Illustration of Morgan Schweitzer
For nearly a year, preacher nonagenarian and personality of radio Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21. Locusts covering the Earth and millions would die to the campsite and his flock lifted to heaven, meeting with Jesus and ascend to the Kingdom of heaven. Instead, may happened 22, Camping postponed the end of the world for five months and then suffered a debilitating stroke, leaving a huge vacuum in the market of Rapture.
The debacle came at an opportune moment for the followers of Apocalypse. A proliferation of earthquakes, a plague that may or may not be swept Brazil, Greeks, and Kim Kardashian, among other things, may conspire to create a bubble of Rapture. In addition to revised forecast of the campsite, definitely the world will end on 21 October: many applicants Rapture believe the signs of time from the roof of the debt on August 2 that can be very, very close to the end. "If the economy, which will be fertile to the Antichrist take power," said Todd Strandberg of Little Rock, Ark. "Hitler came out of the depression." "Many of us believe that the Antichrist will use the same step."
This means that there are only so many days to enrich himself. Strandberg, the owner of RaptureReady.com-the Web's most popular worldwide Rapture preparation, is part of a new generation of entrepreneurs trying to capitalize on the absence of the campsite. In contrast to the campsite, the new establishment of Apocalypse is offering an unprecedented series of thematic doomsday literature, podcasts, survival kits and other goods and services to move through the end of time.
Jack Van Impe, a televangelist from Troy, Michigan, has developed a business of e-commerce hawking educational literature, as the end times prophetic Guide ($ 14.95) and DVDs like 11: 59: The Countdown (two-disc, 34,95 $). Van Impe, who co-runs his Ministry and the emerging Empire of Apocalypse with his wife and fellow Prophet, Rexella, competing for the market with the writer of Costa Rica Tim McHyde; Alex Dodson, whose Watchman Radio hour enjoys an audience at the national level; and Evangelical Minister and author Tim LaHaye, who has written 16 novels inspired by the final judgment day. According to Cheryl Kerwin, Tyndale House Publishers senior marketing manager, left behind LaHaye series has sold 63 million copies around the world.
All face a common problem of the Rapture company: being made more money that can pass before the end of the world. Keith Preston, owner of Rapture ready Consulting in Kenton, Ohio, which is completely unrelated to RaptureReady.com, says, estimated his company grossed $380,000 in 2009 with the sale of products such as screen savers with the Red Sea and an application of smartphone for $4.99 that tells you if you're in a flood zone. Although sales plummeted to $200,000 in 2010, the short-lived economic rise, Rapture vendors say, projected a pall on the sector: Rapture ready recovered this year. Preston is currently working on an application for everyone who isn't ecstatic. "Let's say 2 million people disappear", said Preston. "You have doctors and police officers, have kids, writers and politicians." What is the problem, which will do all what you were doing? "You need an application to do so." It is still unclear how plans to sell of the sky.
Preston is still struggling to compete with a bustling in the services sector which already covers suits of preparedness for natural disasters, moving and storage companies and post-apocalyptic Survivalists. Company data storage that I have been left behind Harwich, Massachusetts, is prepared to offer a service that sends its customers soon-to-be-entranced confidential material to designated contacts and family members. James Rawles, who directs SurvivalBlog.com, says he gets 260,000 visitors every week. There is even a new genre of chick lit called erotic Rapture. Apocalypse sex: love at the end of the world ($4.99) focuses on the characters that look down the end of days, according to its editor, having "the best sex of their lives".
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