Firefighters Standing By To Douse Rapture Preacher’s Fiery Trousers

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Californian evangelist whose Holy Slide Rule Of Jesus told him the Rapture would take place “beyond a shadow of a doubt” at 6pm today, has been surrounded by firefighters who are ready to spray him with thousands of gallons of water at the first sign of smoke pouring from his trousers.

The rolling Rapture has so far passed over New Zealand and Australia without any reports of fervent God-botherers rocketing spaceward at 6pm local time - although Fortean observers warn that this should not necessarily be taken as proof that Mr Camping is full of shit, pointing out that the special kind of Christians the engineer-turned-prophet probably had in mind are almost exclusively confined to the United States.

Don't mock, O ye of little faith - it could happen

However, they added that they are particularly looking forward to the passing of the deadline in California, hoping to ask the self-appointed harbinger of the world’s end whether his own widely-expected non-elevation to heaven means he is a bloody liar, a silly old fart or just a God-damned sin-loving bastard like the rest of us.

NASA scientists, meanwhile, have calculated that the phased passage of the Rapture across the surface of the Earth suggests that, far from being present everywhere at once, God can be presumed to lie somewhere along a precise tangent to both the Earth’s axis and the direction of the sun.

“We’re pointing Hubble thataways right now,” said NASA’s Dr Randy Von Braun. “If we can follow the trail of exploding Christians through space, we should be able to get a pretty good fix on Heaven.”