As Rapture nears, doubters ask for last playful word


Five months ago, a 29-year-old woman from Ohio rolled though Raleigh in a white Subaru that proclaimed from hood to taillight that Jesus Christ would return May 21 - that's Saturday - to claim the faithful few for heaven and doom the rest to a fiery apocalypse.
Allison Warden came bearing news from California radio evangelist Harold Camping, who sparked a worldwide Rapture-watch with his guarantee that the end times had arrived - exactly 7,000 years from the day Noah launched his ark.
But on the eve of apocalypse, the sharpest criticism of the Rapture message comes from the Christian church, which insists from nearly every domination's pulpit that the day of judgment cannot be foretold.
"I would hope to think that you couldn't find a single, serious Bible-believing person who would take that seriously," said Steve Noble, a Raleigh Christian broadcaster who plans to dedicate today's show to the subject.
"For anybody to take that position, you would have to be crazy, ignorant or senile," he said. "The Bible makes it very clear that nobody can know. Not even Jesus knows."
The Rapture, as described in 1Thessalonians 4:13-18, involves the Lord descending from heaven with a shout, in the voice of the archangel, and the "dead in Christ" rising to meet him in the clouds, beginning an eternity together.

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