May 21 came and went, but nothing unusual happened. Or did it?
Did your sanctified and born-again grandmamma happen to go up in a whirlwind Saturday night?
What about your on-fire preacher? Did he vanish like the passing fog?
A lot of disappointed Christian believers stood around waiting for Jesus to return and take them up on chariots of fire to heaven in the sky. Some quit their jobs, gave away their possessions, and spent valuable dollars and time posting signs and standing on street corners to warn the unchurched of the end.
Even children at schools snickered about the end of the world, asking each other, “Do you think the world will end on May 21?”
So now that no big boom, crash or earthquake swallowed the earth and loosed demons, devils and fires from hell, Harold Camping’s followers are scratching their heads in confusion.
Camping, the mastermind behind the end-of-the-world prophecy predicted to occur on May 21, professed the end of days were at hand for at least two years via his Christian radio network, Family Radio.
According to the 89-year-old’s biblical research, he was able to calculate the exact time and date of the rapture, sighting 2 Peter 3:8 as evidence that 7,000 years after the biblical flood God would destroy the earth forever.
“In 2 Peter 3:8, Holy God reminds us that one day is as 1,000 years,” the radio station website literature reads. “Therefore, with the correct understanding that the seven days referred to in Genesis 7:4 can be understood as 7,000 years, we learn that when God told Noah there were seven days to escape worldwide destruction. He was also telling the world there would be exactly 7,000 years (one day is as 1,000 years) to escape the wrath of God that would come when He destroys the world on Judgment Day.” The text further explains that Noah’s flood occurred in 4990 B.C., and 2011 is exactly 7,000 years later.
“Amazingly, May 21, 2011, is the seventeenth day of the second month of the biblical calendar of our day,” the text states. “Remember, the floodwaters also began on the seventeenth day of the second month, in the year 4990 B.C. The Holy Bible gives several additional astounding proofs that May 21, 2011, is very accurate as the time for the Day of Judgment.”
Camping urged non-believers to repent, noting some 200 million would be saved while the rest of creation would be tormented on earth until the earth would be completely destroyed on Oct. 21, 2011, by a miraculous fireball.
But now that the world is still in tact and believers are shaking their heads in confusion, Camping’s followers are left to gather the rest of any belief and material possessions they have left.
The Christian Post reported that a couple who heard about Judgment Day a year ago quit their jobs in New York City to preach the Gospel, read their Bibles, and pass out tracts in Orlando.
Adrienne Martinez, 27, and her husband Joel believed Camping’s predictions were right and planned the rest of their lives around the prophecy.
She had plans to attend medical school but stopped her dream short, thinking the world would end soon.
The couple has a 2-year-old daughter and one child due next month.
“We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won’t have anything left,” she said. The growing family will have to start from ground zero and rebuild their lives.
But, according to the Christian Post, 80 percent of Camping’s organization workers did not believe his prediction at all.
Still, the organization spent millions of dollars on advertising for this fateful day for more than 5,000 billboards and ads plastered all over RVs, vans and cars, all funded on millions of dollars in listener donations and other Family Radio investments.
During Camping’s May 23 Open Forum broadcast, the Bible teacher said that when his prediction did not prove true on May 21, he was very confused and “had a very difficult time” dealing with the fact that nothing happened. However, he said his organization did not make a mistake on the timeline of God’s judgment. He said the fact is that the judgment is an “invisible judgment.”
On the show, he read a letter from a listener who gave him reassurance.
The letter held tight to the teachings of the biblical scholar, saying that yes the world will end on Oct. 21. The listener further explained that God is a merciful God and five months of torment is not in God’s plan. Instead, the prophesied events would be compacted on that day.
“We are not going to be putting up any more billboards, or passing out anymore tracts,” Camping said Monday night. “The world has been warned.”
Instead of taking back any predictions, the octogenarian radio host is convinced that the world is now under the judgment of God and the world will end on Oct. 21.
He said to his listening audience that Family Radio has done its part. Now it’s up to the rest of the world to receive salvation.
