Not wanting to be out-apocalypsed by some pagan Mayan prediction for 2012, Harold Camping jumped in to get a head start on The End.  Camping, president of the Family Radio Christian network, predicts The Rapture will occur May 21, 2011.  That’s right, you have one month to get right with God, reconnect with long-lost friends and bang your hot neighbor across the street.  Not necessarily in that order.

Camping goes on to predict that the end of the world as we know it will be a mere five months later, October 21, 2011.  For those not raptured, that gives extra time for trans fats and looting.

Camping claims the Bible as the source for his prediction.  Camping also claims to be a civil engineer.  Further he claims to have used math to determine the May 21^st date.  Previously Camping predicted a Rapturous event would occur on September 4, 1994.  You probably noticed a lack of End Times that day.  Camping said he made a mathematical error.  Which doesn’t inspire confidence in wrapping up personal business by mid-May (and taking another run at that hot neighbor).  Although Camping has re-researched his source and re-calculated his numbers, if you take the time to study Camping’s arithmetic, you will find that it still follows the basic End of Days Theorem:  X+Y*Z=BS.

The highlight of any Rapture comes when The Saved are whisked to Heaven.  Personally I envision the souls of The Saved sucked out of their bodies by a Divine Vacuum Cleaner, leaving the soulless bodies as zombies or just dead and lying about.   Either way, those of us still around have to clean up the mess.  Again.  Can you imagine the mess after the Great Flood?  You thought cleaning up a flooded basement was horrible?  Imagine a whole world covered in silt, mud and bloated, rotting unicorn corpses (dumb unicorns).  And since no TV executives will be among The Saved, expect to watch “Rockin Rapture” hosted by Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest.

Believers in Camping’s prediction (yes, there are believers in Camping’s prediction) say that around 200 million souls will be fast-tracked to Heaven.  Considering there are approximately two billion Christians, 200 million ain’t many.  Still, it’s better than the 144,000 that will be with God as the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim.

Naysayers say to Camping, “Hey.  What about Matthew 24:36, ‘But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.’ (KJV)  That’s Jesus Himself calling bullshit on you.”  Camping counters by claiming that the passage only applies to the “church age” (yeah, I have no idea what that means either), not to present times.  So, if I’m following Camping’s … logic? … the words of the Son of God aren’t eternally true.  Hence, one no longer has to follow Matthew 5:27-28, in which Jesus said, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (KJV)  This is great news for married folks who want to do the horizontal tango with that hot neighbor before the Rapture.

So what’s one to do come May 21^st if you don’t get the invitation to use the wormhole to Paradise?  Party, of course.  After enough drinks, you may even see four guys on horseback.  And when the pony posse asks you -- you heathen -- how you feel about the End of the World now, you’ll look at them and say,

“I feel fine.”