As May 21 approaches, billboards debate the rapture

My book’s alert proofreader, Art in California, forwarded an article by Angela Hill in the Contra Costa Times that reports on a billboard posted prominently on an approach to the Bay Bridge by the association of American Atheists:

The Rapture: You KNOW it’s Nonsense

2000 Years of “Any Day Now”

The billboard counters numerous others (including one I spotted in my home town, Louisville, at the corner of Winter and Shelby streets) posted by Family Radio, a mini-media empire that lately has been promoting the prediction of Harold Camping, an Oakland fundamentalist, that the rapture will occur May 21.

Judgment Day May 21

The Bible Guarantees It

The atheist group has planned a two-day workshop beginning May 21, the day of the Camping’s rapture. Addressing the workshop are a number of Atheists, Skeptics, Agnostics, Non-Theists, and other secular humanists from across the country.

The atheists aren’t engaged in a theological pissing contest; Angela Hill quotes Larry Hicok, the group’s director:

It’s a troublesome thing going on with these [Judgment Day] billboards. There’s been a tremendous amount of money spent on them by not-wealthy people all over the country who have been frighted into believing this is the end of the world. I think getting money from people for something like that is fundamentally wrong.

The atheists will meet at the Oakland Masonic Center. Wisely, they aren’t planning to use the nearby offices of Family Radio, which would be vacant beginning that morning if Camping is right.

News of doom on May 21 penetrates Louisville’s suburbs

My friend Pat Clark just sent along a couple of end-times religious tracts that recently appeared in his newspaper box along with the morning paper. One of the first readers of my book, Pat sealed them up and had them legally delivered to my postal box to remind me of trouble that I’ve been tracking since winter: Judgment Day is May 21st, in just a couple more weeks (and two weeks after the Kentucky Derby).

The leaflets originate in the end-times cottage industry run in Oakland, California, by Harold Camping, and are published by one of his divisions, Family Radio, which broadcasts on a scattering of stations across the United States.

One of the leaflets addresses a problem that I’ve worried over: the clear assertions in the New Testament that the time of the end can’t be known. Camping (or someone in his shop) argues that a line of wisdom originating in Ecclesiastes 8:5 suggests that the time of the end will be revealed to “true believers” as the time approaches:

Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth [better translation: will know] both time and judgment.

That excerpt, I presume, is from the King James Version, and the interjection in brackets is the author’s.

The other leaflets left in Pat’s box wade into the weeds of Camping’s end-times prognostications. Camping is more of a numerologist than an exegete, and he accepts, however selectively, that numbers in the Bible are often symbols, not facts. He’s also something of a mathematician, recognizing the uniqueness of numbers like 5, 17, and 23, which can’t be divided by an integer except 1 and themselves (he calls them “significant numbers,” but they are correctly “prime numbers.”) Those three numbers multiplied together equal 1,955, which happens to be the number of years between the first Christian Pentecost (33 BCE) and what Camping calls the end of the “church age” on May 12, 1988, about the time when he learned of our imminent demise.

Why should Pat or I or any other random reader of these tracts care that the end might come in a few weeks?

In Revelation 16:15 Christ teaches that He, Himself, will come as a thief (see also Revelation 3:3). Christ obviously is not a thief. He is Holy God. But He and Judgment Day will come like a thief. In John 10:10 God describes what a thief does when he comes: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” Thus, when Christ comes with Judgment Day, He comes to take away life and to destroy those for whom He comes as a thief.

As a true believer, Camping (and readers who accept his analysis) are exempt from the predations of the thief … they know he’s coming.

The murderous thief would be Jesus Christ, for those who haven’t been paying close attention.

Blasphemy!

No, ideally you won’t read any here. But a book of that title by Douglas Preston recently spooled through my car’s CD player and revealed a different biblical end-times scenario from the ones that have lately consumed my attention.

“Blasphemy” tells a story about deeply flawed pastor leaves his disastrous family life to serve a Navajo reservation in Arizona. His mission is located at the foot of a mesa that houses a giant cyclotron where scientists are attempting to duplicate conditions at the creation of the universe in the “Big Bang.”

