Harold Camping Prediction: Christians to Ignore Oct. 21 Date (VIDEO)

Tue, Oct. 11 2011 05:40 PM EDT

Religion Professor Denounces End Times Prediction

By George J. Wienbarg Christian Post Reporter

Harold Camping’s end-of-the-world prediction date is around the corner and scheduled to occur Oct. 21. But after his failed May 21 Rapture prediction, many are expected to simply ignore Camping this time around.

Harold Camping Doomsday: Why Do People Listen to Him?

http://video.christianpost.com/harold-camping-doomsday-why-do-people-listen-to-him-285

Glenn W. Shuck, an assistant professor of religion at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., told The Christian Post we are bound by our faith to ignore people like the eccentric Camping.

Camping, founder of Family Radio Network, predicted that Judgment Day and the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. When spring passed without a Rapture, Camping stood by his prediction but tweaked it to say it was not a “physical” Rapture.

A stroke this summer that left Camping struggling to speak was not enough to silence the radio preacher. Through his slurred speech, sounding decidedly less certain, he still said that the Rapture would occur Oct. 21.

Shuck said he is surprised, not by the Camping prediction of the end of the world, but that people believed the radio host at all, especially since the May flop was not the first one. Camping had already predicted the Second Coming of Christ in 1994.

"It seems to me that people have forgotten about his previous prophecies," Shuck told CP.

Professor Shuck's studies have looked at new religious movements in the United States. He is the author of Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity.

"It surprises me that he (Camping) was able to continue this for this long," Shuck said.

Shuck doubts that the Christian community – or anyone else for that matter – will pay much attention to Camping after the May media hype. Still, there are still devout Camping followers who expect to see the Lord on Oct. 21.

Video by Scott Liu

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Rapture Preacher Suffers Stroke, Now in Hospital

Published on Jun 13, 2011 by AssociatedPress

The California radio preacher who predicted the world would end last month was recuperating Monday after suffering a mild stroke, his family and colleagues said. (June 13)

Unapologetic Harold Camping gives new Doomsday date

May 23, 2011 9:45 PM EDT


An unrepentant Harold Camping took to the airwaves Monday night reasserting his beliefs in the end of the world and gave yet another prediction for the end of the world.

Speaking on his Open forum radio show from California, Camping, who publically predicted the end of the world was to come this past Saturday, defended his claims despite the events not happening.

(Photo: IBTimes)
Family Radio President Harold Camping is seen at his home in Alameda, California on May 22, 2011

"On May 21 this last weekend...God again brought Judgment on the world...We didn't feel any difference," he says, "but we know that God brought Judgment" on the world. "The whole world is under Judgment."

The preacher said not only was he correct this time, but correct in the past as well.

"Actually there are four days that are very crucial at this point in time. We have talked about all four of these days in the past and we are not making any changes in these four days except for in the emphasis...The first part the end of the world began on May 21, 1988," he asserted.

Camping continues going over dates he deems important in church history. The next year he points out is 1994, which is the year he had previously predicted would bring the world's end.


"It is true, there was judgment in a terrible way and there was salvation in a wonderful way. The salvation came because in the previous 2,300 days...virtually no one could be saved in the entire world. We didn't even know how bad it was. Family Radio was broadcasting in those days and we had no idea what was really going," he says.

Camping clarifies that this "judgment" in 1994 was "spiritual, not physical," and says Jesus Christ did not arrive on Earth.

Originally Camping had said that the when May 21 came around, there would be massive earthquakes and believers would be raptured. The ones who were left would suffer great calamities until October 21.

He reasserted that date.

"It won't be a five-month terrible difficulty...that we have learned," said Camping. Instead, he says, the world will end quickly on Oct. 21 without any build up.

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Christian movement preparing for End of Days

Caroline Dennewith, co-owner of Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma, Wash., poses for a photo, Friday, May 20, 2011 with a poster advertising her business' "Rapture Party," which will be held Saturday, May 21, 2011, the day on which a loosely organized Christian movement believes Jesus will return to Earth to gather the faithful. Dennewith says she has received international media attention and some isolated local criticism for what started out as a low-key party in response to predictions of the rapture. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Christian movement preparing for End of Days
(AP) – 7 hours ago

OAKLAND, California (AP) — Some shut themselves inside to pray for mercy as they waited for the world's end.

