OAKLAND, CA (Hollywood Today) 5/23/11 — Blaming everyone but himself, Christian radio evangelist Harold Camping said humans are not capable of understating the Bible, and for the second doomsday prediction he got wrong, he answered “we don’t always hit the nail the first time,” contested figures that said he spent $100 million in church money promoting doomsday and said his believers made their own choice on quitting jobs and spending life savings.
Some of our HT readers said what he did was a form of terrorism (see related story).
“If we found that we make a mistake, immediately we will correct that, of course,” says Camping, but he says he was not incorrect his in math, just his interpretation about how May 21 would play out. He calls the day “an invisible Judgment.”
More importantly, Camping’s second end of the world prediction may have raised the income at his radio empire, but it changed thousands of people’s lives who believed him.
“It is true that a few people have” quit jobs or depleted life savings to donate to Family Radio or spread his Judgment Day message, Camping says, but he says he never told people to do that.
“There are people who for example that have given up their jobs…to work for Family Radio, given their time, and they do because they love the Lord.”
He further contends they should count themselves lucky and just deal with it. He says the country experienced a recession. “Lots of people lost their homes” and jobs. But he says “they survived. People cope. People cope,” says Camping.
He says job, housing and investment losses during the recent economic decline are far worse than what “the average Family Radio listener” has experienced.
Sounds like an insult to us. We hope he doesn’t go out in the ‘hood in Oakland, they won’t be as forgiving as some of his followers.
When a reporter asked if Camping would give up his worldly goods on his revised End of the World date, Oct. 21, the minister seemed to say life would go on as usual, at least for him. “I still have to live in my house…I still have to pay my bills.”
He confirms that date by quoting a listener, which is like Hollywood Today using a Twitter message for a major story. Not going to happen.
Camping quoted a listener who had written him a letter at an unspecified time. The listener wrote he believes that “the great earthquake and the universe melting in fervent heat will all happen on the last day, Oct. 21, 2011.”
In a perfect example of denial that would make our staff rehab doctor tingle, he said none of this would affect the credibility of his following or religion.
Absolutely not, says Camping.
“God says again and again he resists the crowd and gives grace to the humble,” says Camping, who adds “I am nothing, I am nothing.”
He tells the audience to “walk humbly before God” and “give all the credit to God.”
A reporter asks him “then why keep predicting the end?”
Camping stops the questions and says he has run out of time.
He thanks the crowd for not asking anything “embarrassing.”
Even his senior staffer said “He made a mess of things.”
In this first address on his Open Forum radio show since May 21 passed without any of his predictions about worldwide quakes and the Rapture coming true, radio evangelist Harold Camping said he was “truly wondering what was going on” when Saturday came and went without any extraordinary events.
“I went through all the promises God had made…everything was fitting perfectly,” he said, remarking that he thought “what in the world happened?”
What in the still-present world indeed?