When a big time televangelist under the influence of a powerful lobbyist targets the scientific project as blasphemy against the Creator on his television show, pastor Eddy fires up the Internet machine and rallies the chat-room troops with his inside knowledge that the man behind the cyclotron project, the genius Hazelius, is the Antichrist.

Hordes descend on the mesa and assault the scientific project, assured by Pastor Eddie that with their attack on the Antichrist, the Rapture and Jesus’ second coming will occur.

This would of course be post-tribulationism, where the Rapture occurs after the Tribulation and not before. Not many people subscribe to it … better to escape the chaos that is coming, I suppose, than to cause it … but the book accurately observes the danger of rabble-rousing among fearful and angry people using Christian end-times themes.

Reviews on Amazon indicate that reading the book is preferred to listening, and I have to agree that the narrator’s voice stereotypes some of the characters. Preston himself starts with potentially complex characters — a Navajo police officer who might possess the insight necessary to avoid catastrophe, and Pastor Eddie who desperately needs forgiveness — but these characters quickly degenerate into stereotypes as the plot overtakes the narrative and the mesa implodes.

My review? Barely tolerable. For entertainment on long drives, listen to the narration of the detective books by John Sandford or James Lee Burke. And stay out of Internet chat-rooms.

Is that the fourth horseman in Cairo?

My brother David in San Francisco, who stays current on these sorts of things, sent me a link via the blog “Crooks and Liars” to a clip originally posted on another blog, “Fox Nation,” showing some recent street fighting Cairo. Some viewers believe that a ghostly green horseman rides across the frame, then vanishes.

The image is obviously a reflection on the camera’s lens, but what’s the significance to people who want to see the fourth horseman of the apocalypse in the context of modern-day political unrest?

Here’s Revelation 6:7, telling us the result when the symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice, the Lamb, breaks the fourth of seven seals on God’s declaration of the kingdom:

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature call out, “Come!” I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth. (NRSV)

Stirring up the controversy was World Net Daily, a religious website that serves up the news from the hard right side of the court. Here’s the opening of the February 5, 2011, post from their writer, Drew Zahn:

Is this the “pale rider” from Revelation?

A mysterious, pale green figure seen in televised news coverage of the Egyptian riots has prompted some viewers to ask, “Could this be the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse?”

The footage, provided by Euronews and subsequently seen on MSNBC, CNN and uploaded over a dozen times to the popular video sharing site YouTube, captures the fiery, violent protests in Cairo this past week … and something else.

Between the crowds of protesters and barricades, the video shows a flowing, pale green image that resembles an erect rider atop a horse in Medieval-like barding. The ethereal figure remains for a few moments before floating over protesters’ heads and off the screen.

The last of the biblical Book of Revelation’s Four Horseman of the Apocalyse, the “pale rider” is said to be the bringer of death and the forerunner of “hell” on earth.

Are all these events the natural order of things, or warnings of the end times described in the Bible? This DVD probes the answer …

The recent political unrest in Egypt, which in retrospect may be epochal, is no scarier than other revolutions throughout history, including America’s. No doubt about it, revolution almost always brings war, poverty, famine, and death, which the four horsemen of the apocalypse symbolize. Oddly, the revolution in Egypt is unlike many others; it aims to be peaceful, and so far the only violence is what it provoked from the authoritarian government it would overthrow.

What then is the interest of World Net Daily (and perhaps FOX) in fanning the flames of apocalyptic fear?

The last graf of the excerpt from Zahn’s post is more revelatory than the ghoulish image on the camera’s lens. The business side of the dispensationalist apocalypse is not inconsiderable: the “World Net Daily Superstore” is hawking DVDs to people who are frightened by the peaceful demands of the Egyptian people for radical change.

For many of us, the recent events in Cairo reveal the extent to which non-violent street demonstrations that appear to express the will of the people as well as the moral demands of history increasingly result in real movement toward democratization of oppressive governments.