Others met for tearful last lunches with their children, and prepared to leave behind homes and pets as they were swept up to heaven.

And across the globe, followers of a California preacher's long-publicized message that Judgment Day would arrive Saturday turned to the Bible, the book they believe predicts the beginning of Earth's destruction on May 21.

The doomsday message has been sent far and wide via broadcasts and web sites by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar nonprofit ministry based on his apocalyptic prediction.

After spending months traveling the country to put up Judgment Day billboards and hand out Bible tracts, Camping follower Michael Garcia planned to spend Friday evening with his family at home in Alameda, near the Christian media empire's Oakland headquarters.

They believe it will likely start as it becomes 6 p.m. in the world's various time zones.

"We know the end will begin in New Zealand and will follow the sun and roll on from there," said Garcia, a 39-year-old father of six. "That's why God raised up all the technology and the satellites so everyone can see it happen at the same time."

The Internet was alive with reaction in the hours past 6 p.m. Saturday in New Zealand.

"Harold Camping's 21st May Doomsday prediction fails; No earthquake in New Zealand," read one posting on Twitter.

"If this whole end-of-the-world thingy is still going on ... it's already past 6.00 in New Zealand and the world hasn't ended," said another.

Camping's radio stations, TV channels, satellite broadcasts and website are controlled from a humble building on the road to the Oakland International Airport, sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader. Family Radio International's message has been broadcast in 61 languages.

Camping, however, will be awaiting Jesus Christ's return for the second time. He said his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn't come true because of a mathematical error.

"I'm not embarrassed about it. It was just the fact that it was premature," he told The Associated Press last month. But this time, he said, "there is...no possibility that it will not happen."

Skeptics are planning Rapture-themed parties to celebrate what hosts expect will be the failure of the world to come to an end.

Bars and restaurants from Melbourne, Australia to the Florida Keys advertised bashes.

In Oakland, atheists planned a gathering at a local Masonic temple to include group discussions on "The Great Success of Past Apocalypses," followed by dinner and music.

Camping and his followers believe the beginning of the end will come on May 21, exactly 7,000 years since the flood in the biblical story of Noah's Ark.

Some 200 million people will be saved, Camping preaches, and those left behind will die in earthquakes, plagues, and other calamities until Earth is consumed by a fireball on October 21.

In the Philippines, a big billboard of Family Radio ministry in Manila warned of Judgment Day. Earlier this month, group members there distributed leaflets to motorists and carried placards warning of the end of the world.

Christian leaders from across the spectrum have widely dismissed the prophecy, but one local church is concerned that Camping's followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday.

Pastor Jacob Denys of Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church plans to wait outside the nonprofit's headquarters on Saturday afternoon, hoping to counsel believers who may be disillusioned if the Rapture does not occur.

"The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher," he said. "We're not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope."

On Friday afternoon, a small group of eccentrics, gawkers and media opportunists convened outside Family Radio's closed office building. A sign posted on the front door said "SORRY WE MISSED YOU!"

As May 21 drew nearer, followers say donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions of dollars on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

Marie Exley, who helped put up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, said the money helped the nonprofit save as many souls as possible. She said she and her husband, mother and brother planned to stay glued to the television Friday night in Bozeman, Montana for news of an earthquake in New Zealand.

Camping recommended this week that followers surround themselves by their loved ones and not meet publicly, Exley said.

"It's an emotional time and we're kind of nervous and scared about how things will pan out as to who will be here and who will go to heaven," she said. "I'll probably be scared in the fog of it, and crying, because we don't know who is saved and who is not."

Some people wanted to make sure their pets receive good treatment, no matter what happens.

Sharon Moss, who founded AfterTheRapturePetCare.com to provide post-apocalypse animal care, said a new wave of customers has paid $10 to sign up in the last few weeks.

"A lot of people have said you should be out there saving souls not saving pets but my heart says 'why can't you do both?'" said Moss, who identifies herself as Protestant.

