{"id":923,"date":"2012-03-08T19:09:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T00:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=923"},"modified":"2012-03-08T19:09:26","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T00:09:26","slug":"sorry-the-world-didnt-end-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/sorry-the-world-didnt-end-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry the world didn’t end for you…."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"ChristianHoward Camping is one sorry person. Really. This week he apologized – again – for making an incorrect “doomsday” prediction last year that had hundreds, maybe thousands, of his co-religious wingnuts eagerly selling all their belongings in anticipation of the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI, October 21). <\/p>\n

Oops. World didn’t end, but then we knew<\/em> it wouldn’t, didn’t we? Just like it won’t end this December simply because the Mayans ran out of room on their stone calendar for another long cycle.<\/p>\n

I wrote about Camping and his wacky “Rapture<\/a>” predictions back in May, 2011<\/a>. Today I read about his apology for miscalculating the end of the world on the Huffington Post<\/a> and Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Camping actually made his first apology<\/a> in May, 2011, when the “Rapture” he predicted failed to happen. Then he made another apology<\/a> last October when the world didn’t end. Like I said earlier, he’s a sorry guy. <\/p>\n

Well, he said he was wrong, but not everyone<\/a> thought they were apologies. I agree: they read like excuses to me.<\/p>\n

Then Harold apologized (sort of) again, in November<\/a>, when he retired from “Family” Radio. He wrote: “It seems embarrassing for Family Radio. But God was in charge of everything. We came to that conclusion after quite careful study of the Bible. He allowed everything to happen the way it did without correction. He could have stopped everything if He had wanted to.” So it was God’s fault, not Harold’s that he got the date wrong.<\/p>\n

This week Camping posted a new letter of apology on his company’s website. That’s right: his company. Camping is the founder of “Family” Radio<\/a>, a fundamentalist Christian radio network. Never lose site of the fact like televangelists, Camping’s operation is about business first, and faith second. The network spent millions of dollars<\/a> in 2011 advertising the alleged “Rapture.” Big bucks: gotta come from somewhere.<\/p>\n

“Family” Radio isn’t my personal cup of tea: it offers an unrelenting program of Bible reading and study, with an emphasis on Camping’s own particular (and peculiar) slant on the text (its literal truth as he interprets it). Given his track record on end-of-the-world predictions (he made an earlier one for 1994), his interpretations strike me as pretty screwy and not conducive to anyone’s belief. Some of their stations alleviate the dreary droning with CCM (Contemporary Christian Music). Give me Bluesville any day of the week over CCM. Please.<\/p>\n

In his recent letter, posted on the “Family” Radio site, Camping wrote:<\/p>\n

The May 21 campaign was an astounding event if you think about its impact upon this world. There is no question that millions, if not billions of people heard for the first time the Bible\u2019s warning that Jesus Christ will return. Huge portions of this world that had never read or seen a Bible heard the message the Christ Jesus is coming to rapture His people and destroy this natural world. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, the millennium-bug campaign was equally “astounding” in the same sense that for all the brouhaha, nothing happened with either. Dates came, dates went, computers didn’t crash, Jesus didn’t return. Camping seems to think his failed prediction woke people up to his vision of Rapture and apocalypse. I doubt it: it was grist for many, many comedy routines and much smirking palaver, but aside from the general hilarity, I doubt it convinced anyone. In fact, it probably cost Camping a lot of followers. Especially those who woke up October 22, homeless, jobless, friendless, penniless, rapture-less and still very much on planet earth.<\/p>\n

At least he didn’t convince them to drink the Kool-Aid… although there were documented suicides and attempted suicides as a result of his predictions. Some people are that gullible.<\/p>\n

Camping’s letter may seem an abjectly humble apology to some<\/a>, but to me it sounds a trifle hollow; rather defensive or even a bit prideful:<\/p>\n

…we humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing; yet though we were wrong God is still using the May 21 warning in a very mighty way. In the months following May 21 the Bible has, in some ways, come out from under the shadows and is now being discussed by all kinds of people who never before paid any attention to the Bible. We learn about this, for example, by the recent National Geographic articles concerning the King James Bible and the Apostles. Reading about and even discussing about the Bible can never be a bad thing, even if the Bible\u2019s authenticity is questioned or ridiculed. The world\u2019s attention has been called to the Bible…. Yet this incorrect and sinful statement allowed God to get the attention of a great many people who otherwise would not have paid attention. Even as God used sinful Balaam to accomplish His purposes, so He used our sin to accomplish His purpose of making the whole world acquainted with the Bible. However, even so, that does not excuse us. We tremble before God as we humbly ask Him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement. We are so thankful that God is so loving that He will forgive even this sin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For all his mea-culpa commentary, Harold doesn’t apologize to all those people who gave up everything to become his camp(ing) followers and ended up with nothing but the ringing laughter of their former friends and co-workers to live on. I suppose we’ll still have to wait for him to apologize fully. Probably until the “Rapture” finally does arrive… or at least until the UFOs land (pick your fantasy scenario)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Howard Camping is one sorry person. Really. This week he apologized – again – for making an incorrect “doomsday” prediction last year that had hundreds, maybe thousands, of his co-religious wingnuts eagerly selling all their belongings in anticipation of the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI, October 21). Oops. World didn’t end, but then we knew it wouldn’t, didn’t we? Just like it won’t end this December simply because the Mayans ran out of room on their stone calendar for another long cycle. I wrote about Camping and his wacky “Rapture” predictions back in May, 2011. Today \u2026…… click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,13],"tags":[89,87,86,88],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-spirituality","category-faith","tag-apocalypse","tag-camping","tag-rapture","tag-teotwawki"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":5808,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":948,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}