Did You Miss the End of the World?

The sun is just beginning to peek over the mountains into the calm valley below, it's rays glinting off last night's thin layer of snowfall.  The fresh morning silence is broken only by the solitary chirping of a songbird in a distant evergreen.

As the world wakes, the few of us who were holding their breath let out a quiet sigh of relief.  It is December 22, 2012, the day after the Mayan-predicted end of the world.  Clearly, the Mayans were wrong.  Or were they?  The world hasn't ended.  Or has it?

Ladies and gentlemen, it most certainly has; welcome to the end of the world.

I know what you're thinking: "If she was liquefied on contact with water, how did the Wicked Witch ever take a bath?"  While that's a very good question, I will proceed to answer the question you should be asking:

"If the world has ended, why are we still here?"

December 21, 2012 was the date of the rapture.  Reader, here's the cold, hard truth: if you're reading this, chances are most people you know knew have been raptured, and you have not.  In this light, the pronoun "we" hardly seems appropriate.  I will now proceed to answer the question you really should be asking:

"If the world has ended, why am I still here?"

To answer this, we/you must look back to the predictions made by the Mayans.  The first-hand account of Josiah Willard Gibbs tells us that the Mayans "measured the length of the solar year to a high degree of accuracy.  They [used their knowledge to accurately predict the destruction of the Earth by a large asteroid collision.]"  However, due to advances in medicine, we know that Gibbs' records were incorrectly translated from English to Mayan; zeroth-hand accounts tell us that the Mayans predicted the end of a b'ak'tun on 12/21/12, indicating not the destruction of the Earth, but rather the rapture.


It's possible that you've heard that the Mayan calendar functions as a series of cycles.  It's also possible that you've heard that Oprah is having an alien baby.  Dear gullible Reader, don't you know you shouldn't believe everything you hear? 

While Oprah could easily be gestating a Martian, it doesn't make sense for the Mayan calendar to be circular.  Tell me: when you look at the calendar on your wall, does it look like a large stone circle, or does it look like a rectangular sheet of boxes?  That's what I thought.

Surprisingly, this isn't the first rapture.  Notable past raptures include:

• 1186, as predicted by John of Toledo (based on planetary alignment)
• 1284, as predicted by Pope Innocent III (based on the rise of Islam)
• 1658, as predicted by Christopher Columbus (based on the age of the Earth)
• 1697, as predicted by Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister 
• 1716, as predicted by Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister
• 1736, as predicted by Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister
• Christmas Day 1814, as predicted by Joanna Southcott, a 64-year-old self-described prophetess who claimed to be pregnant with the Christ child
• October 2, 1984, as predicted by the Jehovah's Witnesses
• New Year's Day 2000, as predicted by various sources
• December 21, 2012, as predicted by various sources

You can clearly see that the rapture is not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime event.  

However, there is the question of the end of the world as a physical entity.  Scientists predict the physical destruction of the world will occur in approximately 5,000,000,000 years, at which point the Sun grows to be a red giant, and the Earth is either swallowed by the Sun or scorched completely.  They note that "as the Sun grows hotter (over millions of years), the Earth may become too hot for life in only a billion years' time." 

So, dear Reader, seeing that you have apparently survived many previous raptures, evidence suggests you will survive any and all remaining raptures.  However, my voice fingers speak from beyond the grave with this final warning: 

You only have a billion years left max.  There is clearly no time to waste.