Last Night on Earth

The old adage "Live each day like it was your last" has taken on special meaning this weekend for a certain group of religious zealots in California who believe that the end of the world will arrive tomorrow, Saturday, May 21. The prediction was made by Harold Camping, who runs something called Family Radio, and has bought up billboard space across the country proclaiming tomorrow as the coming of the Rapture, in which God's chosen people will ascend to heaven while the rest of us burn for eternity. The billboards really are everywhere; there's one about a half-mile from my house. It doesn't stop at billboards, though; Camping's crew has used radio and TV ads, missionaries and RVs driving across the country.

Of course, most folks are treating this as a joke and having fun with it by throwing "Rapture parties" and planning post-Rapture looting sprees. Camping actually predicted the end of the world in 1994, but now he says it's really gonna happen with a big earthquake. And he's not the only one who has predicted doomsday over the years. The Mayans predicted it'll come next year, but they're not around to find out whether it'll happen.

The interesting thing will be to see how Camping's followers react on Sunday when they wake up and the world hasn't gone boom. Hey, there's always next year.