2011 end times prediction
 Doomsday: Earthquakes on May 21?, ABC News
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May 21 Doomsday Comes to New York, ABC News
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A 'View' of May 21 Doomsday, The View
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Doomsday Predicted This Weekend, MyFoxPhilly |
American Christian radio host Harold Camping stated that the Rapture and Judgment Day would take place on May 21, 2011, and that the end of the world would take place five months later on October 21, 2011. The Rapture, in a specific tradition of premillennial theology, is the taking up into heaven of God's elect people.
Camping, who was then president of the Family Radio Christian network, claimed the Bible as his source and said May 21 would be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment "beyond the shadow of a doubt". Camping suggested that it would occur at 6 pm local time, with the Rapture sweeping the globe time zone by time zone, while some of his supporters claimed that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world's population) would be 'raptured'. Camping had previously claimed that the Rapture would occur in September 1994.
The vast majority of Christian groups, including most Protestant and Catholic believers, did not accept Camping's predictions; some explicitly rejected them, citing Bible passages including those stating "about that day or hour no one knows" (Matthew 24:36). An interview with a group of church leaders noted that all of them had scheduled church services as usual for Sunday, May 22.
Following the failure of the prediction, media attention shifted to the response from Camping and his followers. On May 23, Camping stated that May 21 had been a "spiritual" day of judgment, and that the physical Rapture would occur on October 21, 2011, simultaneously with the destruction of the universe by God. However, on October 16, Camping admitted to an interviewer that he did not know when the end would come, and made no public comment after October 21 passed without his predicted apocalypse.
In March 2012 Camping "humbly acknowledged" that he had been mistaken, that his attempt to predict a date was "sinful," and that his critics had been right in pointing to the scriptural text "of that day and hour knoweth no man". He then said he was searching the Bible "even more fervently... not to find dates, but to be more faithful in our understanding."
"I know it's absolutely true, because the Bible is always absolutely true."
Camping presented several arguments labeled "numerological" by the mainstream media, which he considered biblical proofs, in favor of the May 21 end time. A civil engineer by training, Camping stated he had attempted to work out mathematically-based prophecies in the Bible for decades. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle he explained "... I was an engineer, I was very interested in the numbers. I'd wonder, 'Why did God put this number in, or that number in?' It was not a question of unbelief, it was a question of, 'There must be a reason for it.'"
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