This Easter, I went back home. At that time I had forgotten about the end of the world, but I was reminded by a large billboard in bright yellow by the side of the road in my small coastal town, proclaiming May 21, 2011 as the holy day of rapture. An image of someone kneeling and praying to the heavens adorned the sign, and I remembered suddenly: Oh yeah, that’s happening again.
We’ve all seen the man around campus: the sign mounted on his backpack, his random shouting attracting the attention of any student with enough time before class to stop and listen. The resurrection is coming — and it’s in less than a month.
Apparently, the Bible stated that May 21, 2011 marks the day of Jesus’ second coming, and the Day of Judgment so fiercely awaited by religious folks worldwide. I didn’t take the warning seriously when I first heard about it a few months ago. The man with the sign proclaimed that Judgment Day would and is coming, and that those who had accepted Jesus as their savior would ascend to Heaven while the rest would be left to witness the ultimate battle between Hell and Heaven fought on Earth.
But where exactly did this oddly specific date come from?
According to the Grand Rapid Press, May 21, 2011 is exactly 722,500 days from the widely accepted date of Jesus’ crucifixion, April 1, 33 A.D. Noah’s flood occurred, some believe, in 4990 B.C., 7000 years ago. In other words, the date was decided upon using a bunch of loosely interpreted mathematics.
The apparent rapture has been deadlined again and again, and every time the date comes and goes, more excuses are made as to the lack of anything happening. In 1844, nothing happened after Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the end. Edgar Whisenaut, a NASA scientist, wrote a popular book explaining why the rapture would occur in 1988. More recently, September 21, 2009 was another such date predicted to be the end, and like now, billboards were funded to proclaim this little bit of severely false advertising.
Raptures have been predicted (all using the Bible as the main piece of evidence) before billboards were around to spread the ignorance. It’s not a question of when the rapture itself will happen, but when a religious fanatic will get a bug up his butt to try read between the already-too-thin lines of the Bible to find something that isn’t there. It’s not a surprising characteristic — religions need some sort of physical manifestation to funnel the faith into before it’s dulled to the point that people begin to wonder, “Where the Hell is this Jesus fellow anyway?”
Proclaimed rapture dates seem to be getting closer and closer together. My guess is that a more skeptical and less imaginative populace requires more entertainment to distract from the overwhelming lack of God.
I’ve seen cars driving around, proclaiming the date on the side, a giant “Save the Date!” on the hood. And I plan on saving it. It’ll be a Saturday. I’ll probably be at my house, quietly celebrating the two-month-marker before I turn 20. I’ll probably be studying or eating some of my roommate’s delicious weekend baked goods.
What I won’t be doing, however, is regretting my lack of faith in Jesus Christ.
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