5 Steps to Get Your World-Ending Prophet License

Harold Camping - courtesy Wikipedia

This was originally a guest post I wrote for Bryan Allain - a fantastic comedic blogger - back on June 10th of this year when the world was "originally" supposed to end. I think it's appropriate to revisit and update this post since the world was supposed to end again this past Friday and didn't.

Below is an excerpt but you can read it in its updated entirety over on www.humoroutcasts.com.
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Most states require a licensing process for a host of service providers ranging from hair stylists to mechanics. Those are important services if you’re in the market to touch up your roots or replace your brake pads – but those services don’t come close to predicting the end of the world.

So what exactly do you need to be qualified to foretell the end of days? NOTHING.

Apparently anyone can predict Armageddon without so much as a plastic prophet ring from a box of Lucky Charms®.

Case in point, an 89-year old Internet pastor-turned-prognosticator believed the end of the world would occur on Saturday May 21, 2011. When that didn't happen, he re-predicted that it would end on this past Friday October 21, 2011.   

Ironically, he made the revised prediction before he suffered a stroke on June 13th of this year (makes you wonder if he knew what was going to happen on THAT particular day.)

While I’m sure he's a kind and well intentioned gentleman, he was wrong, and his credibility (as well as the people who followed him) is worth as much as those “5/21/11″ or "10/21/11" bumper stickers. 

To avoid this happening in the future, I believe we need to hand out licenses to would-be prophets.

That’s why I’m proposing a 5-Step Licensing Process that looks like this:

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Question: What's the greatest prediction you've ever made?