Associated Press video journalist Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report.(backslash)

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At Apocalypse Central, Preparing for What Happens, or Doesn’t

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals outside the Family Radio headquarters in Oakland with plans for vegan Last Supper meals.

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: May 20, 2011


OAKLAND, Calif. — If Harold Camping and his followers are correct, Gertrude Stein’s famous comment about Oakland — that there is no there there — may finally be true. If not, some local churchgoers say they will set up encampments outside the headquarters of Mr. Camping, the self-proclaimed biblical soothsayer who has prophesied the end of the world on Saturday, with an eye toward consoling the disappointed.

In a state where fringe leaders like the Rev. Jim Jones and fringe groups the Heaven’s Gate cult have often found followers, and whose beliefs ended in mass suicide, not everyone is laughing about the prediction.

“They are going to be reeling,” said Pastor Jacob Denys of Calvary Bible Church in nearby Milpitas, so he and about 20 volunteers planned to spend Saturday outside Mr. Camping’s compound to let “them to know that God still loves them.”

On Friday, the only concrete sign of anything out of the ordinary was in the window of Family Radio — Mr. Camping’s radio enterprise, which has helped pay for and promote the May 21 prediction — announcing that the offices were closed.

“Sorry we missed you!” the sign concluded.

Family Radio’s representatives did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment on Friday. But whether or not the shuttered offices indicate Mr. Camping’s own pre-apocalyptic plans, what is certain is that the prediction has gained a life of its own.

And not surprisingly, some of the reactions have been light-hearted, especially considering history’s long list of swing-and-a-miss prophets. A Facebook page devoted to “Post-Rapture Looting” had assembled more than 500,000 promised attendees by Friday afternoon. “When everyone is gone and God’s not looking,” the page reads, “we need to pick up some sweet stereo equipment.”

On Friday, there was little activity at the compound, which includes a two-story suite of offices and a large cinder-block warehouse near the Oakland airport. Between the two buildings is a parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, topped with razor wire, containing several vehicles the Family Radio group has used to promote the May 21 prediction.

Inside the offices, a reception desk was unstaffed and the door was locked. Several boxes filled with brochures were visible, showing slogans like “Gay Pride: Planned by God as a Sign of the End.” A calendar on the desk had a red circle around the 21st with a note reading: “Rejoice!”

During a visit on Monday, Mr. Camping told a group at the compound that after Saturday there would be no chance left for anyone else to repent and be saved once the event began. “When the Judgment Day begins, there will be no more salvation, no more possibility of becoming right with God,” he said.

A former civil engineer, Mr. Camping, 89, built a small nonprofit empire in radio, going from a single station in San Francisco to more than 200 radio stations and a pair of television stations, according to The Bay Citizen, which also reported the organization’s most recent I.R.S. financial disclosure filings, showing $34 million in investments, $56 million in assets and $29 million in mortgages.

Mr. Camping has used those resources to buy billboard space across the country and print millions of pamphlets warning of doomsday and explaining his mathematical calculation for picking May 21, 2011: a complex formula involving the biblical flood survived by Noah; a 7,000-year clock ticking from that moment; and the subtraction of a year due to a difference between Old Testament and New Testament calendars.

Mr. Camping’s math has proved to be flawed before. He also predicted the end of the world in 1994. But this time around, Mr. Camping said he was supremely confident. “We’re just a few days away,” he said Monday.

Pastor Dave Nederhood, of Christian Reformed Church in Alameda, said he had met Mr. Camping on several occasions and had followed his radio broadcasts about the apocalypse closely.

“My concern is for the people that have bought into his lie and have sold their belongings, quit their jobs, left their churches and their families and now they are sitting at home listening to Family Radio and waiting for the end,” Mr. Nederhood said. “I’m terribly concerned.”

Although the Family Radio headquarters were mostly abandoned on Friday, the company’s flagship station — KEAR, 610 AM — continued to broadcast religious music, interspersed with sermons and biblically flavored life lessons.

There were also a few curiosity seekers who had made the pilgrimage, including one woman who refused to give her name but peered into the darkened building.

“Is this where,” she asked, “the world is going to end?”


Scott James and Malia Wollan contributed reporting.


A version of this article appeared in print on May 21, 2011, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: At Apocalypse Central, Preparing for What Happens, or Doesn’t.

