False Prophets, False Teachers, and Real Trouble: The Case of Harold Camping

Andy Warhol was wrong. Fame doesn’t last just fifteen minutes. After all, Harold Camping is still in the news, more than a week after his prophecy that the world would end on May 21 at 6:00 p.m. turned out - as expected - to be false.

Camping’s end-of-the-world prophecy and the related publicity circus gained international attention. It was virtually inevitable that his claims would become a matter of global interest, followed by international derision. After all, Camping had claimed to have discovered a secret code within the Bible that allowed him to predict the precise day that Christ would appear and judgment would begin. As he told the press, he was certain that the end of the world was “absolutely going to happen without any question at all.”

In anticipation of May 21, Camping and his followers purchased thousands of billboard advertisements and sent the message across America painted on recreational vehicles. Some of his followers emptied their bank accounts and gave away their possessions, expecting no longer to need them.

When May 21 came and went, and the end of the world clearly did not happen, Camping did not apologize or even concede the fact that his prophecy was false. Instead, he said that the May 21 date was actually a “spiritual” judgment day, and that the actual day, signaled by cataclysmic earthquakes, would come on October 21.

The derision and laughter from the secular community was loud and entirely predictable. An atheist group offered to take care of the pets of those who were raptured, but for a fee. Late night comedians have yet to let go of the affair, and Harold Camping is, at least for the moment, a famous man.

Harold Camping is not, however, a trained Bible scholar or a pastor. He holds an undergraduate engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He was for years an elder in the Christian Reformed Church, but the major platform for his teachings emerged when he joined with others to purchase an FM radio station in 1958 - long before FM was a major player in the broadcasting world. All that would change, of course, and Camping’s expanding radio ministry, known as Family Radio, grew with the new medium.

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