The End of the World...Again

This morning I spent half a month's rent on new brakes for my car.  But I've been told they are good for stopping.  And now I can successfully:

If you recall the last time I had my car serviced...there was a man feeding pastries to his dog Lady.  Today there was a woman texting on her iPhone while her dog barked at people as they walked by.  Apparently my dealership has a "we're cool with dogs" policy.



I feel a bit like a creeper taking photos of strangers in public but not enough of a creeper to stop.

 
While I was waiting for my car to be serviced, I began to wonder if getting new brakes was worth my time and money seeing as the world is about to end.

In case you are unaware, May 21, 2011 is Doomsday.  It has also been referred to as Judgement Day and The Rapture.  According to my research (and by research I mean reading this page and this page on Wikipedia) Harold Camping, a civil engineer turned radio host, has predicted that this Saturday will mark the beginning of the end of the world. 

My religious knowledge is iffy at best but this is what I think is supposed to go down.  On Saturday, Jesus will return to Earth to gather the Christians in the air to save them.   I don't understand what "gathering them in the air" means though.  Will they die and go to Heaven?  Will they float around suspended in the sky?  Is the atmospheric gathering metaphorical?

At 6 pm local time (apparently The Rapture occurs by timezone like the sunset) there will be a global earthquake that will signal the beginning of the Rapture.  Five months after The Rapture (October 21, 2011) will be the end of the world...which is fourteen months before The Mayan end of the world on December 12, 2012.

A few things:
-  Does this mean that Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman will be Raptured?
-  Harold Camping is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that May 21, 2011 is the day.  But he was also sure that The Rapture was going to happen in 1994 and as far as I can tell we are still here.
-  What does this mean for people who are Jewish?
-  I thought that the Second Coming of Christ was dependent on the construction of the Third Temple after a red heifer is born in Israel.  (I read about this in The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs and was fascinated by it.  The birth of a red heifer is supposed to be a sign of divine origin yet there are farmers trying to genetically alter cows in order to breed red heifers.)
-  There have been 10+ Rapture predictions in the last 180 years.

But, according to Wikipedia, Sir Issac Newton said that the world wouldn't end before 2060.  In 1704 he wrote, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."  Well...that sounds logical enough.  And he did discover gravity...so I'm siding with Sir Newton for now.

Discuss.