Coming out for the encore of the Band’s legendary 1976 Thanksgiving Day final concert, at San Francisco’s Winterland theatre, the peerless Robbie Robertson strode to the microphone and said, “Still there, huh?”

It was a funny line, and I was reminded of it as my eyes flickered open early this morning. Harold Camping’s harmful prediction that the Rapture would occur today has made international headlines. It has also served as a bizarre attack on the credibility of the Bible, since so many equate the declarations of a man with what the Bible actually says/predicts.

Of course, not only does the Bible not give any date for the return of the Lord—Jesus Himself said that only God the Father knows—but it says quite plainly what will befall false prophets.

Still, we have this thoroughly fascinating scenario upon us in which it is the end of the world, but it isn’t!

It isn’t the end of the world when a man says it is, but the Bible is plain about the “season” of the end. Take for example the context of Jeremiah, chapter 30. In it, the Lord predicts that at the time of the end, Israel will be alone; all her “lovers” will abandon her.

The president’s insistence this week that Israel retreat to its borders of June 4, 1967 is a perfect fulfillment of Jeremiah 30. Charles Krauthammer said yesterday on FOX that without American assurances, Israel is “naked and alone” in the world today.

Precisely. Traditionally, only the U.S. and Micronesia (God bless them!) vote for Israel in the United Nations. Now, officially, America has abandoned the Jewish state; do not be fooled by the doublespeak that pledges support for Israel’s security on the one hand, and insistence on the 1967 borders on the other (Ambassador Abba Eban referred to these narrow borders as “Auschwitz Lines”).

Yes, we’re still here. But not for long.