May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day But Continue to Pay All Your Bills in the Meantime..."
This is a news segment produced in December 2010 by Northern California's ABC Affiliate KRCR, serving the small town communities around Shasta, Redding and Chico. The upper right hand corner displays a graphic with the year "2012" that's been exed-out.
The report shows followers of Rev. Harold Camping's church, Family Radio, who have been traveling throughout the Western States of the US in a motorcade of kitted-out minibuses with massive loudspeakers, blaring the 1990s hit song by REM, "It's the End of the World and We Know It." They're shown ministering to people on the streets and handing out leaflets, in a bid to save their souls before Judgment Day, which the Camping has calculated to occur on May 21, 2011, before the final destruction of the world on October 21, 2011, according to him and other Fundamentalist denominations in the US.
The KRCR reporter interviews a Family Radio follower, saying, "This begs the questions, 'Should I pay my mortgage? My car payments?'" The follower responds that we should make all credit card payments, etc. and to "Be the example that God would have us be, as True Believers."
P.S. In response to my newsletter a subscriber has written in to say that, "He's not a Reverend because he was never ordained as one by any denomination. He's an engineer by training and manipulates biblical numbers to obtain the outcome he wants. When he was younger he made it very big in construction and used some of his money to buy Family Radio. Family Radio is by no means small. They broadcast all over the world. He's a loose cannon because no one on his staff reviews what he's going to preach each day. This is the eleventh time he's predicted the date of Jesus' return. The most widely followed one was in 1994 in which he changed the date 3 or 4 times as each one passed without Jesus' return. At that time, members of his staff showed him that his numbers were wrong and instead of changing the numbers he fired the critics. Biblically speaking he's a false prophet and God has no mercy on such unless they repent.
Camping has never repented for any of his false prophesies. Many of his followers were hurt badly financially in 1994 because they had sold everything as he told them to on Family Radio. There was even a reported suicide by one of his followers. Interestingly, he kept asking for donations to Family Radio up until the day that the world was supposed to have ended.
He's in his 90's now and some say he's gone insane or will when his latest prophecy doesn't materialize. Who knows? Maybe he'll still be prophesying when he's 100.
