The end of the world?

So let me get this straight. An 89-year old man predicts that people will be raptured into heaven on May 21st at 6:00 p.m. and then three months later the world will end. The media gives him all sorts of attention even though people have failed to predict the end of the world since Jesus was on earth, and the man had failed once before in 1994 to predicting the end of the world.

Why does the media give this man and his teachings any attention? Like the Terry Jones event, the media fell into the trap that Harold Camping set. I wrote about the Terry Jones event at: http://chainlink-chainoflakesncd.blogspot.com/2010/09/terry-jones-and-burning-of-koran.html

Camping was wrong about predicting the end of the world, but he sure raised a lot of money for his radio station.

Yesterday thousands of preachers across the country went into a pulpit and shared a sermon. At Chain of Lakes Church Rev. Barbara Anne Keely shared a sermon about the Road to Emmaus. The site of the sermon is here: http://blip.tv/chain-of-lakes-church/on-the-road-5194050

I wouldn’t have expected the media to cover her sermon, but what she said had more legitimacy than what Harold Camping predicted.

In no other occupation besides religion does the media pay so much attention to off-the-wall ideas and crack-pot theories.

I had a few laughs with my family over the weekend about the impending rapture as I’m sure many others did. But the coverage of this story is not funny. Because of this story atheists have even more reason to question the legitimacy of Christianity. People who are on the fringes of the church will view the church less seriously.

People like Harold Camping will have much less impact if the media stops giving them so much coverage.