On Borrowed Time

1. Weed with extreme prejudice!

   1. He’s using the temperature water boils at to determine when the world ends?

2. “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.” – Matt. 24:36

   As a Christian, I don’t understand some Christians’ compulsion to figure out the exact date of the world’s end.

   1. Is there anything saying the day or hour is exactly fixed forever? Can He change His mind over time?

   2. (My) Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

      1. Said insight including knowing what to weed WAY before it hangs around for for 30+ years, amen.

   3. The reasons are usually things like:
      -If you are a lazy sort, the world is ending soon is great because then you don’t have to do anything to improve it now, like fighting climate change or helping the needy .
      -A conman who can convince someone the world is about to end has an easier time convincing that person to hand over all of their money to “help spread the message”.
      -A cult leader can use the threat of Armageddon control their cultists. Only those who blindly obey will be spared from the imminent end of all things.

3. No Unrequited Love Lost?

   Matthew 24:36 “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.

   Voilà. So sad. Next!

   1. He got around that on a technicality — he’s only proposing to narrow it down to a week or so.

      But I’m pretty sure God meant “That also includes not the week, nor month, nor year. I didn’t even tell the angels and the kid. You mere mortals can’t figure it out with your random math. STOP TESTING ME! I’M GOOD AT SMITING, REMEMBER?”

   2. Jesus didn’t mention the year, month or week, so there!

      There was another guy named Harold Camping who predicted the rapture would happen in 1994 and when it didn’t he said his math was off, if I remember correctly. Of course his theology was off.

4. All this crankage … and nothing about godless Commies?

   1. ha!

5. holds hand up to side of head, whirls index finger around several times

6. I’d rather listen to 88 Lines About 44 Women.

   1. I always enjoyed the B-52s song 52 Girls.

7. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a patron ask for another “world is ending in this decade” book from the 1980s, and he sat down and read it with apparent seriousness. O_0

   1. Well, people do research this for academic reasons, so it makes sense for an archive somewhere to have it. That said, if keeping this sort of literature isn’t in your library’s mission…

   2. Some stories you wish you could ask patrons about.

   3. It’s the 1980s on the phone: they say they want their end of the world back…

      …Tell ’em sorry: they waited too late. We can’t give them the end of the world back, but maybe we give them the back end of something?

8. I wouldn’t trust a prophet who doesn’t know how to Romanize Rosh haShanah.

   1. And divide the syllables properly.

9. Of course in all the history of the world, everything about the end of the world revolves around the U.S.

10. My mother always insisted that, in fact, the Rapture did take place on October 4, 1988. On that day, all of the true practicing Christians, who followed Christ’s word as written, were assumed into Heaven.
    However, there were so few of them that no one noticed.

    1. What did she think about the people who were born after then?

       1. What does anyone think happens to those born after the rapture? It wasn’t her problem anyway, since she demonstrably wasn’t a true Christian.

          1. I’m curious if that bothered her, and what she did about it.

             1. Hardly! We were godless Communists in my family. That’s what made the joke so funny.

    2. I like your mother

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