Religion, Society

Failing Out Of Rapture: Turley Blog Re-Opens After Unexpected Continuation of Times

Well, I went off to my annual trip to Shrine Mont for the rapture (leaving our weekend editors to face the Judgment alone), only to face another Monday with no pre-arranged blog stories. Who would have known that you couldn’t trust an 89-year-old religious fanatic foretelling the End of Times? In Alameda, California, Harold Camping will only say that “It has been a really tough weekend” and he is “flabbergasted” that the world has continued to exist. Talking about a tough Monday to have return to work and face our office mates around the water cooler.

Of course, many of Camping’s followers have no job, or homes for that matter, to return to. Strangely, Camping kept his own home while others sold everything to give him money to spread the word. They did so even though Camping was previously wrong about the end of the world. This falls into a Darwinistic lesson.

One article below contains a telling insight into the type of people who believe this type of collective insanity. Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old MTA worker from Staten Island, was interviewed soon after the un-Rapture as he stood in disbelief. He simply said “I do not understand. I do not understand why nothing has happened.” However, Keith Bauer was far more interesting. He packed up his entire family and drove from Maryland to California to be at Camping’s Family Radio International in Oakland for the End of Times. His response was “I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth.”

That really captures the appeal of the End of Times. If the times aren’t that great, the end looks a lot better. It is really crushing to see children pulled along by parents in such a delusional desire for the end of the world. One does not have to agree with Karl Marx that religion is “the opium of the people,” to see how Judgment Day predictions appeal to those who see nothing but despair and deprivation in life. That hope to be magically transported to a better place can take hold of people even when the Bible says “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew, Chap. 24, Verse 36). That includes Harold Camping.

Well, it was not an entire loss. The family and I had a great time catching salamanders and making S’mores at the cabin in Shrine Mont. While I had to take a couple dips in the lake and pond for missing flip flops and a thrown reel, it was a perfect weekend with the other families. In the end, I was actually sort of happy it was not . . . well . . . the end.

Source: NY Daily

Jonathan Turley

35 thoughts on “Failing Out Of Rapture: Turley Blog Re-Opens After Unexpected Continuation of Times”

  1. Interesting points made over at Lew Rockwell today.

    The “evangelicalenvironmentalists” are continually predicting the end of the world.

    At least Camping was sure he was (mathematically) correct. The enviro-dooms-dayers use fraud and trickery to manipulate others and make money (note: See Al Gore).

  3. Kate,

    Perfect … we could have all released one from our front porches thus being a little less mean.

    Damn, I wish i would have thought of it ’cause I definitely would have done it

    Next time

  5. You know what would have been funny? Expensive, but funny … if someone had bought a couple of hundred inflatable balloons in the shape of humans, filled them with helium, and let them go around where the Camping people were waiting. They’d look up and see what looked like people rising into heaven.

    OK, that’d be mean…

  6. Certainly if one is looking no further than you, Tootles, they will get answers only as idiotic as Harold Camping.

    Whenever someone extols giving up all your worldly possessions because THE END IS NEAR and yet doesn’t do the same themselves?

    We have a words for that.

    Fraud and hypocrite come to immediately to mind.

  7. Cowboy – I think it is our desire to make sense out of the chaos around us. Something has to describe how this all came to be, it couldn’t just happen by accident. So you create a story that explains it but then something happens so you have to adjust the tale or revise the explanation. That works until the next time or until people learn enough to understand the holes in the previous telling or peoples expectation change. Those require new additions and deletions. Eventually the myths become part of the power structure & have to be modified even more to bolster those in power.

  8. Metro:

    People on this blog are the type that make it necessary for reasonable people to need the kinds of beliefs which you call “idiotic”.

    Once I came of age and realized what kind of world I lived in (this was during the “cold” war) it became abundantly clear to me that the only logical thing to do, think, or believe is to hope that someone or something NOT on this planet could explain the insanity of it all.

    If one is not looking beyond idiotic humans for answers one is more idiotic than Harold Camping.

