Like a bad sequel, it’s once again time for the “end of the world” as we know it (so well). Biblical calculations made by Chris McCann, head of the eBible Fellowship, predict that October 7 is the day of “annihilation.”
Maybe.
“There’s a strong likelihood that this will happen. Which means there’s an unlikely possibility that it will not,” McCann says, according to the Guardian.
That qualified statement comes after his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboards and other mass media alerting the world that May 21, 2011 was Judgment Day. Since then, McCann’s following has dwindled.
McCann and the remaining eBible Fellowship members are still sure that day was significant though, it’s just that it was only spiritually significant. “God closed the door to heaven” that day, McCann reported in a Bible study audio clip.
The May 2011 date was conceived by Harold Camping, another Christian broadcaster. Camping died in 2013, but his catastrophic 2011 prognostication still holds weight with McCann’s group. They believe May 21 was the last day God picked out churchgoers to save from the apocalypse.
The eBible Fellowship teaches that God planned to spend the next 1,600 days following May 21, 2011 on saving non-church goers. The 1,600th day is October 7, 2015, so naturally, with no one left to save, that’d be it for old Creation.
Will end-of-the-world prophecies ever end?
Another recent doomsday forecast centered around the “blood moon” lunar eclipses, also purported to be based on the Bible.
Prominent ministers John Hagee and Mark Biltz claimed that four consecutive lunar eclipses, corresponding with Jewish holidays with six full moons in between, meant the end times were near. Hagee wrote a New York Times best-selling book called Four Blood Moons, which didn't specify any date for the Rapture, but told readers devastating events would inevitably result.
While Hagee and Biltz now leave themselves even more wiggle room than McCann has, a non-religious figure emerged as a more assertive authority on when the world will end.
Hollywood actress Jennifer Lawrence claimed last week that the world would come to an end on January 20, 2017 – “if Donald Trump is elected president.”