Predictor sets new rapture date after last failed
Source: Agencies |
May 25, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
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AS crestfallen followers of a California preacher who foresaw the world's end strained to find meaning in their lives, Harold Camping revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the earth actually will be obliterated on October 21.
Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven last Saturday before global cataclysm struck the planet, said on Monday that he felt so terrible when his doomsday message did not come true that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife.
His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions -- some of it from donations made by followers - on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 recreational vehicles plastered with the Judgment Day message.
Follower Jeff Hopkins also spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping's May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 160-kilometer round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least US$15 on gas each trip.
"I've been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I've been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car," said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, New York. "I was doing what I've been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I've been stymied. It's like getting slapped in the face."
Camping, who made a special appearance before the press at the Oakland headquarters of the media empire on Monday evening, apologized for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have."
Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, the light dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.
The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed last Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on October 21.
"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."
The 89-year-old retired civil engineer's apocalyptic prediction for 1994 also did not come to pass.
Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven last Saturday before global cataclysm struck the planet, said on Monday that he felt so terrible when his doomsday message did not come true that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife.
His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions -- some of it from donations made by followers - on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 recreational vehicles plastered with the Judgment Day message.
Follower Jeff Hopkins also spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping's May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 160-kilometer round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least US$15 on gas each trip.
"I've been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I've been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car," said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, New York. "I was doing what I've been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I've been stymied. It's like getting slapped in the face."
Camping, who made a special appearance before the press at the Oakland headquarters of the media empire on Monday evening, apologized for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have."
Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, the light dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.
The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed last Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on October 21.
"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."
The 89-year-old retired civil engineer's apocalyptic prediction for 1994 also did not come to pass.
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