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Amazing Facts President and Nationally Recognized Prophecy Speaker Challenges Harold Camping's May 21st Judgment Day

Published: Monday, 16 May 2011 7:35 PM


SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 16, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Family Radio speaker Harold Camping has boldly predicted that the world will end on Saturday, May 21, 2011, at precisely 6:00pm. Promoting it nationally through his extensive radio network, as well as on billboards and websites such as http://www.wecanknow.com, Camping's assertive claims have created a media frenzy around this predicted terrifying Armageddon event that will soon end the world as we know it.

But is Camping's prediction true? And worse, is it dangerous? Those are the questions posed by international speaker Doug Batchelor, a pastor and the president of Amazing Facts, a Christian ministry known globally for its comprehensive Bible prophecy presentations.

In fact, Pastor Batchelor has directly challenged Camping, offering him $100,000 to hand over the deed and rights to the Family Radio network following the May 21 deadline. He explains, "The Bible clearly teaches in Matthew 24:36 that 'No man knows the day and hour' of Jesus' return. Christ also warned that in the last days, there would be many false teachers. It is worth asking then, does Camping's prediction match what the Bible really tells us about Christ's return? I don't believe it does. But if Camping is right, he deserves the money to spread the message; if he's wrong, he should not own a radio network." Batchelor also warns, "Reckless predictions of the second coming of Christ create an artificial excitement among believers followed by a corresponding depression. In addition, it hardens skeptics in their unbelief and provides new fodder for cynics to mock the Christian faith." Across the country, hundreds of Family Radio listeners are quitting their jobs and selling their possessions.

Pastor Batchelor hopes to set the record straight and save millions of believers the devastation, harm, and the embarrassment that will come to them having put their faith in the wild opinions of men and potentially losing everything they have. He says, "Based on Bible prophecy, we'll all still be here May 22. So what can we do to save those caught up in this deception?" Amazing Facts is a Christian media ministry sharing the Bible through radio and television on more than 650 stations around the world. It also operates AFTV, a 24/7-satellite network (http://www.amazingfacts.tv). Each year, more than 300,000 people contact Amazing Facts to receive information about Bible prophecy and other topics. Its many websites also receive more than 4.9 million hits per year.

Pastor Batchelor has frequently taught on the book of Revelation on the Discovery Channel and appeared with Tim LaHaye in the National Geographic documentary The Riddle of Revelation. He is also the author of numerous articles and books on prophecy and hosts the weekly radio program Bible Answers Live.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Pastor Batchelor, contact:Sam GodfreySgodfrey(at)amazingfacts(dot)orgP.O. Box 1058Roseville, CA 95678916-434-3880 SOURCE Amazing Facts www.prnewswire.com Copyright (C) 2011 PR Newswire. All rights reserved -0- KEYWORD: California INDUSTRY KEYWORD: RAD

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The End is Near? The False Teaching of Harold Camping

The church is not to be arrogantly setting dates, but instead to be eagerly waiting for him. Of that we can be truly certain.

Monday, May 16, 2011


Harold Camping is now warning the world that the Day of Judgment will begin at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011. The 89-year-old founder of Family Radio has made such pronouncements before, most recently in 1994. He now says that he simply miscalculated then, but he is absolutely certain that he has the right calculation now. You have been warned.

Actually, millions of people in America have been warned through Camping’s radio program and by means of the more than 1,200 billboards his ministry has put up across the nation. According to press reports, Family Radio has put up 2,000 billboards in other nations, as well.

Camping is no stranger to controversy, but this one has caught national and international attention. He was wrong before, but this time he is absolutely certain that he is right. As he told New York magazine:

“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied — there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened — but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”

If you know the Bible and this statement confuses you, you are in good company. Harold Camping believes that God has revealed to him the exact dates of biblical events and the timeline of the judgment. He says that God revealed some “exquisite proof” that enabled him to determine a “finished product” timeline that ends on May 21, this coming Saturday.

As Michael S. Rosenwald of The Washington Post explains, Camping “says he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers.” Further, Camping’s mathematical formula “involves, among other things, the dates of floods, the signals of numbers in the Bible, multiplication, addition and subtraction thereof.” As many have noted, the math seems to make sense only to Harold Camping.

