Behind thousands of “Judgement Day” billboards from rural highways to city skylines and a small army of volunteers that have traipsed across the country preaching May 21 as the beginning of the world’s destruction is a frail, 89-year-old California multimillionaire who runs one of the largest Christian radio networks in the world.
Each day, Harold Camping’s slow and sonorous Bible readings and his Open Forum call-in show broadcast for hours from the Oakland, Calif. headquarters of Family Radio, where his words are punctuated by slots of Christian gospel and shows with titles such as “Beyond Intelligent Design” and “Creation Moments.”
And while the retired civil engineer and former Sunday school teacher has been preaching the gospel for decades and talking about God’s wrathful plan for earth for the past two years, recent times have brought him into the spotlight like never before.
In the last week, variations of “End of the World May 21st” and “Harold Camping” have been among the top search terms on Google. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control took advantage of that popularity by releasing a mock guide to the “Zombie Apocalypse” on its web site that quickly went viral.
But “it’s no laughing matter,” Camping says in an interview with The Huffington Post. “It is not something where its' a tiny, tiny, tiny chance it may happen. It is going to happen.”
He and his fringe group of churchless followers believe that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, a massive earthquake will make it’s way around the earth, beginning in Fiji and New Zealand. Graves will open and the dead who are 'saved' will ascend to heaven. Alive or dead, two hundred million of the saved will float up. The doomed remainder will live on an unruly earth for five months before God annihilates it on Oct. 21.
Camping’s warnings are drawn from complex Biblical numerology that is part-based on a literal reading of the King James Bible and part-based and obscure interpretation of the book’s many symbols.
Source : huffingtonpost.com
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