In modern times we can thank the persistence of Martin Luther King, Jr., for demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach, which was borrowed by the people of eastern Europe and now seems to be sweeping the nations of the southern shore of the Mediterranean.

Despair, or fear?

Chris Hedges, a seminarian then NYT war correspondent, attributes the love affair of many conservative evangelicals with rapture and tribulation to despair during an account of his visit to the suburbs of Detroit in “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Tim LaHaye, co-author of the “Left Behind” series, is about to address members of the congregation who have paid $20 apiece to hear him and other doyens of the apocalypse talk about the bloodshed and disaster:

Ten or fifteen minutes negotiating the traffic down South Telegraph Road make the bizarre attraction of the End Times–the obliteration of this world of alienation, noise, and distortion–comprehensible. The manufacturing jobs in the Detroit auto plants nearby are largely gone, outsourced to other nations with cheaper labor. The paint is flaking off the cramped two-story houses that lie in grid patterns off the highway. The plagues of alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence make the internal life here as depressing as the external one. And the congregation gathering today in this church waits for the final, welcome relief of the purgative of violence, the vast cleansing that will lift them up into the heavens, and leave the world they despise, the one they ruined or that was ruined for them, to be wracked by plagues and flood and fire until it, and all those they blame for the debacle of their lives, are consumed and destroyed by God. It is a theology of despair. And for many, the apocalypse can’t happen soon enough.

Is it despair, a circumstance of reversing social fortunes, that drives the fascination of conservative evangelicals with the future as an abbatoir they thankfully escape? Other reporters on the Christian right such as David Neiwert, Michelle Goldberg, Jeff Sharlett, but especially Max Blumenthal have profiled the leaders of Christian nationalism and identify among them a pattern of parental abuse and authoritarian beliefs that rather indicate that what may motivate conservative apocalypticism is fear.

I touch on the theme of fear in my book when I compare Herod’s feast, which results in the beheading of John the Baptist, with the story of Jesus’ feeding of thousands:

These two stories, The Death of John the Baptist and the Feeding of the Five Thousand, provide illuminating contrasts. In the first story, we learn that John the Baptist met his grisly end at a royal feast where a king lasciviously enjoyed the dancing of his stepdaughter, succumbed to the vindictiveness of his wife whose relationship to him was incestuous, and ordered a ghastly execution that he fears will ignite rebellion. In the second, Jesus, mourning his mentor’s violent death and realizing that the same fate awaits him, healed the sick and fed thousands with humble dinners brought by his disciples. Later, the disciples, frightened and alone in a boat in a storm, are encouraged by Jesus who calms the storm, and them.

Jesus’ banquet celebrates the kingdom of God and is marked by compassion, healing, and a simple meal. The celebrants will encounter storms, but the storms will be calmed and the celebrants will gain courage. By contrast, Herod’s banquet celebrating his worldly kingdom is marked by incest, lust, violence, intimidation, fear, and death.

Focused as I was with table fellowship at this point in my book , I was reluctant to explore fear further. But I wonder if the confrontation of fear is how Jesus reinterpreted wisdom and purity to urge the apocalyptic transformation that’s necessary to pursue a strategy of forgiveness and reconciliation despite the injustice and violence that surround us.

I touch on it in an earlier passage about Daniel, where I quote an angel’s words of reassurance:

Again one in human form touched me and strengthened me. He said, “Do not fear, greatly beloved, you are safe. Be strong and courageous!” (Dan 10:10-19)

It’s a subject for another book!

Don’t make plans for April 6, 2012, either!

The Tucson shootings prompted a stroll by investigative reporters through the possible influences on the alleged shooter. Among them, the Los Angeles Times’ Kim Murphy surfaced the paranoid, bizarre, and obscure utterances of David Wynn Miller.

According to David Weigel writing for Slate, Miller, like Jared Loughner, is obsessed with grammar (among other things) as a way to combat government mind control. Evidently, punctuation marks help: he refers to himself as “David-Wynn: Miller” (and as “the King of Hawaii,” but that’s another story).

