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False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world

False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world
“If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:22).

Jesus declares in Matthew 24 concerning His return: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” (NKJV)

False prophets have time and again pronounced the imminent doom of the world, with little apparent concern for the track record of all those who came before them. From Y2K to the tragic mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult and countless other fads and false alarms over the years, leaders arise proclaiming the end of the world is at hand, and usually there is a group that will follow them. Sometimes, not even the failure of their false prophecy can shake their followers: The Jehovah Witnesses allegedly have been wrong over and over again, and yet the sect continues to find adherents.


False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world

To the shock and distress of a handful of ultra-devout Christian believers...America and a world that had signally failed to end.

Instead of a series of earthquakes hitting successive countries at 6pm local time and heralding The Rapture – in which millions of the Faithful would ascend to heaven before the Second Coming of Christ – planet Earth simply carried on and, mostly, kept calm.

Middle East peace remained unresolved, political turmoil hit a few countries and bypassed many others. But by and large the world's toiling billions, as usual, just got on with their lives.

The non-event was a great disappointment to hundreds of followers of a hitherto obscure California-based religious group called Family Radio, which had lavished millions of dollars on a worldwide advertising campaign proclaiming yesterday as Judgment Day.

The group is centred on the teachings and broadcasts of prophet Harold Camping, an 89-year-old self-styled expert in the scriptures who told his followers that his interpretations of the Bible had uncovered the true date of the end of the world. Camping, who lives in the northern California town of Alameda, has previous form on this. He got the date wrong in 1994 when he said the world would end that year, and later explained its continued existence by saying he had made a mathematical error.

But what made this prediction different was the lavish spending that accompanied it. Camping and his followers spent more than $100m worldwide on billboards and posters, financed by the sale and swap of radio stations. Advertising popped up across America and the globe from Iraq to Lebanon to Israel to Jordan, the Philippines to Vietnam, where thousands of the Hmong ethnic hill tribe gathered together on the Thai border in anticipation of the event. The campaign was backed up by Camping's radio show, which can be heard worldwide, and a website that featured, naturally, a countdown clock. Yesterday that clock was at zero underneath the banner headline: "Judgment Day: the Bible guarantees it."

Camping's followers became a familiar sight in cities such as New York, wearing T-shirts proclaiming their beliefs and handing out leaflets in subway stations. On Friday they were at Manhattan's Union Square station, attracting a throng of fascinated gawpers who posed for pictures with them. They handed out their Judgment Day booklets and chatted amiably enough, given their conviction that the End Times were about to arrive.

But as yesterday approached many told reporters they would spend the time huddled in their homes with their families. They planned to pray for their loved ones and hope to be among the lucky few taken up into heaven and spared the global calamity the rest of us would have to put up with for the (much shortened) rest of our lives. Camping himself, who wound down his radio operations ahead of time, said he would watch events unfold at home on television.

Unfortunately for them, nothing happened; a fact that caused much hilarity on Twitter and elsewhere as the 6pm deadline passed in New Zealand, then Australia, Europe and finally America.

"Harold Camping Doomsday prediction fails; No earthquake in New Zealand," read one posting on Twitter. "If this whole end-of-the-world thingy is still going on... it's already past 6.00 in New Zealand and the world hasn't ended," said another. The jokes were global. "Through Croydon; devastation, pestilence, drawn, emaciated faces of the walking dead. No sign of the Rapture though," cracked someone evidently not a fan of the south London town. Another Twitter user suggested people scatter empty pairs of shoes and discarded clothes on their lawns to simulate those lucky few now living with God.

Perhaps not surprisingly, atheists and other non-believers used the opportunity as a way to mock the religious. Various parties were planned across the US. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the local chapter of the American Humanist Association held a party last night to celebrate the Earth's survival and planned a music concert. The American Atheists held "rapture parties" in places such as Wichita, Kansas, Fort Lauderdale in Florida and even just a few miles from Family Radio itself at a conference centre in Oakland. New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg used a press conference to assure citizens that post-Rapture his administration would not pursue parking tickets or late library books.

