December 20, 2013

​Radio Host who Predicted World’s End Dies


BY
SARAH PULLIAM BAILEY

c. 2013 Religion News Service

Harold Camping, the radio preacher who convinced
thousands of followers that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011, to usher in the
end of the world, has died, according to a statement released late December
16 by his Family Radio network. He was 92.

Camping had fallen at his home on Nov. 30 and had
been in weak health due to a stroke since 2011.

Camping first predicted Jesus’ return in 1994,
but his most recent forecasts gained national attention through advertisements
and the Family Radio network of stations he founded. He warned that “judgment
day” would occur in May 2011 and said the world would end in October 2011.

When his prophecies turned out to be
false, he declared in March 2012 that his May 21 prediction had been
“incorrect and sinful” and said his ministry would get out of the predictions
business.

The ministry sold its prominent stations
and laid off staffers, with assets dropping from $135 million in 2007 to
$29.2 million in 2011.

Pressed by reporters after his May 21 prediction
failed to materialize, Camping said he had miscalculated—it must be October 21,
he said. “I’m not a genius,” he said. “I pray all the time for wisdom.”

Starting in the 1950s, Camping broadcast his
views via Family Radio, a global network of Christian stations for which he
served as unpaid president and primary on-air talent. His teachings aired
worldwide five nights a week via “Open Forum,” a call-in show that draws
listeners as far away as China and Ghana.

“Thank you for calling ‘Open Forum,’ ” Camping
said countless times in his trademark baritone, “and shall we take our next
call, please?”

Camping was once well-regarded in among
evangelicals, both for his encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture and his radio
network. But in the late 1980s, when he began teaching that churches had
strayed from the Bible embracing a false doctrine, he lost much previous
support.

He also discouraged his listeners from joining a
church, saying modern churches were heretical and that the “church age” had
ended as the end of the world was near. He had no formal religious training beyond
his tattered copies of the King James Version of the Bible and couldn’t read or
speak Greek, Hebrew or Jesus’ native Aramaic.

His 2011 prophecy got widespread attention,
including “Rapture Parties” hosted by atheists who wanted to “ridicule and poke
fun at the fools.” It gave one man the opportunity to create a fake business
that offered to care for the pets of believers swept up by the Rapture.

His March 2012 statement, which in many ways
amounted to the final time many people heard from Camping, expressed regret for
the predictions, which had led many followers to sell all their possessions in
anticipation of the end of the world.

Camping said people continued to wish for another
prediction, but he had become convinced that critics were correct about the
biblical admonition that “of that day and hour knoweth no man.”

“We must also openly acknowledge that we have no
new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world,” he wrote at
the time. “Though many dates are circulating, Family Radio has no interest in
even considering another date.”

Camping is survived by his wife of 71 years, the
statement says.

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