Nostalgia, Judgment Days & AI Hallucinations

What did the billboard below have to do with Friday the 13th in August 2021?

I’m aware that nobody has asked me that, but bear with me a bit.

Let’s take a glance back, to fifteen years ago, 2011: then one Harold Camping was a radio preacher from Oakland, California, who had figured IT out.

“IT” was the date of Judgment Day, when  Jesus would return, sinners tumble into hell, the elect fly off to heaven, and the world would soon end.

Sure, dozens — hundreds? —of Camping’s wannabe prophetic forebears had made similar announcements over many centuries. But in their wake, while history had yielded no shortage of disasters, plagues, floods, wars, etc., none of them had turned out to be The End.

That’s because all those seers, Harold Camping decided, just got the calculations wrong. Camping was sure he’d got them right.

Certain enough that to spread this somewhat dismaying news, Camping put up hundreds of identical colorful  billboards along highways across the country, paid for by his listeners.

One stood next to Interstate 95 in North Carolina, not far from me. A few people may even have believed the prophecy (though I never ran into any),

May 21, 2011 was a Saturday.

The next morning, once the sun was up & it was clear the world was turning undisturbed, I headed up I-95, to see if the billboard was still there.

It wasn’t. Somebody from the billboard company must have been on alert at sunrise, to strip off the now embarrassing message, painted on a huge sheet of vinyl, from its large frame, unless prevented by a legion of avenging angels.

But the angels didn’t show, and the workers made quick work of removing the evidence.

Preacher Camping didn’t face his redeemer that day, but was confronted by a couple of reporters — probably not pleased to be working on a Saturday morning — asking embarrassing questions like, why was he still here? Why were they still here?

So May 22, 2011 wasn’t a good day for Harold Camping. He soon suffered a major stroke, retreated to a home office, and died in 2013. His prophecy & billboards were soon mostly forgotten.

Now, what’s this got to do with Friday the 13th, August 2021?

Here’s a hint: Mike Lindell.

The MyPillow Guy.

Lindell too had figured out when Judgment Day will be: he said it would be  Friday the 13th of August, 2021.

But this time, instead of Jesus returning, it would be the previous president, who Lindell predicted would be back, and instead of judgment, there would be a “re-inauguration,” wherein the last guy would displace Joe Biden.

I wasn’t much worried then. But let’s suppose — now stay with me— just suppose, I figured, that the USA, including you and me, finished out that week with Joe Biden still in office. Suppose that Air Force One did not make a sudden pickup from Mar-a-Lago? Suppose Lindell ended up being “Campingized”?

Would he simply vanish in a puff of crushed foam rubber?

I made no prophecy then, but events since leave me more nervous than I was when May 21 2011 arrived.

Besides, I thought, if anybody else were to move in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, maybe it should be that guy with the mittens who brightened January 20th, 2021?

UPDATE: As of noon Friday, the 13th, 2021, Biden was still President. He was slated to leave Washington at 1 PM EDT for Camp David, via Wilmington, Delaware. [NOTE: Only serving presidents are permitted to stay at Camp David. Our sources also indicate that the camp is well-stocked with pillows.]

I don’t know if this last part of Camping’s billboard prophecy would be applicable to this case.

But I’ll keep looking.

 

2026 Update: Lindell didn’t disappear, but we haven’t heard much from him of late. And the rising liberal fears that indeed, The End Would Come in November 2024, if MAGA was returned to office have partly come to pass. If not Final Judgment, we have faced plenty of Retribution,  and there’s still two years plus still to run on their reign.

 

Further, while reports that the New Jerusalem had appeared in the depths of the Florida Everglades remain disputed, many still fervently believe that 47 is the Second Coming, and are preparing to follow Crusader Corps Hegseth in his joyfully lethal battle of Armageddon.

And somewhere, I suspect, Harold Camping is smiling.