Blogger Weigel gleaned more information from the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an outfit in Birmingham, Alabama, that tracks hate groups. Staff writer David Potok attended one of Miller’s seminars in 2003 and, in a column archly titled “Full Colon Miller,” reported Miller’s explanation of his name:

“My name is David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller,” the 53-year-old Milwaukean says, and the brows of his audience of 50 begin to furrow. This crowd of “Patriots” is used to conspiracy theories, but even at an event dominated by antigovernment ideology, Miller is tough going. “The reason I use a full colon and a hyphen in my name, the first full colon, which is full colon David, it means for the David hyphen Wynn. That’s my given name, and it’s also a noun, because it uses a prepositional phrase. … Because I use prepositional phrases, through punctuation, which is classified as hieroglyphics, which makes me a life, l-i-f-e. Now, when you don’t punctuate your name … David is an adjective, Wynn is an adjective, Miller is a pronoun. Two adjectives are a condition of modification, opinion, presumption, which modifies the pronoun, pro means no on noun. So therefore, I’m not a fact. I’m a fiction.”

Regrettably for Australian courts, Miller is not a fiction. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that overly-clever defendants in tax evasion cases in Australia, as well as here in the United States, invoke his beliefs and use lawyers he trains to argue that the government’s writs against them are grammatically invalid, or something.

Miller’s promotion of his paranoid style through seminars and book sales evidently earns him a living, but it also earned him the attention of the SPLC because, like the “posse comitatus” crowd in the western US, he avers the illegitimacy of government.

There’s no evidence that Miller advocates the violent overthrow of anything, nor is there any indication that his writings were a significant influence on the alleged Tucson shooter. But one aspect of Miller’s beliefs sure caught my attention: he predicts the end of the world, soon.

The Slate blogger, Weigel, transcribed Miller’s notions about the end of the world from a YouTube posting where Miller calculates the day with typical precision, beginning with a vague biblical allusion (“a prophecy was made a long time ago . . .”) and then trotting out numbers from some unusual sources:

If you look at the history, a prophecy was made a long time ago that the beginning of the end starts in the last kingdom on Earth. The last kingdom on Earth was Hawaii. The last monarch died on the 6th of December, 1872. And you subtract the 8, if you subtract 45 days under maritime law over the three-day grace period better known as the lemon law, you get the 22nd of October, 1872, was when Hawaii filed bankruptcy. If you add 70 years to that, you get the 7th December 7, 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Add 70 years to that, plus the 45 day laws of trust, the 3-day notice, and the 90 days that no law becomes legal, you have 4-6-2012.”

There you have it. Another date to block out on your calendar and hide under your bed.

About your plans for May 21st…

My local newspaper last evening carried an indulgent AP report about Allison Warden, a Raleigh, NC woman who believes that the Lord will return on Saturday May 21, 2011 to separate the saved from the damned.

Ms. Warden has swallowed the mathematical calculations of an 88-year-old former civil engineer named Harold Camping, who runs a small cottage industry that popularizes his May 21 prediction. Last year about this time, Justin Berton of the San Francisco Chronicle tracked down Mr. Camping in his shop in Oakland, where he runs a radio syndicate, a publishing house, and a website several quality notches above the typical end-times schlock, www.wecanknow.com

His website’s moniker, “we can know,” assertively contradicts a major difficulty faced by rapture prognosticators: multiple passages in the New Testament that say that the time of judgment is only known to God (eg Mark 13:32)  or will come like “a thief in the night.”

Typical of end-times predictions, Camping’s methodology applies a veneer of pseudo-scientific mathematics and biblical numerology to unexamined assumptions that drive a forgone conclusion. Berton reports:

By Camping’s understanding, the Bible was dictated by God and every word and number carries a spiritual significance. He noticed that particular numbers appeared in the Bible at the same time particular themes are discussed.

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

“Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved.

“I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that,” Camping said.

Camping has been wrong before, most famously predicting that the end would come in 1994.  Alas, those calculations can’t be easily recovered to compare methodologies, but I suppose his point is: soon . . . just do the math.