At first I thought this was a joke, but as is so often true with religious websites, I don’t think it is. It’s a site called The Rapture Index, and is meant to tell us how close we are (despite the disclaimers) to being taken up to heaven—or left behind.
Here’s the explanation, and the home page for the site, full of information about the Rapture, is here.
The Purpose For This Index
The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.
The Rapture Index is by no means meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.
You could say the Rapture index is a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.
Rapture Index of 100 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 100 to 130: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 130 to 160: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 160: Fasten your seat belts
Today's reading is below. The indices are hilarious, from False Christs [how do they get that number?] to "Gog [Russia]. And "civil rights" indicate an oncoming rapture?
As you see, we’re at 187 today, which means “fasten your seat belts”! Jesus will be here soon, and for sure this meeting I’m at will be Left Behind.
h/t: Merilee
I was staring at the article, intent on understanding the numbers, when it dawned on me. Nonsense is not meant to be understood, but to baffle.
….if you can’t enlighten with facts, baffle with bull shit…..
Yes, even within in the context of their loony beliefs, they have no rational basis for assigning the numbers.
“I don’t like that — add another 1”
The First Digit Phenomenon
“Back in 1881, Simon Newcomb, the renowned Canadian-American scientist, published a provocative conjecture that was promptly forgotten by everyone. Newcomb had noticed that books of logarithms in the libraries were always much dirtier at the beginning. Hmmm! Were his fellow scientists looking up the logarithms of numbers beginning with 1 more frequently than 2, 3, etc.? It certainly seemed like it. He formalized his suspicions in a conjecture …”
I seem to recall an article that used this conjecture to predict if the data in published research was fudged: too many “1’s” was a giveaway.
Ooops … here’s the proper link.
The First Digit Phenomenon
The phenomenon is now known as Benford’s Law.
That is really interesting. Thanks, grasshopper & Jim.
They use DJIA, which must be assumed to be meaningless for those uninitiated. This must bes where the idea that you have to be Sophisticated-TheologianTM to comment on scriptures correctly.
These numbers do not means anything before you read at least 100 sophisticated-left-behindness books …
(I got the feeling something is very wrong here, but I have to wait for my coffee to kick in ..)
😀
I was confused by the numbers, but then you calmed me — no sense in me feeling stupid for not understanding a ridiculous chart!
I found this as a kind of by-the-way link on a site called Math Babe. This index is just too bizarre to believe;-) You couldn’t make this stuff up. Who knew that inflation and interest rates would accelerate the coming of the Rapture. And what is this Gog for Russia? and Beast Government (#33).
You can find out more than you want to know about Gog at the Wikipedia article for Gog and Magog. “Interpreting” Gog as Russia goes back at least as far as Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which sort of started the “apocalyptic books for fun and, especially, profit” sub-subgenre.
Beast government refers to the supposed one world government during the supposed end times.
Communist Russia? One world government? Right-wing paranoia? Or the Trvth Of God™? Only time will tell…
The important thing (for them) is that the sheeple continue to quaff this Koolaid in large quantities, thus ensuring a steady stream of income.
Someone really needs to write a book, something like “Understanding the Fundamentalist Mindset for Atheists.”
This kind of ” understanding” is certainly beyond my feeble brain…
Nothing 25 years in a fundamentalist church can’t cure…
I am fortunate enough not to have spent a single day in any kind of church or religious institution.
Not beyond — beneath. It’s almost inconceivably stupid.
I like the part in that article where George W Bush mentions Gog and Magog to Chirac and he has to ask a scholar what the heck he was talking about. Chirac must’ve thought Bush was right off his rocker.
Well, wasn’t he (off his rocker)?
I have to admit, I found his nicknames for world leaders amusing. He called Chretian “Dino”, Putin either “Pootie-Poot” or “Ostrich Legs” and Berlusconi, “Shoes”. To be able to get away with calling people that in public is hilarious.
Where did he get the Dino for Chretien?
I don’t know, but I can kind of see it.
Is it Dino as in Dinosaur or Deeno as in Dean Martin?
LOL come on, you can’t figure that one out? It’s dinosaur of course. 😀
Well I though maybe ol’ Jean crooned;-)
I don’t think a book would do it. What you need is a friend with a hammer to apply a couple of 6 inch nails to the thinking parts of your brain. That should get you there.
Something like “Fundamental Christianity for Dummies?” Not exactly sure who would be the target for marketing…
This is real; I’ve seen the site before.
They left out one category:
46. Apocalyptic assholes – 5
As an added bonus, the list now matches the chromosomes in the (diploid) human genome!
? 45 # 46.
