World really will end Wednesday, insists Christian group

Undeterred by the world’s stubborn failure to come to an end late last month, when a rare total lunar eclipse combined with a so-called supermoon, a Christian group is now insisting that the planet will be wiped out “forever” on Wednesday.

“According to what the Bible is presenting, it does appear that 7 October will be the day that God has spoken of: in which, the world will pass away,” Chris McCann, the leader and founder of the eBible Fellowship, an online gathering of Christians headquartered in Philadelphia, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

Earth will be “gone forever. Annihilated,” McCann said. Obliterated “with fire,” he added for good measure.

McCann was not, apparently, one of those who anticipated the end of the world on September 27-28, when the so-called “blood moon” prompted several apocalyptic warnings and subsequent NASA reassurances. (Blood moons are full lunar eclipses in which the sun’s rays entering through the earth’s atmosphere make for a red, or blood-like, appearance.)

But he did admit that his new October 7 deadline for humanity was based on a prediction that has been wrong before. Twice.

“The expectation of the world ending this fall stems from an earlier prediction by Harold Camping, a Christian radio host who was based in California,” The Guardian reported. Camping told listeners to his radio station, Family Radio, that the world would end on May 21, 2011, and then — when nothing happened — switched doomsday to a new date that October.

eBible Fellowship warning (via Facebook)

McCann thinks May 21, 2011 actually was a significant date — “judgment day” — from which point God counted 1,600 days during which he decided which non-believers to save, in addition to previously selected believers. Those 1,600 days, by McCann’s count, end on Wednesday; hence the imminent apocalypse.

Except he’s not completely sure.

“There’s a strong likelihood that this will happen,” McCann told The Guardian, then acknowledged: “Which means there’s an unlikely possibility that it will not.”