But other non-believers and cynics saw an opportunity to make money rather than jokes. There has been a mini-boom in firms and individuals offering to look after the pets of those who believed they were about to be raptured. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, set up by New Hampshire atheist Bart Centre, has about 250 clients who paid $135 (£83) for insurance policies that guarantee Centre and others will care for their animals when they ascend. Others paid out to sign up with websites that would send out farewell letters to friends and relations left behind.

But there is a serious side. Camping seemed entirely genuine in his beliefs, enough to spend a small fortune promoting them. While others may be making money out of believing in Doomsday, Camping is not one of them. Many experts have worried about the psychological impact on his followers who are suddenly confronted with the collapse of their belief system. Some Christian pastors planned to gather outside Family Radio to counsel any distraught members who showed up wondering why they – and the world – were still there.

Camping himself admitted he had pretty much staked everything on his fervently held belief. "There is no plan B," he told Reuters late last week. Which is a shame. As the day progressed in California last night with no global mega-quake in sight, he and his followers needed one.

The End Of Daze...Camping wrong yet again

The End Of Daze...Camping wrong yet again
The End of Daze

So the Rapture turned out to be a bit of a bust.

There are no monster earthquakes, no oceans turning to steam, no fire shooting up out of the ground and, most sadly, no heathen dead rising from the grave to walk to earth in search of brains while Christians ascend skyward on beams of light. It would be easy at this point to do a traditional post-mortem point-and-laugh because that's always what this thing was deserving of -- but there's still something overwhelmingly sad about the fact that there are those out there who sold everything they owned, jettisoned their childrens' futures and wound their lives down to this singular point in time not only because they truly believed that earthly concerns wouldn't matter anymore after today but because nothaving absolute faith in that notion would damn them for all eternity. These people are now, for lack of a more diplomatic descriptor, thoroughly screwed.

But there's no sense in letting something like that eat you alive from the inside out; there have always been suckers out there and there always will be, gullible souls so desperate for a cure to a life that simply offers too much incomprehensible mystery that they're willing to swallow any form of snake oil peddled in their direction. You can't save everyone, nor should you try -- an ironic statement, certainly, given the topic.

Still, there's something really worth pointing out in the wake of the non-Rapture. While it was easy for most of us to handily dismiss the lunatic predictions of Pastor Harold Camping and his merry band of messianic misfits, what shouldn't be forgotten is just how unremarkable their basic belief-system is. Sure, even a lot of hardcore Evangelicals ridiculed Camping's assertion that Jesus was going to appear out of the sky today, but make no mistake: Whether they choose to say it loudly and publicly right now, as far as they're concerned the only thing Camping got wrong was the exact date. There are millions of people still going about their business today convinced that at any moment they can be beamed up to heaven while the rest of the Earth falls into a period of tribulation that ends in its ultimate destruction. And by the way, these people aren't considered crazy -- they're just called faithful, and deserving of having that faith respected and lent credence by the rest of us. It's fascinating that, really, the only thing that puts Pastor Harold Camping and his followers one step over the line into the world of the insane outlier is that they thought they had figured out the time of Jesus's return, not that they believed absolutely in the notion of a divine entity called Jesus -- or that he would magically appear to us -- in the first place.

If you need it put in more reductionist terms it can be summed up like this: Believing in Jesus Christ as the resurrected son of the creator of the universe who will eventually return to Earth equals not-crazy; believing that you know when Jesus Christ will make that triumphant return equals crazy. See how, well, crazy that is?

When you look at it in those terms it's kind of astonishing how one belief is considered legitimate in our society and worthy of respect -- and one is considered outlandish and worthy of ridicule.

No, the Rapture didn't happen today. But that doesn't mean a whole lot of people won't go on believing that it will happen eventually, that the Bible really does "guarantee it." And that belief is deserving of no less dismissal than the one for which we've all had such a good time mocking Pastor Harold Camping over the past couple of weeks.

Judgement Day May 21 2011...claims Family Radio

Judgement Day May 21 2011...claims Family Radio

A banner displayed at the Eaton Centre in Toronto predicts that Judgement Day will occur on May 21, 2011. Courtesy Brian Cameron/Flickr.com

The Family Radio website says president Harold Camping came up with the Judgment Day prediction based on 'evidence found in the Bible.' The Independent

If the signs are to be believed, the end of the world as we know it starts on May 21.

