End of the world, end of the movement?

So the rapture is supposed to occur tomorrow, in which all true believers in Jesus will be taken up to heaven. And the world will end on October 21. Um. Yeah.

So what happens when (not if) this prediction turns out to be wrong? Will the movement predicting this fizzle? Or will it find some way to explain away the bad prediction? A sensible person might think the movement will fizzle, but other movements that have had failed end-of-world / second coming predictions have survived. The Seventh-day Adventist Church grew out of a movement that predicted that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844. And now they're a somewhat-mainstream Protestant church. The Jehovah's Witnesses seem to have made somewhat more vague predictions, saying God's kingdom would be fully established on earth in October 1914, and suggesting that Christ's thousand-year reign might start in late 1975 or soon after.

Both of these movements lost members after these failed predictions, but the movements are still alive and well.

Two days from now, I want to see what wecanknow.com says. Will this movement find a way to survive?

A couple of points about the election

Recently I've said some things that are critical of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party, and a bit against Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party.  I haven't really talked about the other parties either, but I have my issues with them too.  But today I'm not going to be critical of any politician in particular; I just want to make a couple of points.

First of all, I don't believe politics can really solve the problems in our society.  It can do a lot of good and a lot of bad, but it can't truly fix things.  If violence, oppression, other crime, and inequality are going to go away, better laws and government programs can help, but ultimately it takes an attitude change on everyone's part.  If we all just put our own interests first, no amount of rules or government programs can fix these problems.  Do you really want police and politicians who only care about their own interests?  That's a recipe for corruption.

Mentioning corruption brings me to my second point.  When I was in China with my wife recently, I heard a few stories about corruption.  High-up officials will routinely "negotiate" discounts in restaurants after eating and getting the bill, and if the restaurant staff refuse, government officials could find "health violations" in the restaurant and shut it down.  A beautiful tree in a park, covered in flowers, disappeared one day.  One of my wife's relatives commented that only a government official could get away with stealing like that.  I'm sure there are far worse examples than these.  These stories of corruption make me appreciate democracy more.  Democracy doesn't make government corruption impossible, and as I said in my first point, it can't really solve our problems.  But it gives everyday people like you and me the ability to do something about government corruption.  You may debate whether it gives us enough of a way to eliminate corruption, but at least it's something.  So if you're a Canadian citizen, please vote tomorrow.