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?

Did I promote a cult?

"I told one guy his place was to be a pimple on the ass of the body of Christ."
--Ole Anthony

About a month ago, I posted this quote from a man named Peter Rollins: "God spoke to me, repeating four simple words: 'I do not exist.'" Then I linked to an interview with Peter Rollins, done by The Wittenburg Door. I mentioned that Rollins had a very interesting way of thinking about God and that The Wittenburg Door is one of my favourite websites.

Today I found an article there about Ole Anthony, the founder of the organization that owns The Wittenburg Door. The organization is called the Trinity Foundation, and publishing Christian satire isn't its only activity; it also investigates televangelists and manages affordable housing projects, among other activities. The article is written by a friend of his, who is quite involved in running The Wittenburg Door (he is two of the most frequent writers on the website--yes, he goes by two different names). It makes Ole Anthony sound like an eccentric man who stands up for the little guy and doesn't care about offending people. He also has a strong sense that following Jesus requires sacrifice. That quote at the top of this post is from this article.

Today I found an article that told a different story. This one paints him as an egotistical control freak. His organization that helped people who'd been controlled and victimized by religion was controlling and victimizing people itself.

I know journalists sometimes twist things, but if this second article is accurate, this organization just might be a cult. I'm not one to tell people what they can and can't read (I'll probably keep reading The Wittenburg Door myself), but I'd like to remind people to take things with a grain of salt. I still think The Door has some great things to say, but not everything in it is good. And I'd be very leery about joining their organization if the opportunity ever presented itself. The articles I linked to are long, but they are both recommended reading if you ever start reading The Wittenburg Door.