We're Alive!

Well its good to be alive, I think. I was not scarfed up in the rapture on Saturday so its back to work today.

For those of you who thought it was the end of the world on Saturday, it was not supposed to be, except for anyone who died of regular earthly causes or who was taken by the lord early. It was the date of the Rapture.
No, the end of the world date is now October 21^st…for sure this time. That is when the actual end comes.

I heard that a quarter of a billion people were supposed to be raptured. I didn’t read any headlines which talked about a large group of missing people somewhere out there so there are two conclusions I can reach; 1- there are even more sinners than even I thought or; 2- I’ll be working past October 21^st also, so I better prepare myself mentally for that.

I was on the road Saturday and was listening to the radio station where the guy who made this prediction can be heard during the evening throughout the week (Harold Camping.) One would think that if those stations were airing that prediction that there would be all sorts of news about it throughout the day, particularly during the “final week.” Things like what we should pack, stories of rioting and looting, and what type of messages we should leave our sinning friends and family members.

Nothing.

I listened to Camping take phone calls one evening. Some people were challenging his interpretation of the Bible and some were totally in agreement, someone asked him why his stations were still soliciting funds (his ministry is worth over 70 million dollars) but what he never did say that day was that May 21^st was the rapture date, at least when I was listening. He mentioned earthquakes in New Zealand (but that had already happened a couple of months ago) and a specific time but nothing about angels sweeping down and scooping up the chosen few.

Harold Camping

I don’t doubt that Camping is sincere about this. He made this same prediction in 1994 and I got a call back then from someone trying to make amends with me because he believed it was all coming to an end. Naturally it didn’t but Camping has such faith in what he believes that he didn’t allow his past failure to sway him.

There are lessons in that. One, I think, is that we should never give up on our dreams!

Ok, maybe that is a stretch to talk about how to rise from the ashes of defeat and failure.

I am not a religious man. This is one of the glaring reasons why; because these messages are skewed by human interpretation. Which religion, if any, are teaching us the correct lessons handed down by God? I even say that, respectfully, with a core thesis that God does exists.
I was exposed early in life to a wide variety of religions. Therefore, I am a product of my environment in that way and have this present opinion. I was told to remain open minded to all beliefs systems because humans do make mistakes.
Even early on in elementary school I remember an exercise where one kid was told a story and had to whisper it to the next one and so on and so on until the final kid in the class had to repeat the story that reached him. It differed so greatly from the original story, which had just been told 15 minutes ago to someone, that it made a very strong impact.

So the other lesson I can take out of this could be that I should trust what I actually see and experience so that I can make critical decisions in life. (I will only speak for myself here…I just crossed out all of the “we’s in there.)

I do admire people of faith. It takes a great deal of courage to stand against a majority of opposite beliefs in times when in the minority. But there is also a war saying that I like to quote sometimes- “Is that the hill you want to die on?” Just having faith that your battle team can capture the hill sometimes doesn’t mean that faith alone can overcome the overwhelming odds stacked against you.

In my 49 years of life I have now survived two raptures, a couple of end-of-the-world dates, Y2K and the consistent playing of Prince’s “Party like it’s 1999” the year before.

This gives me hope that I can survive Lady Gaga, at the very least, and this continuing mess of an economy. That’s right, I went there again and I went there because I trust what I experience and see and not what some preacher or politician wants me to have blind faith in and blindly believe what he says to be true. 

Let me ask one question though, especially for you non-believers of God. About two years ago in Los Angeles a flower was discovered that had never been documented before...in LOS ANGELES, not in some remote jungle.

How did it get there?

Done.