Billboards are popping up around the globe, including in major Canadian cities, proclaiming May 21 as Judgment Day. "Cry mightily unto GOD for HIS mercy," says one of the mounted signs from Family Radio, a California-based sectarian Christian group that is sending one if its four travelling caravans of believers into Vancouver and Calgary within the next 10 days.

Family Radio's website is blunt in its prediction of Judgment Day and the rolling earthquake that will mark the beginning of the end. "The Bible guarantees it!" the site proclaims, under a passage from the book of Ezekiel, which says "blow the trumpet … warn the people."

Richard Ascough, a professor in the School of Religion at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has been watching Family Radio's campaign, and fully expects life as we know it to continue on May 22.

He has seen other apocalyptic predictions come and go, but Family Radio's differs in a notable way: it isn't accompanied by a bold, up-front request for money. And that's worrisome, in his mind.

"I think they really believe it's going to happen," Ascough said in an interview Tuesday.

What if Judgment Day doesn't come?

When groups such as this ask for a lot of money up front, it's possible to think they're "charlatans," Ascough said.

"When they're not doing that so blatantly, it worries me more, because I think they really do believe it and they can convince people who may end up in fact doing things like … quitting their jobs, selling their house, not necessarily to give the money to this group, but simply to divest themselves in light of Judgment Day."

And then that predicted Judgment Day doesn't come.

"We've seen that happen in groups before, and then people are just wiped out, not just emotionally because it didn't happen, but financially," said Ascough. "Some people, it's led to them taking their own lives when they realize what they have done."

Family Radio identifies itself on its website as a "non-profit, non-commercial, Christian radio network" set up in 1958 with one FM station in the San Francisco Bay area. From that station bought by Harold Camping and two others "with the sole intent of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ," it has grown to a network of 66 stations through the U.S. It also broadcasts its programming internationally.

Some published estimates have put its net worth at $120 million or more.

"To have that kind of revenue base, if that's correct, suggests there must be quite a few listeners," said Ascough.

He said it is "hard to get a read" on the sectarian Christian group.

"Their theology is fundamentalist and yet still generally within the bounds of Christianity, until one gets to this date-setting business."

'Evidence found in the Bible'

On its website, Family Radio says May 21 as Judgment Day is "derived solely from evidence found in the Bible."

"Mr. Camping saw God had placed, in scripture, many important signs and proofs. These proofs alert believers that May 21st of 2011 is the date Christ will return for His people and begin a period of the final destruction of the world." All will be over on Oct. 21, "when God will completely destroy this earth and its surviving inhabitants," the website says.

The isn't the first time Camping has predicted the end of the world. He also targeted 1994 as a probable time, but on the website, Family Radio says, "important subsequent Biblical information was not yet known."

Ascough said he thinks Camping's way of reading scripture is "irresponsible."

"It's not the way these Biblical texts were meant to be read, even by their original writers."

And even if they were, scholars can find mistakes in the mathematics and historical assumptions put forward in the Judgment Day predictions, he said. "It's all very slippery."

Ascough hasn't seen such visible activities like billboards from Family Radio in Canada before. He credits technology with allowing the group to reach more broadly into Canada and worldwide.

"They're savvy enough to have figured out how to market themselves well."

Cultural fascination

Family Radio is hardly the first group to predict the end. Movies, literature and television have told tales of a coming apocalypse, in many forms.

"Once it gets mocked on The Simpsons, you know it's taken hold," said Ascough.

Ascough sees both a cultural fascination with end-of-the-world scenarios and a fascination with the Bible behind the appeal that religious groups such as Family Radio can hold for followers.

"Quite a few people are attracted to fundamentalist groups of all stripes because many people don't like to live with ambiguity."

While Ascough predicts the world will survive any suggestions of its demise on May 21, he fully expects such ideas will be revived from time to time.

"Almost every generation has this kind of group, so I don't think they're going to go away."