Will the Next Kook Please Predict the Apocalypse?

Start of the 14th b’ak’tun?
Whatever Mr. Raise Our Hopes
That All Life Will End
and Then Disappoint Us At
The Last Minute!

The apocalypse that no one worth listening to predicted would occur two weeks ago didn’t happen. If you were one of those people gearing up for the planet to end in one spectacular moment, you have probably found yourself going through the five stages of grief during the holidays.

Denial
As the last minute of December 21st ticked away, some of you thought, “This isn’t happening to me,” while others assured themselves, “The end of humanity could still happen tomorrow.”

Anger
A few days later, you sought to vent your anger on annoying relatives, bad gifts, people texting at the movies, or Martin Short’s performance in The Santa Clause 3.

Bargaining
Soon you found yourselves saying out loud, “I would gladly give my life for the world to end” or screaming at the sky, “You could destroy Mars, too.”

Depression
On New Year’s Eve, you sat home alone sulking. You rationalized, “Eveyone’s not going to die soon so what’s the point?”

Acceptance
Hopefully, you have all accepted that the Mayan apocalypse is not coming. Only after accepting that, can you get excited about the next potential end of days.

That’s right, another insane person has taken a wild guess at when the world will end. Don’t worry. This isn’t some rebound, one-night-hook-up type of prediction based on some obscure ancient text that won’t call you the next day. This is a good old Jesus-returning, death and destruction, world-finally-pays-for-its-sins prophecy based on claims of divine inspiration and the respected school of biblical math.

The Next Expiration Date for Earth
Mark your calendars! Ronald Weinland predicts that Jesus will return on the day of Pentecost, May 19, 2013. For those of you who need a little more to go on before you open up your heart to another foretelling of humanity’s end, here are some of Ronald Weinland’s credentials:

• Claims God made him a prophet in 1997, so he’s got references.
• Broke away from the Worldwide Church of God to form the Church of God, Preparing for the Kingdom of God, so you know he can make the best out of a bad situation.
• Evaded paying taxes on the $4.4 million dollars he earned from 2004 to 2007, so he can take you out somewhere nice.
• Prophesied the world would end on September 30, 2008, but he explained that. It was complicated.
• Prophesied the world would end on May 27, 2012, but he apologized. He wanted the world to end more than anybody.
• Convicted of five counts of tax evasion, sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, and ordered to pay $245,176 in back taxes on November 14, 2012, but he’s got the money to keep that tied up in appeal until the world ends anyway.

If those points don’t sway you to fear/get excited for your impending destruction, you should note that before sentencing Weinland, Judge Danny Reeves reportedly “received about 600 pages of letters from people around the world asking for leniency for their spiritual leader.” Here’s a rhetorical question formed of impeccable reason: Would that many people write that many letters if Weinland was not obviously someone with knowledge of future events? And here’s another: Did you really even require that much of the 2012 end-of-the-world theories?

Listen. You guys can do so much better than a theory loosely based on some Mesoamerican calendar. I say you get back out there and fall back in love with the idea that all of your problems will go away on a single day in the not-to-distant future.