The End is Nigh.

[Belkin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/...pocalypse_soon



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RALEIGH, N.C. – If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.

Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011.

To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling through Latin America and Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.

"A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe."

In August, Exley left her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to work with Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio Worldwide, the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible.

She is organizing traveling columns of RVs carrying the message from city to city, a logistics challenge that her military experience has helped solve. The vehicles are scheduled to be in five North Carolina cities between now and the second week of January, but Exley will shortly be gone: overseas, where she hopes to eventually make it back to Iraq.

"I don't really have plans to come back," she said. "Time is short."

Not everyone who's heard Camping's message is taking such a dramatic step. They're remaining in their day-to-day lives, but helping publicize the prophecy in other ways. Allison Warden, of Raleigh, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, post cards and other media in cities across the U.S. through a website, We Can Know.

The 29-year-old payroll clerk laughs when asked about reactions to the message, which is plastered all over her car.

"It's definitely against the grain, I know that," she said. "We're hoping people won't take our word for it, or Harold Camping's word for it. We're hoping that people will search the scriptures for themselves."

Camping, 89, believes the Bible essentially functions as a cosmic calendar explaining exactly when various prophecies will be fulfilled.

The retired civil engineer said all his calculations come from close readings of the Bible, but that external events like the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 are signs confirming the date.

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment," he said.

The doctrine known as the Rapture teaches that believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time. Camping believes that will happen in October.

"If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved. Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all," Warden said.

The belief that Christ will return to earth and bring an end to history has been a basic element of Christian belief since the first century. The Book of Revelation, which comes last in the New Testament, describes this conclusion in vivid language that has inspired Christians for centuries.

But few churches are willing to set a date for the end of the world, heeding Jesus' words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that no one can know the day or hour it will happen. Predictions like Camping's, though, aren't new. One of the most famous in history was by the Baptist leader William Miller, who predicted the end for Oct. 22, 1844, which came to be known as the Great Disappointment among his followers, some of whom subsequently founded the Seventh Day Adventist church.

"In the U.S., there is still a significant population, mostly Protestant, who look at the Bible as kind of a puzzle, and the puzzle is God's word and it's predicting when the end times will come," said Catherine Wessinger, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies millennialism, the belief in pending apocalypse.

"A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society," she said. "Right now, there's a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it's not all random, it's part of God's plan."

Past predictions that failed to come true don't have any bearing on the current calculation, believers maintain.

"It would be like telling the Wright brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn't even try," said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message.

For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion: God's compassion for people, and the hope that there's still time to be saved.

That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley, who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. Her hope is that not everyone who hears her message will mock it, and that even people who dismiss her now might still come to believe.

"If you still want to say we're crazy, go ahead," she said. "But it doesn't hurt to look into it."


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Why weren't we informed of this earlier? This is only a few months away and I haven't even graduated college yet!

[isladar]

Harold Camping, lol.

[Byrd]

The Mayans are going to be pissed someone is trying to steal their thunder.

[archibaldcrane]

There were people in the Rose Parade on Saturday with signs telling of this May 21st apocalypse. They blended right in with all the TCU Jesus-freaks out in force with their "Repent Sinners!" signs.

[Belkin]

CHRISTIAN APOCALYPSE FIRST PLZ

[Selamis]

Sweet ass, the end of the world is gonna happen on my birthday. Guess I should make plans to have an off the wall and outrageous celebration since it'll be the last one ever.

[Melena]

someone queue up the clip of stan smith telling jesus to rapture him.

[Kuya]

Humans seem to like it when the world ends.

[bigrougabagel]

RALEIGH, N.C.

I am utterly shocked and in complete disbelief.

[Moss]

"It would be like telling the Wright brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn't even try," said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message.

lol

[Max™]

http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm

I like the Carter Catastrophe argument myself, not that I think it's likely, but at least it isn't based on a dusty old book some hallucinating sheep herder wrote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

It was first proposed in an explicit way by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983,[1] from which it is sometimes called the Carter catastrophe; the argument was subsequently championed by the philosopher John A. Leslie and has since been independently discovered by J. Richard Gott[2] and Holger Bech Nielsen.[3] Similar principles of eschatology were proposed earlier by Heinz von Foerster, among others.

Denoting by N the total number of humans who were ever or will ever be born, the Copernican principle suggests that humans are equally likely (along with the other N − 1 humans) to find themselves at any position n[dubious – discuss], so humans assume that our fractional position f = n/N is uniformly distributed on the interval [0, 1] prior to learning our absolute position.

f is uniformly distributed on (0, 1] even after learning of the absolute position n. (This is equivalent to the assumption that humans have no prior information about the total number of humans, N.) That is, for example, there is 95% chance that f is in the interval (0.05, 1], that is f > 0.05. In other words we could assume that we could be 95% certain that we would be within the last 95% of all the humans ever to be born. If we know our absolute position n, this implies[dubious – discuss] an upper bound for N obtained by rearranging n/N > 0.05 to give N < 20n.

If Leslie's Figure is used, then 60 billion humans have been born so far, therefore it can be estimated that there is a 95% chance that the total number of humans N will be less than 20 × 60 billion = 1.2 trillion. Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1140 billion humans will be born in 9120 years. Depending on the projection of world population in the forthcoming centuries, estimates may vary, but the main point of the argument is that it is unlikely that more than 1.2 trillion humans will ever live.

[Kwijiboe]

May 21st is my birthday. God better wait until the very end of the day.

[Melena]

Have they specified which region May 21'st? I got plans on the 20th but if God uses Australian time, I'm fucked.

[Suited Aces]

Screw the mortgage. All my money will now go towards ammunition and cans of soup.

[Jak]

Great, I'm keeping this away from EVERYONE I know who already believe it is the "endtime" now because of all the dead birds and fish coming up about 30 minutes from my house. -_-; "Oh noes, it was in the bible!! We're dooooomed!"

I'm keeping ANY story like this away from everyone in my circle of people.

[Dantrag]

someone queue up the clip of stan smith telling jesus to rapture him.

This was my first thought.

I like how the guy says that if he's still here(like everyone of us will be) that means he wasn't raptured. I like how he played that.

[shiarua]

Matthew 24:36-44 (New International Version)

The Day and Hour Unknown

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. 42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Pfftt.... May 21st....

[ZarakiKujata]

NICE KNOWING YOU GUYS

[Surealistic]

"A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe."

i dont even.....

[Max™]

I think it's funny that the youtube playlist popped this up as I was reading that bit from Matthew.