Its Past 6 p.m. and All is Well on May 21, 2011.

Our Get-Ready Man, Harold Camping, a preacher from California is wrong once again.  “Rapture Day” passed, in fine weather one might add; the 2% of the world’s population that were promised Heaven waited for the Grand Boat that never came.

After 70 years of studying the Bible, he claims to have developed a system that uses mathematics to interpret prophesies hidden in it. He says the world will end on 21 May, because that will be 722,500 days from 1 April AD33, which he believes was the day of the Crucifixion. The figure of 722,500 is important because you get it by multiplying three holy numbers (five, 10 and 17) together twice. "When I found this out, I tell you, it blew my mind," he said.


It all came about when Camping concluded that the number 5 signifies "atonement", 10 is "completeness" and 17 means "heaven." So the product of these numbers squared signifies the end of the world. D-uh.  How could anyone have missed this!


A Rosetta stone he ain't, that much he's proved.  He should go back to his dusty trusty crystal ball.


Camping says God even showed him a sign. Of his vast media company, he remarks:  "We are now translated  into 48 languages and have been transmitting into China on an AM station without getting jammed once. How can that happen without God's mercy?"


The California radio broadcaster’s wrong prediction about the rapture and the end of the world reflected poorly on Christians, said Ed Stetzer, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research and LifeWay's missiologist in residence. You think?  ( I should look up the word "missiologist".  Someone that is "missing" something, like an attic? )


Ed Stetzer wants his pound of flesh -- he wants Camping to apologize "for being wrong about his doomsday prediction and leading people astray."  The kettle Terry Jones, the pastor who publicly burned the Koran in Florida, cast one of the first stones claiming the pot Camping was "irresponsible". "I think it's misfortunate," he said. "I've been a pastor for some 30 odd years and this has happened what some half-dozen times. People twist it and turn it to make it look like Christians are kind of nutty."
(Misfortunate? more "mis" words)


Meanwhile, in a related story,  an American Atheists conference in California is celebrating a "Rapture that wasn't" party later tonight.