Why I Still Want To Be Left Behind

When California preacher, Harold Camping, predicted the world would end this Saturday evening, several of my Rapture-ready friends insisted I finish reading the Left Behind series and make my preparations.
Camping's ubiquitous billboard messages: "Blow the trumpet, warn the people!" were all over Seattle. People were so giddy with anticipation, it recalled the many loopy, no-exit conversations I've had with my righteous neighbor.
"Why are you so ... well, cheerful, about doomsday?" I always asked him.
He gazed at me with the true alarm of deep pity. "I'm afraid you'll have a rough time of it here during the Tribulations."
"Don't you love any of us you believe will suffer so?" I said.
This gave my neighbor a moment's pause. But then he admitted with some chagrin. "You can't blame us born-agains for at last getting our heavenly rewards. We've waited thousands of years for End Times. We've got holy wars, world financial markets crashing, Israel's military power, Middle East uprisings, and even global warming."
This last sign he pronounced brightly, as if our global climate was gleefully graduating into a hot time in the old world.
It struck me that being "raptured" out of this world trumps the insecurity of living and the surrender of dying or staying on. No bodily indignity. No suffering. One will simply be whisked off with the fellowship of the believers -- the Rapture gang -- to a heavenly reward.
In the twinkling of an eye they say, the righteous will ascend, dropping golden dental work, nightgowns, and perhaps some spouses. Unless you count losing the earth and billions of unfortunate sinners who cling to it, getting raptured is a blast. Who wouldn't want to escape prophesied plagues, floods, and nomadic thug-like legions of the unsaved?
This rather pitiless evacuation plan for only the righteous might seem darkly comic, if not for a Time magazine poll: 56 percent of Americans "believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true." Perhaps that explains why the Left Behind books are the biggest selling fictional series in the United States.
In complex and challenging times, apocalypse is such a simple answer. Fight-or-flight fear is hardwired into our reptilian, forest-slashing, migrating, pioneering species -- leave the Old World behind, find a New World. No need to really change, adapt or evolve, just find another planet or heaven to plunder for our own rewards. After all, the dark side of fundamentalism is consumerism.
The next time I saw my neighbor he sported a new bumper sticker: "THIS VEHICLE WILL BE UNMANNED IN CASE OF RAPTURE."
I did not say that I wanted a bumper sticker of my own: "IN CASE OF RAPTURE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CAR?"
It was a surprisingly sunlit Seattle day and we strolled down to our backyard beach on the Salish Sea to continue our End Times talk. We sat down on driftwood and watched the comic black-and-white tuxedo harlequins diving and popping up in the waves.
A Great Blue Heron swooped in with the caw of a dinosaur bird. How could this ancient bird fly with such huge wings? How did she escape extinction? Somehow the Great Blue had adapted and survived beautifully. Couldn't we?
"So," my neighbor asked excitedly, "Are you ready for the End?"
He had already taken out a post-Rapture insurance policy from Eternal Earthbound Pets USA to protect his beloved dog -- since animals aren't allowed in his heaven.
I put my arm around my neighbor, the driftwood creaking slightly under our weight.
"Listen," I said softly, "I want to be left behind."
Left Behind to figure out a way to fit more humbly into this abiding Earth, this living and breathing planet we happily call home, we call holy.
My neighbor looked at me, startled, then fell very quiet as we watched a harlequin float past, his bright beak dripping a tiny fish. Happy, so happy in this moment. The Great Blue cawed hoarsely and stood on one leg in a fishing meditation. Wave after bright wave lapped our beach and the spring sunshine warmed our open faces.
"You're a really good neighbor," I told him. "We'll all miss you if you zipped up to heaven. We'd say ... well, there goes the neighborhood."
"I'll miss you," my neighbor said softly. "and ... and all this, too."
It was a beginning.
Slowly he took my hand and we sat in silence, listening to waves more ancient than our young, hasty species, more forgiving than our religions, more enduring. Rapture.

May 21st Doomsday: Does Harold Camping’s Ministry Have Money

 
May 21^st, Doomsday is one of the hottest search topics in Google.
So in case you haven't heard by now, Harold Camping is the preacher who claims to have the calculations set on May 21, 2011 as The Judgment Day, Rapture Day, Doomstay  -or whatever you want to call it. Camping's apocalypse hype is getting worldwide attention.

Harold Camping, 89, is a former civil engineer and Bible scholar. He is president of the religious non-profit Family Radio based in Oakland, California which fervently preaches the message about the end of the world, now days away. He and a caravan of trucks have been plastering over 5,000 billboards, spending millions of dollars to spread the message.
So, where do they get the funding for all this?
Tax returns indicate that the radio ministry raised a staggering $100 million dollars over the past seven years. The ministry also owns 66 radio stations worldwide valued at $72 million in 2009.
Not to mention donations have soared as well. The contribution comes from radio listeners, according to Tom Evans, board member of Family Radio.

However, Camping claims that it is not about the money, but spreading the message and saving as many people as possible.
"When Judgment Day comes, if someone is a billionaire, how will they take their money with them? If we have any money left, and we will because we have to pay bills up to the very end "... it will all be destroyed because the world will be in a day of judgment.
"The money is not important at all. It's a vehicle to spread the judgment and a vehicle of the Lord."
According to Camping, "I've never taken one nickel out of Family Radio. Many evangelists have become very rich, but my wife and I live very modestly."
"We have no interest in talking about money. We never tell people what to do with their money, that's between them and God."
And in case one might wonder, Family Radio has no intention of giving away their money before May 21.
The explanation?
"There isn't going to be a Saturday. So certainly none of Family Radio's assets will be left because it won't matter," says Evans.
"The last thing people should be concerned with is what Family Radio is doing or what their assets are. They should be concerned with what I am doing and how I will stand before God."