  9. Ive always wondered what is the flaw in mankind that makes us need such idiotic ideas….sun gods, jewish carpenter, fat bald asian guy who makes funny hand gestures and the list goes on and on..

  10. AN – yeah, word is He is very jealous too. Some sort of ego problem I guess but nobody says anything about it out loud.

    HEY! Was over by the gate to Muslim Heaven & saw Bin Laden with his 72 virgins! Those were 72 of the ugliest, hairiest, dumbest looking guys I have ever seen. OBL looked a bit unhappy.

  11. AY, Re: “I am here…I think….are you…”

    I’m not sure…

    Frank, Just bite the bullet… Oh, no bullets where you are.. Well, just get the damn implants… Put the procedure behind you. Doesn’t believe in anesthesia? You mean “He” is sadistic?? Noooo. Coulda fooled me…, said with great sarcasm…

    Humming that old song, “I’m a Believer”… Where did I go wrong?

  12. I was quite surprised, really, to find myself floating skyward, naked as the day I was born just a bit ago. I talked one of the archangels into letting me use his laptop so I could send a note to all you heathens left behind.

    My vertigo is raging. peering over the edge of a cloud makes me very dizzy but it is supposed to pass.

    Its all pretty peachy here although I was told the wing implants are painful as He does not believe in anesthesia. Not really looking forward to that.

    Its madness here at the moment what with all the new arrivals, I have not run into anyone I know which is a bit of a disappointment but no Republicans so thats all good. The house orchestra, Glenn Miller and Count Basie with Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa, played us in so that was fantastic. Going to hear Hendrix and Janis after new arrival orientation so it isn’t boring.

    I will write again soon if allowed. But from what I hear you guys may not have a lot of free time what with the tribulations and all.

  14. AY,

    You can think you’re here if you like. I’m going to continue to think I’m in Jamaica. I mean, if we’re going to play the reality is a state of mind card, I’m going to a place with nice beaches and lil’ umbrellas in the drinks.

  15. Harold Camping ‘flabbergasted’; rapture a no-show
    San Francisco Chronicle
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/22/BAKO1JJIK7.DTL&tsp

    Excerpt:
    “I’m looking for answers,” Camping said, adding that meant frequent prayer and consultations with friends.

    “But now I have nothing else to say,” he said, closing the door to his home. “I’ll be back to work Monday and will say more then.”

    Camping’s followers will surely be listening.

    “I’m not as disappointed as everyone since I didn’t fully believe him,” said one, who asked to remain anonymous Sunday because he worried he would be shunned for admitting he was “upset” with Camping.

    The middle-aged Oakland resident said he’d been listening to Camping since 1993, when he said the world would end in 1994.

    That was strike one, the man said. And this is strike two. Even so, he said, that doesn’t mean the message is wrong.

    “I just know he’s biblically sound,” the man said. “I’ve never been one of these guys who think everything he says is true.

    “I don’t think I am going to stop listening to him,” the man added, heaving a deep sigh before continuing: “I don’t know, I gotta listen to him on Monday, see what he says on the radio.”

    Outside Camping’s compound near the Oakland airport, which was locked and dark on Sunday, a different religious group waited for dejected believers.

    “I would encourage them not to lose their faith because they listened to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and Jesus said there would be wolves in sheep’s clothing,” said Jackie Alnor.

    Alnor, a resident of Hayward who blogs about the rapture, said Camping had twisted the word of God by trying to predict the end. Only God knows when the world will end, she said.

    “He’s in big trouble with God,” she said.

    If that isn’t bad enough, she said, Camping’s false prophecy could have bigger impacts on religion.

    “It’s given people who hate Christianity an excuse to hate it even more,” she said. “People can just paint with broad brush strokes.”

    Across town, a group of atheists gathered in Oakland’s Masonic Center to observe the promised rapture in their own way.

    “The issue is the Bible is mythology,” said Larry Hicok, state director of the American Atheists, bluntly laying out his case.

  19. “Collective insanity”, indeed.

    “It is really crushing to see children pulled along by parents in such a delusional desire for the end of the world.” -Jonathan Turley

    And it borders on abuse, IMO.

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