Today we all meet our creator. That’s according to the predictions of a religious Christian sect.
Here’s the Huffington Post,
Circled dates dot a calendar on John Ramsey's refrigerator door. They show the busy life of a 25-year-old: dinner parties, birthdays, holidays. But only until May 21.
Every month after May has been crossed out. As has all of 2012.
Ramsey is one of thousands of followers of a loose-knit Christian fringe movement whose members are increasingly found on sidewalks, in parks and at transit hubs in major cities throughout the United States.
They recite passages of the Bible line-by-line and say they have decoded a message for humanity: The world is about to end.
"God says when you see the sword come upon the land, you blow the trumpet and you warn the people," says Ramsey, paraphrasing Ezekiel 33:3. "All I'm doing is telling what I know."
Ramsey and the movement's followers say that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, the ground will quake, graves will open and many of the dead will ascend to heaven. Two hundred million of the 'saved' -- dead or alive -- will float up. Those left behind will be doomed to live among blood, destruction and disease for five months before God annihilates the Earth on Oct. 21.
Now how did this sect come about with the prognosis of today’s supposed rapture?
Again the Huffington Post, (bold emphasis added)
Camping, a frail 89-year-old who speaks in a slow but sonorous voice for hours each day on his "Open Forum" call-in show, is convinced that he crunched the exact date of the Rapture through a complex set of equations.
For example, he says, certain numbers repeat in the Bible along with particular themes. The number five means "atonement." Ten means "completeness." Seventeen is "heaven."
"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.," he says. "Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."
If you multiply that number by 365.2422 -- the number of days in the solar calendar -- it equals 722,449. And if you add 51 (the number of days between April 1 and May 21) to that number, it equals 722,500.
Multiply five by ten by 17 to equal 850, and multiply 850 by 850 and the result is the same: 722,500.
Another article brings about the same math based predictions but with a little twist.
From the Daily Beast (bold highlights mine)
Robert Fitzpatrick brings some papers to explain to me how the May 21 date was discovered. It’s not an easy thing to understand. Harold Camping’s calculation includes numbers divined from the founding of the state of Israel in 1948; Jesus’ order to “flee into the mountains” in Matthew 24; and the jubilee year of 1994. From there Camping performs handsprings back and forth through biblical time before ending up, with a great flourish, on May 21, 2011. For Fitzpatrick, the calculation’s outlandishness confirms its rightness. “A genius could not understand this,” he says, “because God has to open your mind to allow you to understand this.”
Fitzpatrick took Camping’s math and laid it out in a self-published book called The Doomsday Code, a soup-to-nuts guide to the Rapture. That cost him a few thousand dollars. He poured the rest of his savings into signage. Fitzpatrick’s belief in the May 21 date has been buttressed by various “proofs.” For instance, it is Camping’s contention that God imbues numbers in the Bible with special meaning. Five means atonement; 10 means completeness; 17 means heaven. If you were to multiply atonement times completeness times heaven and then, for a reason that remains mysterious, multiply that sum by itself again:
(5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17)
You’d end up with 722,500. Fast-forwarding 722,500 days from the date of the crucifixion—at least, the date as divined by Camping—lands you on May 21, 2011, the date of the Rapture. QED.
Like any instruments, which can be use for good or bad or for advancement or retrogression, mathematics can be used for many other matters (in the user's interests), whether for politics, environment, social signalling or even for religion (as the above).
Maybe like global warming, these divine 'econometric' (application of statistical and mathematical techniques in solving problems) modelers may (likely) have gotten their assumptions, applications or computations all amiss.
That's unless what they have been using could be extraterrestial models.
No comments:
Post a Comment