WHEN THE WORLD DOESN'T END >>>

Having written a novel about the end of the world (Lightfall, available at bookstores and libraries near you) I've spent a fair amount of time talking to people about the Apocalypse. Actually, having been one of Jehovah's Witnesses until adulthood, I've spent a lot of time talking to people about the Apocalypse, so forgive me if I have a few thoughts on the Harold Camping debacle last Saturday. I know it's beating a dead horse, but at least the horse died of natural causes rather than fire and brimstone.

My erstwhile religion was pretty much founded on the notion that the Lord would return in October 1914. The Witnesses were so wedded to this belief that when he didn't come, they accepted World War I as a sign that he had in fact come, we just couldn't see him. Then they spent the next 80-plus years telling the world that "by no means" would the generation alive in 1914 pass away before the visible advent of global Armageddon. I was born in 1968, and that was about the time the Witnesses' Governing Body decided October 1975 would bring the Big One. I knew folks who took their kids out of school, stopped paying their credit cards, and gave all their money to the cause of international evangelism. That was 36 years ago. Then the Witnesses told me, in a sermon written by the Governing Body for a district convention in the mid-'80s, that there was "no way" human governments would endure to the next millennium. But here we are, 11 years later...and here we are.

Now the Witnesses say that what the Bible MEANT to say when it said "generation" was rather vague. In fact, I can't seem to follow what they believe it does mean anymore. The whole prediction has lost its guts. I guess it's rather like when Jesus's buddies asked him when the world would end, and he said (in Matthew 24:34) that their own generation would witness the Apocalypse. He was right about the Temple falling. Everything else? Not so much. Jesus was everything he's cracked up to be, sure; but as a prophet, even he was no great shakes.

The Bible says no man knows the day or the hour, and that's the smartest prediction ever made. Besides, the fact is, the End of the World comes on different dates for everyone. The End of my stepfather's world was a few years ago. He lived his life, and it ended, and now he exists only as a widely divergent set of memories. And that's OK. It's how things work. You may not like it, but the universe isn't obliged to behave exactly the way you or I want.

Some Armageddons, I'm happy to say, are survivable. My soon-to-be sister-in-law (have I mentioned I'm getting married next Saturday?) and her husband thought it was the End of the World when their baby boy developed a life-threatening cardiac defect. That was two years ago, and he's fine, and he'll probably outlive us all. Yesterday I taught him "knucks."

My point is, even the best prophets get it wrong. Harold Camping might be a liar and a cheat, but more likely, he's just a sad old man who thought he'd found inside information. That's the quickest path to the worst Apocalypse a human can suffer, which is mockery at the hands of a secular nation. His life is Hell right now. Among the only people whose world ended Saturday were those suckers who gave away their lives to be ready for Rapture. My prediction? There are some truths the mind cannot handle, and among them is the realization of absolute foolishness--so the Camping camp will be back out on the streets by the time you read this, insisting they simply forgot to carry the 1--math is hard!--and the Lord will be back before you know it. I hope they're right...but assume they're not. You should, too.