Although 2012 is known as a disaster year, the American radio presenter at the Christian Family Radio Harold Camping (1921) already predicted the end of the world for the year 2011. He did not base this on the Mayan calendar, but on indications in the Bible.
The return of Jesus
Harold Camping takes a traditional, Christian approach in his predictions. While followers of the Mayan calendar theory have various ideas about what exactly will happen on December 21, 2012, Camping is clear that he is referring to the return (or second coming ) of Jesus Christ announced in the Bible. This second coming is accompanied by earthquakes and the rapture of believers into heaven . Camping expected this to happen on May 21, 2011, after which the remaining unbelievers would slowly but surely die.
Various data, one plan
The year 2011 was not the first for which Harold Camping announced the end of the world. He made similar predictions before May 21, 1988 and September 7, 1994, which also did not come true. Initially, after the failure to fulfill his previous predictions in 1988 and 1994, he admitted to making a calculation error, but on May 23, 2011 he said that everything was still going according to plan. On May 21, 1988, the judgment of God (the judgment of God that determines the end times) came upon the church, this was continued in September 1994 and on May 21, 2011, the judgment of God descended on the entire world.
Earthquakes herald the end
In 2005 the book Time Has An End was published, in which Camping explained his predictions for the end of the world in 2011. Based on numerological application to passages from the Bible (including from the books of Genesis and 2 Peter), he expected that the so-called end times would start on Saturday, May 21, 2011, with the final end on Friday, October 21. On May 21, earthquakes are expected to sweep the world from 6 p.m. local time. This would start on the island of Kiritimati (or Christmas Island) in the Pacific Ocean, and involve the rapture. After May 21, all kinds of disastrous events would take place for five months, causing millions of casualties every day. October 21 would be the actual end of the earth.
A Family Radio campaign bus to announce the end times (photo: Bart Everson) / Source: Bart Everson, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-2.0)
The bible about rapture
Some followers of Harold Camping estimated that on May 21, 2011, approximately 200 million Christians (3% of the world’s population) would be raptured into heaven. How one should imagine this is somewhat described in the Bible book 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 17: ,…afterwards we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them [the previously deceased Christians] in the clouds in the twinkling of an eye, meet the Lord [Jesus] in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
Friday, October 21, 2011 should really have been the last day
When the weekend of May 21 passed without rapture, Camping indicated two days later that it had only taken place in an invisible, spiritual form and that the actual rapture would take place on Friday, October 21, at the same time as God’s destruction of the earth ( as he had predicted). Many of his followers had sold their belongings and/or quit their jobs. Believers preparing for the May 21 rapture were not just Americans. Also in Vietnam, a group of people expected Jesus’ return on that day, and billboards with the end times announcement appeared in Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Lebanon and Israel, in addition to the United States. Because, according to Camping, everyone should now be aware of the end of the world, the billboard and other campaigns have stopped after the month of May. After his prediction on October 21, 2011 was also not fulfilled, Harold Camping refrained from commenting for a long time. It was not until March 10, 2012 that Camping made himself heard again through a statement in which he admitted that he was wrong. Harold Camping died on December 15, 2013 at the age of 92.