California, June 08: Though making a false prediction for the first date he specified for day of rapture, a US fundamentalist preacher said that the end of the world is still near, shifting the day for Day of Judgment for further five months, the BBC reported on Tuesday, May 24.
“We are not changing a date at all; we’re just learning that we have to be a little more spiritual about this,” radio preacher Harold Camping said in a rambling 90-minute radio broadcast in his Open Forum radio show late on Monday.
“But on Oct. 21, the world will be destroyed. It won’t be five months of destruction. It will come at once.”
Camping, the 89-year-old East Bay preacher, gained international fame with his prediction that the so-called “Rapture” will begin with powerful earthquakes at 6:00 pm local time in each of the world’s regions on May 21.
After the mega-quakes, the good Christians will be taken into heaven, eighty-nine-year-old Camping believes.
Those who do not make it to the gateway to the Heaven on Saturday will suffer through hell on earth until October 21, when angry God will pull the plug on the planet once and for all, destroying everyone and everything.
Appearing in his show yesterday, Camping said sorry for not having the dates “worked out as accurately as I could have”.
Camping added that he misinterpreted the Bible and that May 21 was not really the end of the world but the spiritual beginning of the physical end.
He noted that he returned over the weekend to the scripture and it had “dawned” on him that a “merciful and compassionate God” would spare humanity by compressing the apocalyptic destruction into a shorter time frame.
Camping made a similar prophecy years ago saying then that the Rapture would happen in 1994.
But 1994 came and went without Rapture.
Muslims believe that the Day of Judgment will occur at a fixed point in time in the future. The exact time is known only to God.
They ask thee about the (final) Hour when will be its appointed time? Say: “The knowledge thereof is with my Lord (alone): None but He can reveal as to when it will occur, Surah 7 Verse 187 of the Holy Qur’an says.
World Warned
Taking down warning billboards, Camping said that they would focus for the coming five months on programs on religious music and God’s word, not on a countdown to the end.
“We don’t need to talk about it anymore,” Camping said.
“The world has been warned. We have done our share and the media picked it up. The world has been warned that it is under judgment.”
In response to the first prophecy, his independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions of dollars on broadcasts, billboards and campaign vehicles to publicize the prediction.
Some followers donated their life savings or simply gave away their worldly possessions as the day approached.
Tens of thousands of ads from non-believers appeared on the internet offering to buy the worldly goods of those who think they’re going to heaven on Saturday night.
A group of atheists has sold hundreds of contracts to rescue people’s pets after the Rapture.
Feeling betrayed and shocked as the day came and went with no sign of world end, people who believed Camping said they were facing humiliation and mocking.
“I’ve been mocked and scoffed and cursed at,” Jeff Hopkins, a retired TV producer in New York state who spent some of his savings customizing his car to showcase Camping’s warning, told the BBC.
“It’s like getting slapped in the face.”
Despite being pressed by others, Camping refused to take responsibility for any pain or suffering his prediction may have caused, saying that he was merely interpreting the Bible.
“We just had a great recession. There’s lots of people who lost their jobs, lots of people who lost their houses… and somehow they all survived,” Camping said.
“We’re not in the business of giving any financial advice,” he added.
“We’re in the business of telling people maybe there is someone you can talk to, and that’s God.”
–Agencies