Harold Camping, the Christian broadcaster says world will end Friday. Yes, that’s the same Mr. Camping who “predicted” doom on May 21. Having just recovered from a stroke back in June, 90-year-old Camping pronounced the world will end on Oct. 21 on Earth, as his previous prediction from May only affected those in Heaven.
“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period,” Camping said on his Web site, Family Radio. “On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21.”
Catherine Wessinger who is an expert on doomsday groups at Loyola University in New Orleans and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism, says to NPR, no matter what, doomsday movements will always be with us because they play into a primal fear.
“We don’t want to suffer and we don’t want to die,” Wessinger says.
And these movement give an escape.
Next up, says Wessinger: Dec. 21, 2012 — when the Maya calendar seems to indicate the world will end.
Again.