So, obviously the world didn't end on May 21, 2011 - but don't you worry. Harold Camping, the Family Radio preacher who was behind the (most recent) doomsday movement said that Armageddon is still coming.
The new date? October 21. So mark that on your calendar for the next End of the World Party (I'll bring chips):
Harold Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before catastrophe struck the planet, apologized Monday evening for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have."
He spoke to the media at the Oakland headquarters of his Family Radio International, which spent millions of dollars_ some of it from donations made by followers — on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.
It was not the first time Camping was forced to explain when his prediction didn't come to pass. The 89-year-old retired civil engineer also prophesied the Apocalypse would come in 1994, but said later that didn't happen then because of a mathematical error.Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.
The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.
Link | And if that doesn't work out, there's always 2012!
On another note, the failed doomsday prediction is fun and games for most of us, but has deadly consequences to a few others.
Just because I have a really morbid sense of humor - does anyone know if there have been any follow-up interviews with all those people that were spending there life savings because they believed they were going to be "raptured"?
That quote, when mathematically decoded, actually gives the hour and the day.