When I called West End Baptist Church pastor “Skip” Irby on Thursday to set up an interview about him leaving the church after 25 years of service, he had something else on his mind entirely.

“I thought you were calling to ask me about the end of the world,” he said, after I told him of my real reason for calling.

To the church family at West End, their beloved pastor leaving for interim ministry work might very well be akin to the end of the world. But that’s not what Irby was referring to.

False prophet Harold Camping, unfortunately, managed to convince thousands of people during the last few years that judgment day would come on Saturday. After he failed at predicting the date of that day in 1994, he did some “recalculating” that eventually led to a date of May 21, 2011. More likely, he just picked the date he wanted and then came up with a numerical rationalization that happened to fit.

End-of-the-world and judgment day prophecies have been around for thousands of years now. Who knows why we get so caught up in them — maybe it’s our fear of the unknown, our thrill at the possibility of knowing the unknowable, or maybe just the desire of most people to be in on the secret.

While much-photographed advertisements by Camping and his crew promulgated the message that “The Bible guarantees it!” many vulnerable people probably didn’t take the time to read the Bible to find that God actually says, “No one knows about that day or hour.” (Matthew 24:36)

Camping’s lies ruined countless lives — people who left their families, spent all their money on advertising for the false message and gave away all their possessions believing that they would not need them after Saturday.

Of course, nobody needs thousands of possessions anyway. And the money, while truly a loss, can be resaved. But there likely are family relationships that have been forever ruined thanks to this absurdity.

This isn’t the last time there will be some sort of end-of-the-world or judgment-day prophecy, either. In fact, another one is coming around on Dec. 21, 2012 — though this one is based mostly on an ancient calendar and not on one man’s cult-like ramblings.

According to people who study such things, the calendar of the ancient Mayans runs out on the Gregorian date of Dec. 21, 2012. For some, that means the end of the world as we know it. For others, as my mother said on Saturday, that just means someone got tired of chiseling numbers and said, “Take this job and shove it.”

If you were waiting for the end of the world on Saturday, or were confused about it, or don’t know what judgment day means for you, I’d encourage you to read the Bible. It’s far too much information for us to fit in this newspaper, but you’re guaranteed to find some answers there.