Betrayed by a stubborn Rapture that refused to abide his calculations, California-based televangelist Harold Camping was seemingly silenced in May when the Earth remained unscorched. But like any resilient prophet, Camping has dusted himself off and is doubling down on doom. An exceprt from Dan P. Lee’s smart new New York magazine article about the prognosticating preacher:
“By Monday, in a development he could not have previously fathomed, Camping found himself sitting back in his chair in his wood-paneled studio before a scrum of television cameras. His rail-thin body was clad in an old JCPenney suit, and in his lap he held a massive leather-bound Bible. Though ancient-looking, Camping came across surprisingly confident. After calling ‘this last weekend a very interesting weekend,’ he cut to the chase: ‘And so, the first question is, ‘Camping, what about you? Are you ready to shoot yourself, or are you ready to go on a booze trip, or whatever?’ ’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Well, I can tell you very candidly that when May 21 came and went, it was a very difficult time for me.’
As God had it, an answer began forming and was furthered along via some ideas in a letter he’d received that very morning from a listener. He realized, he explained, he’d been taking some of the end-time verses in the Bible too literally. ‘Suddenly it dawned on me, Oh, I see what happened,’ he said. God had indeed returned to Earth on May 21, he explained, but His return—and the earthquakes and terror that were to accompany it—was for now spiritual, not physical. It was, Camping said, necessary for it to be this way; if God had let Camping realize there would be no fire and brimstone, then his warnings might have been less vigorous. Most important, the timeline he’d parsed from the Bible was no less accurate. The Final Judgment was already occurring. It would last for five months—153 days—and we were already two days in.
‘And it will continue right up until October 21, 2011, and at that time the whole world will be destroyed,’ Camping said calmly. ‘This is why we don’t have to talk about this anymore. The world is under judgment. We are not going to be passing out any more tracts; all billboards are coming down. Our work is done. The world has been warned. My! How they have been warned.'”
