Doomsday Prophet Harold Camping Takes No Responsibility for Creating Fear and Anxiety Among Followers

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Doomsday prophet Harold Camping as a preacher
Photo courtesy: Associated Press

The world didn’t end, the earthquakes didn’t happen, and his blind and unthinking followers could not go to heaven on May 21 this year. Harold Camping, the senile and self-styled doomsday prophet, had made the silly prophecy that earthquakes would destroy the earth and, just before that, 200 million believing Christians would be taken to heaven leaving all others to their ill fate.

After the non-event of May 21 Harold Camping is said to have been “flabbergasted.” Next day, he returned to his Family Radio preaching work.

As Mr. Camping used his religion or some verses from the Bible with his puzzling interpretation and calculation of the oncoming doomsday and created fear and anxiety among his followers, he is not being held accountable for it. If a non-religious person would create fear and anxiety among a number of people for non-religious reasons, he or she would most probably be held accountable for the costly nuisance. Some people are asking why Mr. Camping should go scot-free for such a deadly behavior.

Mr. Camping did not get rid of his own job, money or properties to be ready for the doomsday but a good number of his gullible followers did so and became bankrupt. Some wonder about the cunningness of this pastor and silliness of his suckered followers.

Without even being repentant about the false prophecy, Mr. Camping has the temerity to announce after May 21 that he had made a little mistake in his calculations, but, according to his new calculation, the world would definitely come to an end on October 21, 2011!

Some also mention, preachers like Mr. Camping belong to such Churches or Christian groups which teach that believers do not need a priest or pastor to interpret the Bible for them, but they, on their own, can read the Bible and understand its meanings. Here we see Mr. Camping has been interpreting the Bible and fixing a date of the doomsday for his followers.

Mr. Harold Camping's teachings and activities are critically studied by a Protestant website, called Jesus is Savior.

Some Doomsdayers Are Ready to Go to Heaven Tomorrow!

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Some Doomsdayers predicting the end
of the world tomorrow, May 21
Sketch (Toronto: May 20, 2011) © Jerome D'Costa

Some call it the Apocalypse, some Armaggedon, some Doomsday, some End Time, some Day of the Rapture, and others Judgment Day. The bottom line is the world will come to an end on a certain day according to the prediction of Jesus Christ in the Bible. Jesus clearly mentioned that no one knows when the end of the world would come.

Yet, some people interprete it differently and try to pinpoint the date for the world's end in a violent way.

Harold Camping, 89, is such a doomsdayer (one who believes that the world will come to an end imminently with violent natural catastrophes followed by the return of Jesus Christ for the last judgment). He is a Christian evangelist who preaches through the Family Radio, based in San Francisco, to thousands of people in the USA.

Mr. Camping, who is a former civil engineer with his own construction firm, left his profession and became an evangelical Christian preacher. Through his reading and interpretation of the Bible and his numerical calculations came to the conclusion for the second time that an earthquake would occur on Saturday, May 21, and sweep true believing Christians to heaven and leave others in this world to be destroyed by the catastrophe.

He predicted that at 11:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST), Friday, New Zealand would be the first country to be affected by the earthquake and it would make its way through Australia, Asia, Europe and North and South Americas. His place, California, would be hit at 6:00 p.m. PST, Saturday.

He said: "We know without any shadow of doubt it is going to happen." His followers and supporters in the USA and elsewhere have paid for billboards, posters and pamphlets announcing the imminent doomsday and asking people to be spiritually ready for it.

It is noteworthy that Mr. Camping made his first prediction that the doomsday would happen on September 6, 1994 when Jesus Christ would return. This outlandish prediction of his proved to be false.

Some believers, in the meantime, sold all their properties and gave away money to others to be prepared to go to heaven with Jesus Christ on May 21. Mr. Robet Fitzpatrick, a retired person in New York, is a strong believer of this doomsday prediction. He used up his total life savings of US $140,000 to put up posters in the city's subway (underground rail) system to announce the May 21 end of the world and to warn people to be ready for it.

Large Churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestant Churches), however, teach what Jesus Christ already said: No one knows the exact time or day of the end of the world except God himself.

For further reading on the subject of the doomsday, you may visit the following:

• A Brief History of the Apocalypse (2800 B.C. to 1700 A.D.)
• Religious Leaders and Their End-of-Time Predictions
• Doomsday Facts (or Fictions)