People Get Ready, Jesus is Coming. Apparently

Judgement Day is once again neigh. Frankly waiting to be purged by God’s holy fire - as though Armageddon were a plot-line in a TV show and the writers trying to spread it out over the course of a season - is rather enervating. God's an indecisive bastard, isn't he. Changing his mind about the date of the rapture as often as Moll Flanders became pregnant. Either that or the human race is rather impatient in waiting for its inevitable bloody demise and, as such, continually shouts out random dates for the apocalypse like it suffers from prophetic Tourette’s syndrome.

I’m not anti-religion, nor am I prejudice towards adults who choose to believe in an omnipotent elderly date-rapist. I believe both religion and science can serve a harmonious relationship. Science can help us explain the correlation between entering a room and forgetting why we did so, whilst religion provides some comfort toward the daunting thought that upon death our bodies will merely become food for worms and playthings for necrophiliacs.

However, as with most things co-opted by lonely people, religion has become the breeding ground for the zealous types who take every single word in the bible as absolute fact. Like a small child listening to their parents’ fantastical stories about tooth fairies. These are the people who constantly pull the dates for the rapture out of their hat-like arses, and will often claim society is corrupt and the only path to redemption is to utterly bow down to an angry invisible being.

Evangelists of this degree are never wrong. Even if they claim Spiderman is better than Batman (a statement which clearly erroneous) they will never ever admit to being wrong.

In accordance with their beliefs, God will destroy the human race if you even so much as have inappropriate thoughts about your secretary. Life is reserved entirely for veneration and for ridding the world of inequity. But why should we completely succumb to this type of Lord? What is there to entice sound minded individuals to spiritually bind themselves to this God, the ultimate bunny-boiler? He is demanding, manipulative, and unreasonable, but by George if you piss him off you’ll know about it. He's basically Alexandra Forrest from Fatal Attraction.

The subterfuge this time comes by way of one Harold Camping, an evangelist who made similar predictions in the past that never came to fruition. He even wrote a book about it entitled 1994?, lest the sweeping brush of convenience let us forget. The findings come after he used ironclad calculations based on dates and figures in the bible and Jewish calendar. Because the most accurate and reliable form of arithmetic is known to be the ‘random stab at the dark based on approximate dates in an ancient book, and the rejection of dates that screw up the calculation’.

But on the chance that Harold isn’t actually seeking attention in order to get his ashamed children to visit and today (21^st May 2011 – for those left behind) the sinful are punished, I’m going to create a list of things to do in this situation.

1. Quit your job

Very few could claim to actually enjoying going to work. Except Liam Gallagher, whose work as a full time prick routinely amounts to a 168 hour work week. And since the end is upon, us you might as well quit your job so you can ensure your final hours aren’t wasted poking people on Facebook or looking up lolcat memes.

2. Abandon your family

Now in order to spend your last day on earth in total tranquillity you’re going to need to abandon your family in order to prevent any emotional obstacles. This may be difficult for you to do so, so you’ll need to get into mindset of a male Jersey Shore resident who has just had a child maintenance form handed to him.

3. Become religious

Since the world is going to be metaphorically crushed under the creator’s giant boot, you probably want to be in his good books. So you convert and join in the demonstrations as the final hours tick away, chastising the dirty heathens to whom you belonged only three hours prior. But at least you're safe in the knowledge that when you die you’ll go to Heaven. And spend eternity with the being that sent everyone you know to an agonising fate in Hell.

*Spoiler warning: Read only after 6pm in your respective country*

4. Become insanely religious

Well it’s the morning after and apart from a handful of mysterious suicides and deaths - caused by a "might as well do it once" attitude towards bizarre sexual experimentation - the world's population has hardly changed. You were expecting millions to have suddenly disappeared, and for the surface of the Earth to have been pounded like Andy Dufresne's posterior. But this is God’s plan you realise. God is merely testing your resolve preparing you for the actual Day of Judgement.

Whilst you wait for the next time you decide to recruit more followers to your cause, because faith is all you have left; no job, no family, just the belief that one day the world will end from non-global warming related causes, and that will make all your sacrifices worth it. Perhaps if you perform enough offensive demonstrations at the funerals of fallen soldiers you’ll get to the afterlife just that bit quicker.