Is Doomsday Coming This May?

Could the end of the world be sooner than 2012? 90 year old doomsday preacher, Harold Camping, puts our expiration in 2011. Beginning May 21th to be exact.

One of Camping's followers has even began a website dedicated to his teachings at wecanknow.com

Kimberly Winston, Religion News Service

Camping is not an ordained pastor with a church, and has no formal religious training. He can't read or speak Greek, Hebrew or Jesus' native Aramaic. His main predictive tool rests by his side in his wood-paneled office that looks like it was borrowed from the set of AMC's Mad Men.

"I made a very deliberate decision to make the Bible my university," Camping said, reaching for his battered, brown King James Bible and flipping nimbly through pages with marked-up margins and taped-up tears.

"I bought a Bible with a good leather cover. This is the sixth one. When you use them all the time they wear out."

The same can't be said for Camping. Since the 1950s, he has broadcast his views via Family Radio, a global network of Christian stations where he now serves as unpaid president and primary on-air talent. His teachings air worldwide five nights a week via Open Forum, a call-in show that draws listeners as far away as China and Ghana.

"Thank you for calling Open Forum," Camping has said countless times in his trademark baritone, "and shall we take our next call, please?"

One of those callers is Chris McCann, an independent preacher who is part of a Philadelphia group of Camping followers that is spreading the word about May 21.

"God has put his stamp of approval that this is the day," McCann said in a telephone interview. "I don't doubt it, and I don't look at the possibility of May 22 happening."

Neither does Camping. Asked how he arrived at the date, he opened his Bible to Genesis and said Noah loaded animals into the ark in 4990 B.C., a number he said he arrived at years ago after looking at carbon dating, tree rings and other data. Paging forward to 2 Peter, he read aloud, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day."

Leafing back to Genesis, he said that the seven days Noah spent loading the ark was really 7,000 years. He then added 7,000 to 4990 B.C to arrive at 2010. He added one more year, he said, because there is no year one in the Bible.

As for the exact date of May 21, he pointed again to Genesis, which says the flood began on the "17th day of the second month." According to the Jewish calendar, which he believes God uses, that is May 21.

Full article at usatoday.com