The End of the World Again

How Harold Camping tried to get us ready for the end of the world.

15th September 2012
In early Spring of last year Mr. Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster from (where else) California predicted, with great confidence and a knowing air, that the world was about to end. It would end, to be precise at around 6pm on May 21st.

He invested a considerable amount of money in advertising the fact on hoardings around the area and predictably, many credulous individuals sold everything they had; house, car, children's inheritance, clothes etc, in order to be able to travel light on the Last Day.
The rest of us just waited, some with bated breath, it has to be admitted, as the days and hours ticked away. It reminded me a little of what happened or rather, didn't happen at the very end of the last century. There was a theory going around that all the computers in the world, including those that ran airplanes, trains, the Pentagon etc, might stop, because they hadn't been set right for the millenium. I never really understood that because my understanding of maths is not up to it, but there were people who took the possibility seriously.
Anyway, I wrote an open letter to dear Harold Camping at the time. I don't suppose he ever read it, but here it is.

So, Mr. Harold Camping, you wanted to be famous and now you are. And some. But not for the right reasons. I suppose you saw yourself at the head of a great army, twenty million strong, heading into the skies with the wind streaming through your hair, '...the loading had begun; taking Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun...', except you didn't need the silver spaceships.

Why, o why are you so gullible, Mr. Camping? Are you so convinced of your own superiority that the brakes and curbs that most people have on their imagination don't work in your case, or is it that you just don't have a sense of humour? I mean, surely half an hour spent Googling should have been enough to convince you, Harold, (can I call you that?) that your forecasts (two of them, remember) were simply the latest in a long line of prophesies stretching back almost five thousand years.

A clay tablet, identified as Assyrian, has been dated to about 2800 bc. On it is written, amongst other things '...there are signs that our world is speedily coming to an end' and dire apocalyptic warnings have been trotted out regularly ever since.

I must admit I started to Google up a list of end of the worlders, starting with the Assyrian one I mentioned, but the list seemed to go on for ever (OK Harold?), an endless parade of bishops, popes, mystics, one 'anti-pope', (who he?) and seers. The only names I recognised in this impressive list were Isaac Newton and Christopher Columbus. Columbus even wrote a book called The Book of Prophesies. I don't know why that surprised me but it did. In it he said the world would end in 1658.

Columbus died in 1506 so he was spared the kind of mirth you've had to put up with, Harry. Maybe you should have done the same as Chris. If you pitch the Last Day 150 years into the future, nobody could object and you wouldn't get egg on your face. Why don't you try it, Hal? It's not too late to change the date. Oh yes, well, maybe it is...

In any case, Harry baby, I can hardly wait for your next pronouncement - October, isn't it? What is it they say in your country, Harry; three strikes and out, and what is it that the other Harry says; 'Are you feeling lucky, punk - make my day'.

P.S. In March of this year, Harold Camping stated that his attempt to predict a date for the end of the world was 'sinful'. He is now searching the Bible "even more fervently...not to find dates, but to be more faithful in his understanding". This is a man who doesn't know the meaning of defeat and for that at least, I salute him.
James Collins