Harold Camping Predicts Rapture Again, Says World 'Probably' to End Friday, Oct. 21, 2011

Harold Camping

​Whatever you make of his obscure numerological scholarship or beliefs about the end times, you have to give Oakland-based Family Radio president Harold Camping full marks for sheer persistence.

Having predicted that Christ would return and the world would end in 1994 -- only to see the human race continue sinning heedlessly into the new century -- Camping got back on his horse and said the rapture would come on May 21, 2011. That didn't pan out either, so now Camping, who after that failed prediction suffered a stroke, has offered a revised estimate of the day the world ends: Friday, Oct. 21, 2011.

We know what you're thinking: Couldn't this have waited till after Halloween? The good news is that Camping seems to have left himself some wiggle room in his latest doomsday forecast, claiming only that the world will "probably" end this week.

As the Washington Post reports, Camping's newly aired audio statement asserts that "the end is going to come very, very quietly probably within the next month . . . by October 21. Probably there will be no pain suffered by anyone because of their rebellion against God . . . We can become more and more sure that they'll quietly die and that will be the end of their story."

If Camping doesn't sound too confident, you can't blame him. After all, a lot of Family Radio followers were likely disappointed when existence as we know it continued back in May. Camping's explanation of that failed prediction on his organization's website didn't do much to clarify matters:

What really happened this past May 21st? What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God's salvation program would be finished on that day. For the next five months, except for the elect (the true believers), the whole world is under God's final judgment. To accomplish this goal God withheld from the true believers the way in which two phrases were to be understood. Had He not done so, the world would never have been shaken in fear as it was.

One can only assume Camping is already busy drafting a similar disclaimer to publicize next week.

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