Oh, how absolutely loverly it would be for all the True Believers™ to be Ruptured. Maybe then the rest of us will have a fighting chance at fixing the place they’ve left behind, without having to put up with their impedimentary bullshit any more!
b&
Yes, but…
The Protestants agree that the Catholics won’t be going. Furthermore, in certain sects, even a greater or lesser percentage of the other Protestants won’t be going.
I see what you did, sneaking the words “left behind” into your post. I think someone needs to write a book titled “Right Butt Cheek.” The opening epigram could be, “If any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well” (Matthew 5.39).
For you:
https://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/velocirapture.jpg
Love it!!
Ha ha!
Or: The Philosoraptor
So, Jesus already came — 65 MYA, and he rode an asteroid just like Rael! Only it wasn’t humans who were saved….
b&
From their Rapture hit parade:
“06 Interest Rates:
Key rates drop on soft employment data. ”
Yeah, the Bible never stops going on about that kind of thing. I guess it must be true.
Lord Jeezus…take me now!!!!!!
the Bible never stops going on about that kind of thing
That’s ‘cuz the bible spends so much space talking about America!
Say, doesn’t the Bible say usury is a sin? Naughty money lenders!
Or as John Cleese as the Frenchie king would say, “I fart in your general direction.”
“I told them we’ve already got one”.
yup;-)
Hairsplitting: It wasn’t the French king, just a man-at-arms.
“Go away or I shall taunt you a second time”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs for the full panoply of French insults. (And the rain of animals).
You’re right, of course. Fetchez la vache!!!
It goes to show that, as expected, Enraptured is the converse of Enlightened.
Love the FAQs! You gotta check those out. Classic stuff.
Oh My Ceiling Cat – the FAQs are unbelievable!!
I’d rather not give them the clicks and possibly enhance their advertising returns. tell us more, and in the process boost ProfCC’s rating with WordPress and the level of his hits in Google.
Most of the FAQ’s are pretty lame. This one is not so bad:
How many Rapture points are given for “Wood chucked by woodchucks”? Wood chucking can’t be a good sign.
I wonder what the score for woodchucks upchucking would be?
How much yuck would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would upchuck?
b&
Maybe we’ve got a new classic?? I used to put the Gary Larson woodchuck panel on my math tests…
Looking at that – are we sure it isn’t a spoof site like Betty Bowers or Landover Baptist Church?
AND it has “Behold, I come quickly” right there on the masthead. Are they serious? I expect my immediate and regrettably predictable reaction to that quote has blown any chance I might ever have of being Saved…
Waiting 2000 years and calling it “quickly” makes a lot more sense with a 13.7 billion year old Universe than it does with a 6000 year old one.
Maybe another sign of the rapture is that modern cosmology and evolution are true?
That wasn’t exactly the sense of ‘come quickly’ that sprang to mind. At least, not to my mind. I seem to have the sort of mind to which regrettable interpretations all too readily seem to spring.
🙂
When he said, “let the little children come unto me,” that’s NOT what he was talking about!
And yes, I think just about everyone since the time of Jesus has come quickly at some point or another.
For some time now, I’ve been pondering the analogous question about species of Artamus.
From the high/low by year, we have been at or above 172 since sometime in 2011. Seat belts fastened, still waiting for take off clearance from the control tower…
There might be a slight additional delay.
I’m sure the high alert status hitting the stratosphere coincides with events which took place on the first Tuesday in November, 2008.
Droughts are a 5 and floods are a 5…
It all boils down to what Achrachno said in #1 above: “I don’t like that — add another 1″
Jesus is coming! Everyone look busy!
Ew. “Three Mile Island,” as kids these days refer to (though I have no clue why.)
b&
I was hoping to see a graphical representation of the Rapture Index (or any of its facters), in order to then check it with the web site on Spurious Correlations. No success.
Think where the index would be if Sarah Palin had been elected Vice-President of the United States. Cats and dogs, living together….
At least she can see Gog from her back yard. 🙂
+1
ROFL!
You’re a funny one, Ms. McPherson.
😉
On the other hand, Magog is in Quebec, so she would have trouble seeing that …
I’d start believing in Jeebus if all these weirdos suddenly disappeared…
OTOH, it probably has already happened. We’re all still here. Proof!
I think He missed a few.
Well. Lessee. Pretty much all of the societies that participated in making up the BuyBull were slave-owning societies. Their economies seriously depended on a large cadre of people being removed from the wage-earning (money circulating) part of society. So, liberation of the slaves would have been a deeply threatening idea to many. Particularly the ones that could read and right (Freudian slit there!), and had sufficient leisure time to think about the future and theology.
