The good news: You can have that extra doughnut this morning. You don't have to do laundry this afternoon. And you don't have to go to work tomorrow.
The bad news: Because the world is ending today. Allegedly.
Today is doomsday, according to a conspiracy theorist. This time it's not David Meade -- who was wrong about the fall of 2017 and then again about April of 2018.
It's Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue.
Now, I've never heard of him. And I couldn't find out much about him. There is a Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue on Facebook. Not positive if it's the same guy, but his post of a doomsday clock suggests it could be. There's also an @MathieuJeanMar on Twitter whose only post has the hashtag #FinDelMundo 2018 ("End of the World 2018").
Assuming it's really him, he has only eight Facebook friends and 38 Twitter followers. Why bother building a big social network if the world is just going to end, right?
But whoever Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue is -- we'll call him Matt for short -- he made tabloid headlines at the beginning of the year saying that by his calculations, the world was going to end June 24, 2018. And by our calculations, that's today.
Here are what some questionable sources have to say about it.
From The Daily Star:
Conspiracy theorist Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue has highlighted a passage in the Book of Revelations (sic) as a sign that 2018 could be the Earth's last year.
It reads: "He was given authority to act for 42 months."
He wrote: "I heard a voice in the middle of the four living beings.
"This is wisdom. He who has intelligence can interpret the figure of the beast.
"It represents the name of a man. His figure is 666."
To find the date of the apocalypse, he takes the 666 figure and adds it to his earlier calculations, with the 42 months from the bible.
But can we trust a source that doesn't know it's the Book of Revelation (singular)?
A story from The Express was equally revealing:
The end of the world will come on June 24 of this year, according to Christians who believe that we have entered the end times. ... Christian conspiracy theorist Mathieu Jean-Marc Joseph Rodrigue examines a passage in the Book of Revelations (sic). ... Mr. Rodrigue then performs a series of complex calculations and when combining 666 with the number 42, concluding with the date June 24.
However, the conspiracy theorist was unable to detail how he reached this figure or how exactly the world will end.
I must admit, I'm reveling in these Revelation typos.
From the aliens-and-rapture-obsessed but not spelling-obsessed Disclose.TV which also couldn't manage to get "Revelation" correct:
The passage in question is from the Book of Revalations (sic), which describes Judgement (sic) Day -- a great battle between heaven, hell, and the Son of God who makes everything right. He believes that a certain line in the passage, "He was given authority to act for 42 months, "in the context of the prices of crop harvests depicted in the rest of the book," gives clues as to when the world will end.
Rodrigue goes on to cite another line, where he claims to have heard a "voice in the middle of the four living beings," which represents a man with a figure of 666. For those that don't know, 666 is the number associated with the devil. With the help of some math, he adds the 666 figure to the 42 months in Revalations (sic). According to his calculations, the end of the world would be on June 24, 2018, though how it will happen is yet to be discovered by the curious conspirator.
Like with these information outlets and spelling, arithmetic has never been our strong suit. But we can't believe it is Mathieu's forte either. How does 666 plus 42 months equal "June 24, 2018?"
Show your math, Mathieu!
Here's a real revelation about the end of the world: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." That's according to the Gospel of Matthew, which I believe over the guessing of Mathieu.
So, we better do laundry today. We probably have to go to work tomorrow.
But, just in case, dough-nut pass up an extra doughnut.
Send a "hole" lot of email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture.
Style on 06/24/2018