Rapture

Every time someone says anything about the rapture all I can think about was that little old lady in west virginia who told me she didn't have -time- to listen to me share a message about Christ with her because "[she was] waitin' on the rapture!"

Let me start by saying that I didn't hear anything about this until this afternoon while browsing through the news. I know nothing about the guy who made the claim other than what I saw on 4 different news channels, and I don't have a clue about what his FULL claim is, so everything I am basing this blurb on is about the things I saw on national television.

So.
To summarize:
Some 89 year old kook claims the rapture is going to happen tomorrow at 4pm and that it is a mathematical claim based out of the bible.

The first thought that comes to my mind is: There is very little mathematics involved in the bible. i mean, they count the tribes and the Israelites. There are a lot of 7s here and there and 12s and 3s and 666, but really it isn't the number of it that matters in all of those cases, it's the meaning behind them.

This isn't the first time this old man has cried the end of the world. Many years ago he made the claim and was wrong. One reporter asked him what would happen if he was wrong this time. He said that it WILL happen; he was quite confident and sure of himself, almost the same way a magician is sure of himself to the point where he can convince his audience that he really did saw the young lady in half.

The old man also made a point to say he wasn't a prophet, that he didn't have a vision, that nothing came to him, he didn't eat spaghetti, etc. That he just found a mathematical formula in the scriptures and that he just came up with it himself. I find that humorous. Doesn't it also say several times that no one will know when the end will come and that people will come forth claiming things and making their own paths to heaven and yet that they will all be wrong?

Personally, I think the end is close but not THAT close. There are many things that need to take place first.

Also personally, I don't think I even want to know when the Lord is coming. If the exact date was made known to me I'd just as soon not know.
Why? Because I don't believe it would be worth my time to change my habits just because "the end is near". I plan to live every day of my life the way I ought to and not have any regrets, because whether the Lord comes or not, I could just as soon die tomorrow from something else, or things could be brought against me that would require me to have had a good life in order to get out of them...
In other words, I would like my ethos to be so good that I CAN use that as my only evidence.

Ramble Ramble.