. "He's in big trouble with God," said "Rapture blogger" Jackie Alnor. "It's given people who hate Christianity an excuse to hate it even more." Alnor contends that the world will end, but no one—not even Camping—knows when.
"I don't think I am going to stop listening to him," one acolyte told the Chronicle, before sighing and adding, "I don't know, I gotta listen to him on Monday, see what he says on the radio." Yes, let us withhold judgment until we listen to his broadcast, shall we? Certainly there's a perfectly rational explanation for all of this.
