The evangelical broadcaster who left followers crestfallen by his failed prediction that last Saturday would be Judgement Day says he miscalculated.
Harold Camping said it had "dawned" on him that God would spare humanity "hell on Earth for five months" and the apocalypse would happen on 21 October.Yesterday Harold Camping appeared on camera scratching his head over The Rapture That Wasn’t, saying “This is a big deal,” and “I’ve gotta think it over.” Camping told the interviewer who surprised him at his front door to give him a day, and he’d have it figured out.Turns out, he didn’t didn’t even need a day.
By late yesterday Camping was ready with a new theory to make sense of Saturday’s seeming indifference to the scheduled apocalypse. Camping’s new theory is that The Rapture actually plays out over two phases: First, the spiritual phase, in which Jesus passes judgement but doesn’t do much about it. According to Camping, this did in fact happen on Saturday. Phase two, in which Jesus consumes Earth in a ball of fire, dispatching the blessed souls to heaven and condemning the damned to hell, is now scheduled for October 21. Mark your calendars.
“We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning,” Camping told reporters at a press conference yesterday. “May 21 is the day that Christ came and put the world under judgment.”
October will be Camping’s third predicted end-of-the-world date. He must be testing his followers’ patience at this point, some of whom have spent their life savings on on billboard signs to welcome the messiah (who has apparently learned English in the last two thousand years). Camping follower and former TV producer Jeff Hopkins explains Saturday’s bitter disappointment to Reuters, saying, “It’s like getting slapped in the face”—apparently missing the Biblical advice to turn the other cheek.
But Rapture or not, Camping himself is not going out broke. According to Reuters in 2009 his Family Radio enterprise “reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.”
At 89, it’s likely that if Camping is able to delay his Rapture prediction a few more times, he himself will pass from this earth before Judgement Day ever comes. And as long as he’s able to keep believers hooked while keeps moving the line of scrimmage on the Rapture date, the donations will likely keep flowing in. The meek may inherit the earth, but Camping’s children will inherit a sweet asset portfolio.
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