MIDDLETOWN, MD, USA, May 20, 2011: Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as The Rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.
Believers subscribe to the prophecy of Harold Camping, a civil engineer turned self-taught biblical scholar whose doomsday scenario — broadcast on his Family Radio network — predicts a May 21, 2011, Judgment Day. On that day, arrived at through a series of Bible-based calculations that assume the world will end exactly 7,000 years after Noah’s flood, believers are to be transported up to heaven as a worldwide earthquake strikes. Nonbelievers will endure five months of plagues, quakes, wars, famine and general torment before the planet’s total destruction in October. In 1992 Mr. Camping said the rapture would probably be in 1994, but he now says newer evidence makes the prophecy for this year certain.
With their doomsday T-shirts, placards and leaflets, followers — often clutching Bibles — are typically viewed as harmless proselytizers from outside mainstream religion. But their convictions have frequently created the most tension within their own families. Mr. Kino Douglas, 31, a Brooklyn resident whose sister is a firm believer, said he was eagerly awaiting for Sunday, a day he is sure will come. “I’m going to show up at her house so we can have that conversation that’s been years in coming.”
Meanwhile, atheists are mobilizing in several ways. Several parties are scheduled for Rapture Day. According to the BBC, a non-believer from New Hampshire is enjoying a boost in business for his company, Eternal Earth-bound Pets. He is making contracts to pick up people’s pets after the Rapture and care for them, since he is “certain to be left behind.” He has more than 250 clients who are paying up to $135 each. They will be disappointed twice, he told the Wall Street Journal. “Once because they weren’t raptured, and again because I don’t do refunds.”