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US preacher warns end of the world is nigh: 21 May, around 6pm, to be precise

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Proud Mary

Mon Mar 28 2011, 03:24PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

US preacher warns end of the world is nigh: 21 May, around 6pm, to be precise

(But he has been wrong before). Guy Adams reports from California

The Independent
Sunday, 27 March 2011

Harold Camping has been broadcasting his Doomsday predictions around the world

The end of the world is nigh; 21 May, to be precise. That's the date when Harold Camping, a preacher from Oakland, California, is confidently predicting the Second Coming of the Lord. At about 6pm, he reckons 2 per cent of the world's population will be immediately "raptured" to Heaven; the rest of us will get sent straight to the Other Place.

If Mr Camping were speaking from any normal pulpit, it would be easy to dismiss him as just another religious eccentric wrongly calling the apocalypse. But thanks to this elderly man's ubiquity, on America's airwaves and billboards, his unlikely Doomsday message is almost impossible to ignore.

Every day Mr Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners. Such is their generosity (assets total $120m) that his network now owns 66 stations in the US alone.

Those deep pockets were raided to allow Family Radio to launch a high-profile advertising campaign, proclaiming the approaching Day of Judgement. More than 2,000 billboards across the US are adorned with its slogans, which include "Blow the trumpet, warn the people!". A fleet of logoed camper vans is touring every state in the nation. "It's getting real close. It's really getting pretty awesome, when you think about it," Mr Camping told The Independent on Sunday. "We're not talking about a ball game, or a marriage, or graduating from college. We're talking about the end of the world, a matter of being eternally dead, or being eternally alive, and it's all coming to a head right now."

Mr Camping, who makes programmes in 48 languages, boasts tens of thousands of followers across the globe, with radio stations in South Africa, Russia and Turkey. After 70 years of studying the Bible, he claims to have developed a system that uses mathematics to interpret prophesies hidden in it. He says the world will end on 21 May, because that will be 722,500 days from 1 April AD33, which he believes was the day of the Crucifixion. The figure of 722,500 is important because you get it by multiplying three holy numbers (five, 10 and 17) together twice. "When I found this out, I tell you, it blew my mind," he said.

Recent events, such as earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and Haiti, are harbingers of impending doom, he says, as are changing social values. "All the stealing, and the lying, and the wickedness and the sexual perversion that is going on in society is telling us something," he says. "So too is the gay pride movement. It was sent by God as a sign of the end."

Mr Camping, who founded Family Radio in the 1950s, grew up a Baptist. Many of his strongly held views â€“ he does not believe in evolution and thinks all abortion should be banned â€“ are relatively commonplace among America's religious right.

Critics point out that this isn't the first time Mr Camping has predicted the second coming. On 6 September 1994, hundreds of his listeners gathered at an auditorium in Alameda looking forward to Christ's return.

"At that time there was a lot of the Bible I had not really researched very carefully," he said last week. "But now, we've had the chance to do just an enormous amount of additional study and God has given us outstanding proofs that it really is going to happen."

Mr Camping's argument has convinced Adam Larsen, 32, from Kansas. He is among scores of "ambassadors" who have quit their jobs to drive around America in Family Radio vehicles warning of the impending apocalypse. "My favourite pastime is raccoon hunting," Mr Larsen told CNN. "I've had to give that up. But this task is far more important."

Daedronus

Mon Mar 28 2011, 03:45PM

Registered Member #2329 Joined: Tue Sept 01 2009, 08:25AM
Location:
Posts: 370

I'm willing to bet money he is wrong :)

Mads Barnkob

Mon Mar 28 2011, 04:37PM

Registered Member #1403 Joined: Tue Mar 18 2008, 06:05PM
Location: Denmark, Odense C
Posts: 1968

"So too is the gay pride movement. It was sent by God as a sign of the end."

.... yes... it was...

also... additional pictures are always good:

Proud Mary

Mon Mar 28 2011, 05:10PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Mads Barnkob wrote ...

"So too is the gay pride movement. It was sent by God as a sign of the end."

.... yes... it was...

also... additional pictures are always good:

According to Rev Camping, In Jude 7 God speaks of this sin as â€œgoing after strange flesh,â€ which I'd always believed was an injunction against eating sushi.

But what an odd creature the pastor is - looking for an explanation of the world in the crumbling parchments and rotting scrolls of the Late Bronze Age.

Will he submit himself to the surgical techniques of Bronze Age medical authors, or fly in aeroplanes directed by Bronze Age notions of navigation?

Conundrum

Mon Mar 28 2011, 05:12PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Numerology is about as nutty as it gets methinks.
About the only thing that will happen on that day is a lot of stupid people will realise they gave away their property/etc for nothing and everyone else will laugh at them.

-A

Kizmo

Mon Mar 28 2011, 05:30PM

Registered Member #599 Joined: Thu Mar 22 2007, 07:40PM
Location: Northern Finland, Rovaniemi
Posts: 624

21th may just happens to be my birthday

Steve Conner

Mon Mar 28 2011, 05:57PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Hm, are you one of the Four Horsemen by any chance? :)

I also find it ironic that he likes to bash gays and yet his name is "Camping".

Nah

Mon Mar 28 2011, 07:06PM

Registered Member #3567 Joined: Mon Jan 03 2011, 10:49PM
Location: USA, 1960s
Posts: 260

Now I may be religious but this is just:

POPPYCOCK

101111

Mon Mar 28 2011, 07:41PM

Registered Member #575 Joined: Sun Mar 11 2007, 04:00AM
Location: Norway
Posts: 263

Steve McConner wrote ...

Hm, are you one of the Four Horsemen by any chance? :)

@ 1:45 "But the Horsemen are kool dudes"

Renesis

Mon Mar 28 2011, 08:36PM

Registered Member #2028 Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319

21 May, around 6pm:

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