So I see no grounds for surprise in people who use the BuyBull to come up with an indicator of massive disaster that sees high (or increasing) civil rights as a sign of impending disaster.
I wouldn’t be astonished to find that neo-Nazi KKK-ers make up a significant proportion of the fundamentalist party, but I’d suspect that the roots of the correlation do lie in the attitudes and fears of the people who invented the BuyBull.
I firmly believe the rapture will happen tomorrow. I have always firmly believed this because I live in the sure and certain knowledge that tomorrow never comes.
Though if one of their chosen ones, a Palin for instance, were to find their way into the briefcase with the big red button I think we could be in for something that would be as near as dammit a rapture. Just without the baby jebus coming down to take his chosen out of the ensuing end of civilization conflagration.
#35: Date Settings. 3
Wut?
I think an example would be when Mac users get an email from December 31st, 1969.
No, it turns out that date setting is when people set dates for the rapture. Like Crouch.
If you scroll down far enough, you come to a link that goes to a page that explains the categories. And some of them are great!
Like civil rights. Tyranny, for example, is a sign of the end times because reasons. So the spread of civil rights is a bad thing if you want the rapture to be soon.
It’s when people try to predict the rapture on a set date instead of being vague about it like Jesus intended.
I still wonder if people are taking all those revelations out of context. That the events were predictions for the near future when they were written. The vague references relating to people of the time who were not able to be named for fear of persecution. I recall seeing a documentary to this effect a few years ago.
It’s amazing how we can use logic to justify our beliefs. But are they just projecting?
As an atheist I have no concerns about these prophecized ends of the world. The delusions of other cause me no fear.
Except that these people vote, and buy guns.
ok, this has to be the craziest of the crazy:
33 Beast Government
Pinellas County, Fla., students are paying for lunch by
waving one hand over a palm scanner.
Didn’t find anything about getting our microchips removed, but it must be there somewhere.
Since rapture is simply a state or feeling of great happiness, pleasure, or love, as well a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion, I can honestly state that I have been raptured tens and even hundreds of thousands of times in my life, and will be again at least ten thousand times in the future (if I live for another decade or two). So if most people are like me in that department, we are as close to rapture both past and future as we are able to reach that rather wonderful state!
Concerning rapture, Blondie is considered definitive.
The rapture is an imaginative interpretation of something Paul said somewhere. Revelation is best understood as an elaborate allegory concerning the situation in the first century.
It’s pointless to try to construct a consistent narrative of the end times from the scraps of the New Testament; hell, it’s impossible to reconcile the Gospels’ various accounts of the last days of Jesus: before or after Passover?
I always thought that Revelation was written by some Greek fella called John who lived on Patmos, following his eating of rye bread made from ergot-infected grain, or some other kind of magic mushroom…
😉
Note that, as best I can remember, the term “rapture” is not found in the Bible.
I’m so happy that Zinnia will be taken care of after the Rapture:
http://www.aftertherapturepetcare.com/
Zinnia seems pretty unconcerned.
I thought this was a joke too. Fearmongering at its worst/best.
Now that bearded women win European Song Contests, it’s obvious that this Rapture is close. Especially in Putin-Country.
You know if we took action to fix climate change it would bring the index down to below 160 … 🙂
So, are Liberalism, Peace Process and Civil Rights good or bad? Just that with these people you never know…
P.S. I’ve always thought rapture was what happened to me personally when I had, for example, been partaking of too many illegal substances or got lucky on Saturday night… I never thought to apply it to the faithful being zonked off willy-nilly to Paradise or wherever.
Oh, and while I totally disapprove of the gun culture, I can’t help but get a laugh out of Tim Kreider’s take on it:
http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly110518.htm
I’ll bet my left behind that they can’t find it with both hands.
I’m guessing the handwringing about the “end times” is partially from the hilarious failure of the teabaggers on Friday with their “American Spring” nonsense.
Oh yeah, it’s bee at “fasten your seat belts” or thereabouts for a while. (I check the site on occasion, just out of dumb curiosity!) I actually first learned about that website quite a few years ago, at church…
I’d like to see a, “Why There’ll Be No Rapture” index: it could include things like, “Number of studies proving that Adam and Eve never existed; Number of years since Christ promised he would return; Number of studies indicating that natural disasters have NOT risen in frequency”, etc., etc…..the evidence is kinda piling up.
Yeah, but who needs evidence if you’ve got FAITH 🙁
WHERE R TEH GAYS??!1
They forgot us…
That’s king of a glaring omission, isn’t it? You’re probably covered under #15, Moral Standards, which stands at 5 (the max, I think).
Though, come to think of it, I doubt whether it ever drops below 5…