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Make My Bed? But You Say the World’s Ending (Rapture Prophecy Tests Families - NY Times)
NY Times ^ | May 19th, 2011 | Ashley Parker

Posted on 05/20/2011 10:15:13 AM PDT by Gena Bukin

The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.

The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to “sound the trumpet” on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.

Last weekend, the family traveled to New York, the parents dragging their reluctant children through a Manhattan street fair in a final effort to spread the word.

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

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.

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, particularly with relatives whose main concern about the weekend is whether it will rain.

Kino Douglas, 31, a self-described agnostic, said it was hard to be with his sister Stacey, 33, who “doesn’t want to talk about anything else.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: camping; haroldcamping; rapture
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Interesting article of how family members cope with each other over differing beliefs regarding the coming (or not) Rapture.
1 posted on 05/20/2011 10:15:19 AM PDT by Gena Bukin
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To: Gena Bukin

I mowed my grass just in case.


2 posted on 05/20/2011 10:21:24 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: Gena Bukin

I’ve seen this before. They will just make excuses, change the date, and do it all over again.


3 posted on 05/20/2011 10:23:34 AM PDT by 240B (he is doing everything he said he wouldn't and not doing what he said he would)
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To: 240B

Yep. I would LOVE to find some of these people who are completely sold on the idea and buy all their stuff for ten bucks, though.


4 posted on 05/20/2011 10:28:57 AM PDT by arderkrag (Georgia is God's Country.----------In the same way Rush is balance, I am consensus.)
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To: 240B
I’ve seen this before. They will just make excuses, change the date, and do it all over again.

Except people have maxed out their credit cards, spent their savings, drained their kids' college funds, quit their jobs and put their pets to sleep.

Sunday is going to be pretty rough for some of these people.

5 posted on 05/20/2011 10:29:33 AM PDT by Gena Bukin
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To: Gena Bukin

Either way, I’m eating cheesecake. If it is the end of times, I am not sure that in on the menu in heaven. If it isn’t the end of times, my diet will start on Monday. Win Win!!


6 posted on 05/20/2011 10:32:46 AM PDT by momtothree
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To: Gena Bukin

Remember when Ted Danson gave the world ten years to total environmental destruction? How many years ago was that?


7 posted on 05/20/2011 10:33:00 AM PDT by Spok
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To: Gena Bukin
"Sunday is going to be pretty rough for some of these people."

People who've destroyed the lives of their loved ones will deserve to have a pretty rough Sunday.

8 posted on 05/20/2011 10:33:24 AM PDT by Artemis Webb (artemis_webb@yahoo.com --Lord knows how long before I'm banned so please say hello sometime.)
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To: Gena Bukin

****And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.***

Some people believed the same thing in 1988.


9 posted on 05/20/2011 10:33:47 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Click my name. See my home page, if you dare!)
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To: cripplecreek

I think I’ll let the mowing go until Monday.

The looters can deal with it.


10 posted on 05/20/2011 10:35:49 AM PDT by Palladin (Sarah Palin in 2012!)
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To: Gena Bukin

Back in the early 1980s, at a family reunion in southern Arkansas, an old woman in the family claimed to have a vision that the family needed to stay together till the “Rapture”. They did.

They lost homes to forclosure, lost jobs, and basicly completely turned their lives upside down.

Finally the old woman died, and the families drifted apart realizing they had been “had”.


11 posted on 05/20/2011 10:37:46 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Click my name. See my home page, if you dare!)
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To: Gena Bukin

I’ve woke up on a few Sundays where I wished the world would end. Mostly in college.


12 posted on 05/20/2011 10:38:01 AM PDT by lp boonie (Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment)
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To: Gena Bukin

Like a true cult, Camping effectively exalts himself as the supreme interpreter of Scripture to the exclusion of those who dissent from him, and even teaches the lost are those who deny that believers will know the hour of Christ’s coming. Yet prior to that he said that he makes plans for future business on earth (as does his ministry now: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/19/news/economy/may-21-end-of-the-world-finances-harold-camping), even while teaching he expects 2011 to be the end. (Time
has an end, p.22)

Countdown clock an refutation here: http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Camping.html

Anyone know how to make the countdown clock script work here?


13 posted on 05/20/2011 10:38:02 AM PDT by daniel1212 ( "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," Acts 3:19)
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To: 240B

We do live in rough times however, and the enemies of Christ are just going to go bananas if or when this goes
awry. Part of me hopes Christ would come back 3 days later just to wipe the smirks off their faces. Let him indeed come “like a thief” when no one is expecting him!


14 posted on 05/20/2011 10:41:45 AM PDT by mdmathis6 (Applied Christianity;a study in spiritual fiber optics connecting God's love to man!)
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To: Gena Bukin

“Gary Daniels, 27, said he planned to spend Saturday like other believers, “glued to our TV sets, waiting for the Resurrection and earthquake from nation to nation.””

Flat screen?

How large?

And what is Gary’s address?


15 posted on 05/20/2011 10:42:12 AM PDT by trumandogz
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To: Gena Bukin
I've seen the mother-daughter drama play out lots of times, but that mom is going to have a really interesting situation come Sunday.

If you've told your daughter the world is ending Saturday and she's going to hell, do you go to church on Sunday?

Sure would have some 'splainin' to do to the Lord.

16 posted on 05/20/2011 10:49:03 AM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: Gena Bukin

Judgement Day and the so-called “Rapture” are two totally different events separated by a thousand years.................


17 posted on 05/20/2011 10:51:03 AM PDT by Red Badger (Jesus said there is no marriage in Heaven. That's why they call it Heaven............)
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To: Artemis Webb; Gena Bukin; Ruy Dias de Bivar

When it doesn’t happen they will be told that because of their strong faith the world has been spared. Now go out, proselytize and get more paying customers for the radio show.

Given the option of feeling you have been duped or having saved the world - what would you choose?


18 posted on 05/20/2011 10:51:23 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: momtothree

Well, look on the bright side. At least it will put and end to all this Global Warming nonsense....................


19 posted on 05/20/2011 10:53:29 AM PDT by Red Badger (Jesus said there is no marriage in Heaven. That's why they call it Heaven............)
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To: Gena Bukin

Yeah, it is sad. Interesting that what you describe also happened at Y2K. A week later the paper was full of ads trying to sell generators, dried food, water purification stuff, radiation suits, etc.

This has happened dozens of times throughout history with some preacher or shamen or other fraudster.

You can’t protect stupid people from themselves.

As far as quitting a job and running up credit cards...that doesn’t sound very ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ to me, if you think you are going to die soon. Sounds more convenient and unethical to me. Furthermore, religiously speaking, you are not supposed to ever predict or anticipate the rapture. The very people who believe this stuff are sinning themselves out of salvation by not following the Bible.

What if Jesus tells them they can’t go if they still have debts to pay? Sounds like a reasonable thing for Jesus to do.

Oh well Gena, I’ll see you tomorrow on the other side...or not, I don’t know.


20 posted on 05/20/2011 10:54:54 AM PDT by 240B (he is doing everything he said he wouldn't and not doing what he said he would)
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