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Community Corner

Doomed Doomsday: Behind Harold Camping's Phony Predictions

Harold Camping said the rapture was coming on May 21, 2011, and he was wrong again.

For evangelist radio host Harold Camping, one Judgment Day just isn’t enough. The billboard-hanging prophet of eternal doom first predicted the world would come to an end in September of 1994.

But, unless you took Kurt Cobain’s death or the establishment of NAFTA much harder than the rest of us, by most accounts the world did not, in fact, end that year.

Now Camping, president of the California-based Family Radio broadcasting network, is back and this time he was confident that the Rapture would indeed occur today, May 21, 2011.

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Guess he still has a few hours left.

While billboards across the country are promising an end to all bill collectors, routine dental exams or having to endure yet another installment in the Twilight series, those who’ve already might be disappointed to find out they’ll have to wait another five months.

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That’s because this time, according to Washington Post blogger Sally Quinn, Camping has set a backup date of October 21, 2011, just in case he forgot to carry the seven.  

But for fans of dune buggies, sawed-off shotgun duels and Mel Gibson clad in tattered rags, the Rapture may actually take that full five months to fully destroy all earthly creation.

According to eBible Fellowship, Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011, will only be the beginning of what it describes as a “5-month period of horrible torment… for all the inhabitants of the earth.”

Language like that, while certainly frightening, does leave open a significant window of time for the credit card issuers, dentists and movie producers to inflict a few final wounds to the post-apocalyptic landscape of forsaken souls.

Of course, not everyone shares Camping’s view that the world will end this Saturday. In the same Washington Post blog mentioned above, World Prophetic Ministry President Ed Hinson says that while Camping likely has the wrong date, the second coming is coming, we just can’t be sure when.

“Don’t waste your time, trying to guess the time; be ready all the time, because Jesus could come any time,” is the mantra by which Hinson says he lives. In fact, he’s even scheduled a speech in front of 10,000 followers on Sunday, May 22, one day after Camping’s predicted end of the world.

The moral of the story: Don’t run up your credit cards or eat too many sweets just yet, as there’s clearly no consensus among the Judgment Day-predicting community about a final date.

And if Camping turns out to be wrong on the next date, well, we’ve always got the Mayan calendar slated to end just around the corner in 2012.

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