Florida TV viewers creeped out when suddenly confronted with ‘end-of-world’ warning

It was something straight out of a bad Left Behind script.

Some Orange County, Florida cable viewers were innocently watching television on Thursday when their programming was interrupted by the antichri… OK, not exactly, but they were treated to about a minute of foreboding messaging about the impending end of the world.

Cox Communications user Stacy Laflamme told the Orange County Register she was watching HGTV around 11:05 a.m. when she was alarmed by an emergency alert on her screen followed by an ominous male voice saying, “Realize this, extremely violent times will come.”

“It almost sounded like Hitler talking,” Laflamme told the Register. “It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.”

Spectrum user Erin Mireles also caught the interruption.

“I was definitely startled, ’cause the volume increased exponentially,” Mireles said. “I wasn’t alarmed in the sense of thinking something was wrong, ’cause I assumed it was some sort of hack. My channel changed back to Bravo after a couple minutes.”

Cox Communications spokesman Joe Camero explained that the error occurred when at least one radio station was conducting an emergency test, which cable systems often pick up. However, instead of an emergency broadcast test, something else got transmitted.

“With these tests, an emergency tone is sent out to initiate the test,” said Camero. “After the tone is transmitted, another tone is sent to end the message. It appears that the radio station (or stations) did not transmit the end tone to complete the test.”

Oops…

Nobody knows where the alert came from, and both cable companies are looking into whether or not the alert was purposeful or accidental.

“We have confirmed that we were fed an incorrect audio file,” said Spectrum spokesman Dennis Johnson.

Of course, at least one “Christian numerologist” is predicting the end of the world on Saturday, so there’s that.

According to Fox News:

According to Christian numerologist David Meade, verses in Luke 21:25 to 26 signify that recent events, such as the recent solar eclipse and Hurricane Harvey, portend the apocalypse.

The verses read:

“25: There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

“’26: Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.’

Saturday’s date, Sept. 23 was pinpointed using codes from the Bible, as well as a “date marker” in the pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

Meade’s views are not endorsed by Roman Catholic, Protestant or eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity.

What with all the natural disasters of late, even prominent Fox News hosts are wondering when come the locusts:

But there’s also the fact that tribulations and natural disasters have always been a part of mankind’s experience, and so have attempts to predict the end of the world.

In an article entitled “If you believe the end of the world will happen on Sept. 23, sign over your assets to me effective Sept. 24,” author and Bible scholar Gary DeMar writes:

People have short memories or have no memory about prophecy speculators who have assured an anxious public that Jesus would return by this or that day, week, or year. His coming is always said to be “near.” The 1980s was described as the “terminal generation.”

In 1970, Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth that included a prophetic teaser that something called the “rapture” would take place before 1988. It was based on his claim that when Israel became a nation again in 1948 that the “rapture” would occur within a 40-year prophetic window.

In 1988, NASA engineer Edgar Whisenant wrote 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be In 1988. When the “rapture” didn’t occur, he revised his book with 89 reasons why the rapture would be in 1989.

Following a similar prophetic script, Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in California wrote in his 1976 book The Soon to be Revealed Antichrist that “we are living in the last generation which began with the rebirth of Israel in 1948 (see Matt. 24:32–34).” He repeats the claim in his 1978 book End Times…

If you aren’t familiar with DeMar’s work, you should change that. He lays out how and why the prognosticators have always been wrong, and why they always will be.

And locusts or no, they’ll be wrong again come Saturday.

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BizPac Review.

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