Weekend Doom: Harold Camping & The Beginning of the End of the World, Which He Says Is This Saturday
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 19, 2011
As I wrote in January, radio evangelist and president of Family Radio Harold Camping believes that the end of the world is upon us, and that it all begins this Saturday, May 21.
Camping isn’t the first to predict Judgment Day and won’t be the last, but he’s definitely gotten the most publicity. He has many followers — one New York man, in fact, has poured his life savings into purchasing doomsday ads.
Others say Camping’s math is flawed. But Camping isn’t backing down on his doomsday prediction. The Rapture, he says, is this weekend and the end of the world will occur on October 21.
From Chicago Tribune, Is May 21st the end of the world?:
It’s just about the biggest, boldest prediction anyone could make. But the 89 year old minister behind the May 21st doomsday campaign says he has no doubt that the world is ending in two days.
Believers of this biblical prediction have quit their jobs to prepare for the world’s end. Skeptics say it’s just another bogus prophecy.
According to Boulder native and Internet preacher, Harold Camping, May 21st, this Saturday is the end.
“Then the whole universe is going to be destroyed by fire,” says Camping in a network interview.
Camping created a formula based on bible verses to calculate the day the world ends.
“He uses rather sophisticated mathematical equations that are tied to one date.. the date of the flood from Noah’s Ark,” says history professor, Matthew Makley at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Camping’s faithful followers took it from there, traveling the country, spreading the word.
“There’s going to be a worldwide earthquake and what’s going to happen is the graves are going to open up, the dead and Christ are going to rise first,” says one of his many followers.
“There have been at least 100 predictions tied to the end of the world or the apocalypse,” Makley challenges Camping’s accuracy. “He admitted at the time that his numbers weren’t entirely precise but this time he`s sure that his numbers add up,” he adds.
From New York Times, It’s Been a Sullen Few Days, but the End Is Near:
If a Staten Island man named Robert Fitzpatrick is right, the world will end on Saturday. Mr. Fitzpatrick has spent a good deal of money putting up hundreds of placards, in the subways and on bus shelters, to warn that May 21 is Judgment Day.
This is based on the teachings of Harold Camping, a radio evangelist, who says that a “global earthquake” will do us in that day, starting just before midnight, Jerusalem time, which means about 5 p.m. in New York. This is a shame. We were hoping to put a bet down on the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, but post time is an hour after the end of days. Not much point now, is there?
The reason for mentioning this is that we always figured the world would end before Leslie Lieber’s weekly gig did. He seemed eternal.
For 46 years, Mr. Lieber has been the guiding force behind a New York fixture known as Jazz at Noon. More or less every Friday, he gathers a bunch of jazz-playing New Yorkers to perform free to a lunch crowd. They are doctors, lawyers, business types and others with serious day jobs. Mr. Lieber, alto sax, made a career in public relations. Over the years, the group changed locations. Of late, it has encamped at the Players club, on Gramercy Park South.
But time can be heartless. The musicians grew older. Some moved away. Others died. It got ever harder to form a group. Mr. Lieber is no kid himself — 99, old enough to have jammed in Paris during World War II with the incomparable guitarist Django Reinhardt. He could keep on going, he said, but finding performers has gotten tougher. Friday, June 10, will be the last session.
Of course, if the world does end on Saturday, the issue becomes moot.
From Kansas City Star, End Daze: Harold Camping says Doomsday’s on Saturday. Around 6. Guaranteed.:
He’s the Joe Namath of Doomsday hucksters, but the stakes are much higher than Super Bowl III.
Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Christian evangelist from Oakland, Calif., whose Family Radio broadcasts are heard in 61 languages, doesn’t just think that Judgment Day will come Saturday. He guarantees it.
“It is absolutely going to happen,” said Camping, who has determined after five decades of studying Scripture that May 21 marks the beginning of the end. “We do not have a Plan B at all. There is no possibility that it will not happen, because all of our information comes from the Bible.”
So if you haven’t made amends with God, cancel your weekend plans, Camping says.
From The Times Daily, It’s the end of the world (again):
Maybe you haven’t heard, but Saturday is the end of the world.
Not the end of the world exactly, but it is the supposed date of the Rapture, after which all of us left behind on Earth will be in for a really nasty time, culminating in the real end of the world on Oct. 21.
That’s the prediction of Harold Camping, the 89-year-old president of the Family Radio network. You may have seen one of his billboards proclaiming that the end of days is upon us.
It’s hard to tell for sure, but Camping seems to have developed a following, even though he doesn’t exactly have a good track record when it comes to forecasting Judgment Day.
Twenty years ago, Camping predicted the world would end in 1994. (Oops.)
Camping, naturally, can explain in great detail why he got it wrong then and why he has it right this time.
He’s sure Saturday is the day.
From AFP, US atheists offer pet rescue after judgment day:
WASHINGTON — When judgment day comes — which some US Christian fundamentalists insist will happen on Saturday — have you thought about what you’re going to do with the family dog and cat?
In 26 US states, you could have them rescued and adopted by enterprising atheists who have set up a business to care for the animal companions of any Christians who are selected to go to heaven when Jesus Christ comes back.
“You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes, what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind?” Eternal Earth-Bound Pets says on its website, offering to “take that burden off your mind.”
The post-doomsday pet rescue service already has 259 clients, who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address, to ensure the faithful animal companions are looked after and loved even when their Christian owners have gone to the other side.
All the rescuers are sworn atheists, which means they will definitely be left behind on Earth, ready to rescue pets after the Rapture, which one US Christian fundamentalist group has penciled for Saturday.
About the author
So this man knows more than Jesus?
(Matthew 24:36-44)
32“No one knows when that day or hour will come[m]—not the angels in heaven, not the Son, but only the Father. 33Be careful! Watch out! Because you don’t know when the time will come. 34It’s like a man who went on a trip. As he left home, he put his servants in charge, each with his own work, and he ordered the doorkeeper to be alert. 35So keep on watching, because you don’t know when the master of the house is coming—whether in the evening, at three o’clock in the morning,[n] or at dawn. 36Otherwise, he may come suddenly and find you asleep. 37I’m telling you what I’m telling everyone: Be alert!”
I am on the side that I believe we have many years left on our beautiful planet, but I also know that God does in fact work in ways we will never fully understand, and maybe he gave this man the insight to discover the day the world would come to an end, and that we did deserve to know, for if i remember from bible school, that God had claimed he would never wipe out the world again , so we have to remember that no matter what tomorrow brings, we need to live each day like its our last and do good things and live as God wanted us to live, and teach our children to do the same, cause if we think about it for a second, if we all lived like that , what reason would God have to end something so beautiful that he himself created?
Is Second Coming date-setter Harold Camping worthy of death? He already has a zero batting average after his September 1994 prediction fizzle and, according to the Bible, is a false prophet.
A Google article (“Obama Fulfilling the Bible”) points out that “Deut. 18:20-22 in the Old Testament requires the death penalty for false prophets.”
The above article concludes: “False prophets in the OT were stoned to death. Today they are just stoned!”
PS – For many years Camping was not known as a pretrib rapture teacher. But now, for $ome my$teriou$ rea$on, he seeks support from those who believe in and teach an imminent, pretrib rapture which supposedly will occur SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE the traditional SECOND COMING to earth! For a behind-the-scenes, documented look at the 181-year-old pretrib rapture belief (which was never a part of any official theology or organized church before 1830!), Google “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty,” “Pretrib Rapture Diehards” and “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts.”