World's Going To End Wednesday. Wear Something Nice!

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Planet

You may have been pretty relieved when we dodged the Mormon Apocalypse last week, what with the supermoon lunar eclipse not ushering in any Utah-destroying earthquakes or United Nations invasions. Well, wouldn't you know it, another, completely different bunch of prophecy-interpreters has predicted that the actual End of the World will be upon us come Wednesday, Oct. 7, absolutely for sure. And this time, it's not something so vague as the "beginning of the End," it's just flat-out God's gonna end the world all at once, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

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The Guardian has the End of the World News for you:

The eBible Fellowship, an online affiliation headquartered near Philadelphia, has based its prediction of an October obliteration on a previous claim that the world would end on 21 May 2011. While that claim proved to be false, the organization is confident it has the correct date this time.

That's the thing about those eBibles: you miss your apocalypse date, and it keeps saying "recalculating ... recalculating ..."

Turns out the eBible Fellowship is a remnant or successor of the completely sane flock of Rev. Haorld Camping, who confidently predicted the end of the world for May 21, 2011, and then when that didn't come to pass, rescheduled the End for October of the same year. The world didn't end then, either, although Rev. Camping did come to an end in 2013, and boy, was he ever astonished to find himself assigned to an eternity of washing mead flagons in Valhalla.

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So now, Chris McCann of the eBible bunch -- which mostly exists only online but also has monthly meetings in what passes for the real world -- insists that he's got this prophecy thing all calculated out:

According to what the Bible is presenting it does appear that 7 October will be the day that God has spoken of: in which, the world will pass away [...] It’ll be gone forever. Annihilated.

Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. This will be an EX-Planet! 

According to his careful readings of Scripture, McCann explained that the world is going to have to burn to a crisp:

“God destroyed the first earth with water, by a flood, in the days of Noah. And he says he’ll not do that again, not by water. But he does say in 2nd Peter 3 that he’ll destroy it by fire,” McCann said.

But didn't Harold Camping's twice-failed attempt prove that predicting The End is a foolish thing to do that will result in your ridicule when it doesn't happen? Not at all, says McCann, no doubt smiling the way those guys always do. You see, he explains, May 21, 2011, really was Judgment Day, since that was the day God decided who, among current churchgoers on that date, was going to survive the end or go straight to heaven or whatever.

Following 21 May 2011, God turned his attention to deciding which non-churchgoers to save, according to McCann. The eBible Fellowship believes that God said he would devote 1,600 days to this task – bringing us to 7 October 2015.

God apparently has a really complex screening process, and His filing system is a mess. (He also sucks at geography .) Also too, it's a pretty good joke on everyone who got Born Again after May 21, 2011, since apparently God stopped looking at churchgoers after that. Mysterious Ways and all.

“There’s a strong likelihood that this will happen,” McCann said, although he did leave some room for error: “Which means there’s an unlikely possibility that it will not.”

Looks like you've covered your ass then, as a famous prophecy-ignorer once said. 

We have to say that we appreciate the Guardian's commitment to covering all points of view. The paper notes that while no scientific data points to Wednesday as the most likely date of Earth's demise, we are likely to be swallowed by the Sun as it expands into a Red Giant in about 7.6 billion years. Or maybe not, since its gravity will decrease as it loses mass, and our orbit will go all cattywampus. Not that we'll be around to see it, since the C.H.U.D.s will have et us all up long before then anyway. And if McCann is proved wrong? He's not saying, but we bet he'll discover he forgot to carry a two and make another prediction.

You were expecting that REM song, weren't you?

[ Guardian / Scientific American / image by "BobTheOwl001" at DeviantArt ]