Rapture has commenced...

[RichardCranium]

Definitely Plan B material, get $10 from each of those 6 million utter morons and it's a good income stream.

On his web site you can pay by any means you can think of, including monthly direct debit.

Anyway, this page will give you lots of "data" to help form the basis for your cult: Harold Camping's Heresies EXPOSED!. Start a little way down at the section headed "Harold Camping's Kingdom Hall". I didn't know wank could be heaped so high.

[AtW]

I always said CUK should switch to subscription model

1) Free - you can read but not post
2) £10 a month - post moderately
3) £50 a month - 2 sockies can be registered
4) £250 a month - can't be banned
5) £1000 a month - admin privileges!!!

Guest stars: sasguru, DimPrawn, MarillionFan and AtW get a cut from extra activity generated by their witty comments...

[TykeMerc]

On his web site you can pay by any means you can think of, including monthly direct debit.

Anyway, this page will give you lots of "data" to help form the basis for your cult: Harold Camping's Heresies EXPOSED!. Start a little way down at the section headed "Harold Camping's Kingdom Hall". I didn't know wank could be heaped so high.

Thanks for that, it appears that the Yanks have a long track record of falling for this kind of scam repeatedly so the idea has great merit. With easily available broadcast media it's going to be trivial to spread the word.

Admittedly I'll have to do a bunch of research to understand the commonly used religious buzzwords (or at least where they should be placed for the right impact), but every business needs a little development time.

[TimberWolf]

PRINCETON, NJ -- Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago.
Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism

Almost "unbelievable".

It takes a failed believer to believe in a testable religious prediction though. Religion 101 = no testable predictions. Schoolboy error.

[TykeMerc]

Almost "unbelievable".

It takes a failed believer to believe in a testable religious prediction though. Religion 101 = no testable predictions. Schoolboy error.

Quite believable, although completely terrifying.

[RichardCranium]

Admittedly I'll have to do a bunch of research to understand the commonly used religious buzzwords (or at least where they should be placed for the right impact), but every business needs a little development time.

You could just invent new stuff.

Take Ann Lee, for example and see if you can comprehend how the timeline has remained intact from her to modern day Shakers. It'll take about ten minutes to read through that lot but by the end of it you'll also understand why the Flat Earth Society persists.

I suspect all you'll really need to get started is:

• a prediction people can believe in (e.g. "we'll eliminate IR35 by 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012"
• some numerology crud (take the letters of "The Holy Church of Chutney Spoonerism and Saint TykeMerc The Saviour" where A = 0, B = 1 etc and it adds up to 666!!!);
• an online order form;
• the means to take monthly direct debits;
• the ability to talk in a funny voice ("Orrrlll praaaaaaise de loooorud");
• a piece of mango chutney shaped like Jesus;
• a press release ready to go out at the start of the silly season.

Put out a few YouTube videos of you ranting, and put together some leaflets, and I reckon you're good to go.

[NotAllThere]

To be really convincing, you have to delude yourself that it's all true. May require a high-level of double-think.

[RichardCranium]

Regarding the survey above:

According to a survey of 17000 people in the US International Business Times, they reckon:

8% say Harold Camping will confess he was wrong. ✔
16% say he will claim that the rapture did happen, but just in an invisible way that we cannot perceive or understand. ✔
19% say Camping would "claim God had mercy on mankind and spared the earth" ✔
54% say that Camping will unrepentantly claim a calculation error and form a new Doomsday date just like he did in 1994. ✔

They were all right!

The evangelical Christian broadcaster whose much-ballyhooed Judgment Day prophecy went conspicuously unfulfilled on Saturday has a simple explanation for what went wrong — he miscalculated.

Harold Camping said he now believes his forecast is playing out “spiritually,” with the actual apocalypse set to occur five months later, on Oct. 21.

Camping said it “dawned” on him that a “merciful and compassionate God” would spare humanity from “hell on Earth for five months” by compressing the physical apocalypse into a shorter time frame.

I can't wait any longer ...

[Zippy]

He's the kind of utterly worthless piece of shit: that makes me hope that there really is a Judgement Day. Bastard.

[NickFitz]

Regarding the survey above:
They were all right!

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, 'EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.'

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter III