Well, here we go again.

Harold Camping, a radio evangelist, made a widely popular--and later ridiculed--prediction that the world would enter the biblical, prophesied "End Times" back on May 21.  Based on the Book of Revelation, Camping had pretty much informed his followers and the public through his radio broadcasts, billboards and leaflets that the great Rapture was nigh and that Christians and heathens alike should prepare themselves accordingly.  

Some followers of Camping cleared out their bank accounts, quit their jobs and took up their End-Times task of warning everyone about impending doom and damnation.  The media outlets were abuzz.  The topic trended on Twitter.  Websites were even created to cover such an historical event.

Well, May 21 was an historical date, all right, if only marked by the sheer number of people who LOLed their way through spoof Rapture photos, YouTube videos, and tweets from Australia stating something to the tune of, "We're still here! How about you?  What time zone, exactly, is this party supposed to get started?"

Apparently, the ridicule wasn't enough to deter Camping, who has since suffered a stroke and is now convalescing   The new date for the Rapture is today, October 21, and it seems that the only thing the world is preparing to do right now is...laugh.

Live Science recently wrote about Camping and his current, as well as his many past (failed), predictions.  Their article then went on to discuss doomsday prophets/religions and how they will often change the interpretation of their predictions, if not dismiss them completely, when such predictions prove to be incorrect.  Though I understand Live Science's stance, the flippant manner in which they addressed the issue rubbed me the wrong way and actually sent me into Camping's corner on the defensive--if only for this one time.

Understanding the Rapture Mentality
When Camping made headlines in May with his Rapture predictions, I too mocked them.  I didn't do so solely because I thought the radio evangelist was bat-guano crazy, but because the Bible itself says that no one can know the time of Christ's return. 

Some accused Camping of making the prediction to scare people into becoming followers in hopes of padding his own coffers.  Others accused Camping of being as nuts as the Heaven's Gate leader, Marshall Applewhite.

I, on the other hand, believe that Camping is simply misguided by his own wills and desires, something that many of us suffer from on one level or another.  What makes him so different from us, however, is his far-reaching influence.  And while the majority of us bumble and stumble through life, driven by desires--such as love, money, a bigger house, a new car, successful children, and so on--Harold Camping seems driven by his religion, his dogma, and the belief that if we all don't step in line behind him to follow said dogma, we'll all perish.  As someone who was at one time a born-again Christian, I get where he's coming from.  I understand that deep, burning, unrelenting desire to save any and everyone from the trials and tribulations prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

During my church days, I shared biblical scriptures with just about anyone I encountered, in one way or another.  As I look back on those days, I know that my intentions were pure.  I didn't want anyone to be left behind or to suffer the trials that were to come after the Rapture.  But as I sit here and look at the old me-- the born-again me--through the lenses of truth, I see someone that was also driven by ego.  Deep down inside, I wanted my friends and family to be saved, but I also wanted to be right.  I wanted to be vindicated in front of all the naysayers who insisted that my dogma was false.

Christians around the world--whether they'll admit it or not--want...need...validation.  And these doomsday predictions are just a way of searching for those validations, even if the search itself is grossly misguided.  The Bible states no one knows the day nor hour of Christ's return, yet preachers have been predicting it since Christ left.  In fact, one of my favorite television shows back when I was born-again was Jack Van Impe Presents, a Christian broadcast featuring the doomsday prophet of which the program is named.  His message is essentially, "The world is soon coming to an end! Send me $20 and I'll mail you a book to tell you all about it!"  If the world's coming to an end, just tell me now, Mr. Van Impe.  Why leave my fate in the hands of the postal service?

So, if I'm so cynical, why am I in Camping's corner?  Well, Live Science pretty much roasted those whose predictions are proven false by stating that the prophets will skew their story any way they can to make the prediction fit.  When no one disappeared en mass back in May, Camping expressed that his prediction did indeed come true in that instead of the earthquakes he foresaw, God "shook man with fear." See?  So, it was all just a misunderstanding, folks. Right?

I won't debate Live Science's stance against doomsday prophets, but as a psychic medium myself, I have to say, "Geeze, dudes, cut prophesying some slack!"

Hits and Misses in the Psychic (Prophet) Field 

For those of us who are genuinely in search of spiritual growth and answers that benefit the whole of humanity, the gift of intuition not only bears the burden of immeasurable responsibility, but it is also a gift that has to be constantly nurtured and honed.  It's not an exact science even though world governments seem desperate to make it so.  But I'm willing to bet anyone a braised goat and ice cream dinner that the governments are not interested in elevating mankind, but rather interested in protecting their own interests.

Because intuition is not an exact science, we get a lot of hits and misses in the field.  The messages that come through the channels have to get through all the mental filters and internal junk that all of us humans carry.  What separates the professional psychic from the average person is not that she has the gift of intuition--everyone has it.  It's that she actively practices quieting her mind so that she can better receive messages through space, time, and the grocery list she committed to memory earlier that morning. 

We psychics aren't more gifted than anyone else.  We're just more aware.  Hyper-aware, as I like to call it.

But regardless of how aware one might be, we have to understand that the psychic medium's tool is herself.  It's her consciousness   It's the combination of mind and soul.  And while that sounds all nice and metaphysical, we have to understand one very fundamental aspect: The psychic is human.

From what I've seen in the last twenty years in the field, the average psychic is about seventy to eighty-five percent accurate.  This includes the celebrity psychics, as well as that teenage Goth girl playing with her tarot cards during a full moon. (My own accuracy over the years has teetered between eighty-five and ninety-three percent, and that number is based on the number of clients that have given me feedback of either "dead on!" or "hm, not sure if that's me you're describing".) 

Because predictions and their interpretations have to come through so much internal clutter, missteps are to be expected from time to time. No one is one-hundred percent accurate everyday, all the time. (If they're making such claims, it's bologney.)  

Personal Growth through Trial and Error

A while back, a friend of a friend had contacted me because she lost her favorite raincoat.  It seemed that the coat had just disappeared into thin air, and after tearing up her house, car and every where else she could think of, she decided that she needed the assistance of a psychic. At the time, finding lost items was not one of my strengths, and even today, I still struggle with it, but I gave it the old college try.

After about ten minutes of trying to see where her coat could possibly be, I only came up with two things.  I told her, "Look up. Wherever it is, it's dark and it's up high."  Vague, I know, but it was the best I could do.  Well, after going back and forth on the phone, she decided that maybe it was up in a closet, or the attic even.  Searches in both places proved fruitless.

A few weeks later, she called me back.  She had found her raincoat in a toy trunk in the Sunday school classroom where she taught.

We both laughed and said, "Well, you can't get any higher than God." We weren't twisting the outcome to fit the channeled information.  My prediction was correct. Unfortunately, it was too vague to be of any real use to anyone but me as a learning experience.  Now, there are psychics in the field who would have gotten a lot closer to the raincoat than I did.  After all, it's been proven that psychics can be very helpful in solving crime mysteries.  But at the time, I was still learning that area of the field.  It was a fun and insightful exercise.  It taught me that I had a long way to go before I started volunteering to find missing children or stolen museum artifacts.

Too Many Variables Going Against Doomsday Prophets?

Past doomsday predictions that many are very quick to dismiss as incorrect are the end times of Y2K.  Yeah, remember that?  When Y2K was drawing near, I was of the mind that nothing was going to happen, especially to our computers.  I knew that for a fact because I had checked to see just how far my Microsoft Works database went, and I was good to go until about the year 2100.

But to my horror, the end of the world did arrive, just not in the way nor in the year many suspected.  Technically, the new millennium started with 2001 if we want to split hairs.  In fact, many on the internet believed that the world wouldn't end in 2000, but instead a year later.  And, they were right.  No one in their right mind can say the world has been the same since after September 11, 2001.  The world as we knew it ended on that day and America hasn't been right since.

So, in Camping's defense, maybe he's correct this time.  Maybe today will be a day of enlightenment for all of us, a day of awakening to some greater consciousness.  I don't think the angels will sound their trumpets or the sky will be any brighter than a normal, sunny day.  Fire and brimstone won't rain down upon us, nor will the dead rise.

But, the potential is there for us to become better than we were yesterday, to become more connected to this world we live in, to rise out of spiritual graves and become more alive, more in tune and more aware of who we are and why we're here.  It's a hope that I cling to not just for today, but for every day.  Every day that we are given holds the potential for all of humanity to shake out of our illusions and awaken to our true spiritual identity.

There was a time where I thought the world would end in a fiery battle between angels and demons.  As a youth, I had countless nightmares about it.  But now as I look at the Book of Revelation, I no longer see a hellish vision of humanity's future suffering and torment.  I believe that we're already going through those trials.  The world is already in a state of great tribulation, which means that peace--or paradise, as it were--can't be too far off.

But then again, that's just my interpretation.  I'm human.  I could be wrong.
Chantel Lysette is a professional angelologist and international author in the subjects of angels and the psychic phenomenon.  Click here for more information on her and her latest book The Angel Code.
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