Yet, in a strange way, this just serves to affirm Camping in his teaching. On his website he states:

However, it was not until a very few years ago that the accurate knowledge of the entire timeline of history was revealed to true believers by God from the Bible. This timeline extends all the way to the end of time. During these past several years God has been revealing a great many truths, which have been completely hidden in the Bible until this time when we are so near the end of the world.

These “true believers” turn out to be Harold Camping and his disciples. Others, even professing Christians, will be in big trouble when Saturday comes, he believes.

The Christian church has seen this kind of false teaching before. William Miller and his Adventist followers (known, surely enough, as Millerites) believed that Christ would return on March 21, 1844. In the 1970s, popular Christian preachers and writers predicted that Christ would return on various dates now long in the past. All this is embarrassing enough, but now we have the teachings of Harold Camping to deal with. Given the public controversy, many people are wondering how Christians should think about his claims.

First, Christ specifically admonished his disciples not to claim such knowledge. In Acts 1:7, Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” In Matthew 24:36, Christ taught similarly: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

To state the case plainly, these two verses explicitly forbid Christians to claim the knowledge of such dates and times. Jesus clearly taught that the Father has not revealed such dates and timing, but has reserved that knowledge for himself. It is an act of incredible presumptuousness to claim that a human knows such a date, or has determined God’s timing by any means.

Second, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. The Bible has been given to us in order that we might know the truth, and the truth is clearly revealed in its pages. We are not to look for hidden patterns of words, numbers, dates, or anything else. The Bible’s message is plain and requires no mathematical computation for its understanding. The claim that one has found a hidden code or system in the Bible is an insult to the Bible as the Word of God.

Third, Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes. We are not to draw a line in history and set a date, but we are to be about the Father’s business, sharing the Gospel and living faithful Christian lives. We are not to sit on rooftops like the Millerites, waiting for Christ’s return. We are to be busy doing what Christ has commanded us to do.

In Hebrews 9:28, we are taught that Christ will come a second time “to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” That is the faithful Christian response to the New Testament teachings about Christ’s coming. The church is not to be arrogantly setting dates, but instead to be eagerly waiting for him. Of that we can be truly certain.

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Billboards Announce Return of Jesus

(quinn.anya / Flickr.com / Creative Commons)

Updated: Friday, 03 Dec 2010, 10:51 AM CST

Published : Friday, 03 Dec 2010, 9:42 AM CST

Jesus may not know the exact time He returns to Earth, but one Bible teacher has marked his calendar.

Family Radio founder Harold Camping is predicting Jesus will come back for his followers on May 21, 2011. Family Radio’s campaign includes billboards in Nashville, Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, Little Rock, Omaha, Kansas City, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Bridgeport, Conn. The ministry is also sending people around the world to proclaim Camping’s prediction, The Tennessean reported.

Camping predicts the rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He bases his prediction on the flood happening in 4990 B.C., on what he says would have been May 21 in the modern calendar.

Camping says that God gave Noah one week of warning, and since the Bible says that for God a day is like 1,000 years, Camping predicts there will be a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture: May 21, 2011.

"We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong," he told The Tennessean.

Well, they could point to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, which records the disciples asking Jesus when “all these things will be fulfilled."

In the passage, Jesus answers: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32).

The Rev. Fred Fuller of Madison (Tenn.) Campus Seventh-Day Adventist Church said the Bible points to Jesus' return, but no one knows when.

"The Bible says no one knows the day or the hour," he said. "I don't believe that date-setting or the scare tactic of an immediate date is a biblical approach."

Camping’s previous book, “1994?,” said the end of the world could occur that year, somewhere between September 15-17, according to the Christian Research Institute .

Camping wrote in “1994?” that we can know the month and the year that Christ will return, but he acknowledged he didn’t know the exact day because Scripture says “no man knows the day nor the hour” (Matt. 24:36).

Previous predictions of Christ’s return didn't pan out. The Tennessean said that in 1843, the so-called Great Disappointment happened when William Miller and his followers sold their homes and waited in a field for Jesus to come back.

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