Harold Egbert Camping (born July 19, 1921) is a liar who says the world’s going to end to make more money but is [sic] is a piece of crap.
Now, as of almost 3 p.m., it has been partially restored, but still refers to Camping as a "false prophet."
That much is certainly true.
But even if he actually did believe his own prediction (who knows -- but I doubt it), he couldn't have been clueless about the fact that he was running a profitable business based on a cockamamie work of fiction.
He raked in tons of dough from Family Radio followers between 2005-2009. Sure, you could argue that it's his followers own fault for falling for Camping's BS. I definitely agree with that to some extent. Some of his followers blew their money on luxury cars and vacations. Kinda dumb!
Granted, the government kind of has bigger fish to fry, but instead of re-writing Camping's Wikipedia page to reflect what a scam artist he appears to be, I say someone who feels deceived by the Christian radio broadcaster-turned-false prophet should take the fearmonger to court!
One of Family Radio's vans, parked outside the station's Oakland, California, headquarters. Photo: Casey Miner
Scenes from Family Radio Headquarters during the Earth's final days.
By Casey Miner Fri May. 20, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
Two weeks and two days before the end of the world, Tom Evans does not lack for work. In the past few weeks he has fielded roughly 400 interview requests from news outlets around the globe, a number that continues to rise as Judgment Day draws near. Jesus, he says, commands his followers to "occupy until I come." Evans is occupied. He moves continuously around the Family Radio [ ] station headquarters in Oakland, California, cellphone ringing every few minutes. He must determine how many interviews he can schedule before May 16th, the last day on which Family Radio founder Harold Camping plans to speak publicly about the impending Rapture. He must remember to change the lightbulb in the office hallway. He must locate supplies for his daughter Chloe's third birthday party. "It's a horse party," he says, picking up a folding table from outside the station's TV taping studio. "She loves horses."
Broadcasting online as well as over local airwaves, Family Radio reaches at least 150 countries in 82 languages. For the past year the 89-year-old Camping, a Berkeley-trained civil-engineer-turned-Christian-broadcaster, has used this platform to announce that the biblically preordained date of the Rapture is Saturday, May 21, 2011. The nonprofit station has paid millions of dollars for more than 5,000 billboards around the world affirming this fact: They tower over housing projects, flash on bright LCD screens over freeways, solemnly accompany riders of public transit. Every night people call Camping on his radio program, Open Forum, with questions about the end of days, and every night he assures them the end is nigh. He does not entertain queries about May 22. By extension, Evans refuses interview requests from anyone who wishes to follow up after the 21st. "What is the point of interviews at that point, except if you presume time will continue and things remain unchanged," he wrote in his initial email to me. "To presume it will not happen is a very grave presumption indeed."
The station is located on Hegenberger Road, a commercial strip out by the Oakland airport, next to a sushi restaurant and behind a restaurant called The Hegen Burger. It's extensive, though not ostentatious; if not for the satellite dishes on the roof, you could easily miss it. The nonprofit had $72 million in assets in 2009 (the most recent year for which financial records are available), and holds several lucrative FCC licenses. A sizable chunk of its funding comes from donations. All this, says Evans, shows that God has favored them.
The station has about 350 total employees, though only a fraction of that number are on site at any given time. The ones who are seem eager to get their message out through all available media; the station is filled with people wearing some combination of Judgment Day T-shirts, Judgment Day baseball caps, and Judgment Day windbreakers. A calendar of paid staff holidays posted in the lobby has a thick black line drawn between Easter and Memorial Day.
Though Camping has not wavered in the certainty of his message, neither have staff made plans to cease broadcasting. Evans says this simply reflects a desire to be good citizens. "We'll just let God stop it whenever He's going to," he says. "We suspect it will be around 6 p.m. our time."
"It" will be a major earthquake that works its way from west to east around the world. As the souls of the saved disappear, those not so lucky will be left to suffer and spend the summer slowly dying off. The Earth itself will cease to be on October 21. Asked to describe what this moment means for believers, Evans offers a sports analogy: "Remember Coach Walsh, from the 49ers? They won the Super Bowl—that's the pinnacle of the sports world. Walsh was respected, had wonderful friends, a wonderful family, he was an articulate person, a gifted coach. Most people would envy his life. But he died." He pauses to make sure this sinks in. "I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but if not, well...all those great things are just gone."
Evans, 55, hails from Southern California and is the third of nine children. His siblings, he says, run the gamut of political belief; his mother has been known to keep Mother Jones in the house. He began listening to Family Radio while working nights as a student at UC-Berkeley, studying Puritan theology. "I'd been reading the Bible for several years, but Mr. Camping was speaking my language," he says. He grew to admire Camping's "unique perspective" and accepted a job as a station producer when he finished school. Finding that sitting in a control room all day didn't suit him, he soon took over as facilities manager (hence his attention to the lightbulbs).
Camping predicted the end of days once before, in 1994. The appointed date was September 6. Evans still remembers it. "I remember sitting with a friend, and we waited," he says. "It didn't happen, obviously." Camping attributes the error to an incomplete reading of the Bible, an explanation that seems to satisfy his followers. For his part, Evans says he was not disappointed when Jesus did not come. And anyway, "2011 is distinctly different. There's no Plan B."
Over the years, Evans has filled many roles, but he has been a media representative for only six months. He acknowledges that this is a particularly trying six months during which to be media representative. On May 17 he arrives at the station in a navy blue zip-up sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, carrying three-year-old Chloe and her hot-pink Barbie backpack on his shoulder. The horse party, he tells me, was a smashing success. He heads up to his office, a tiny room filled with file cabinets at the top of a set of dark, narrow wooden stairs. A framed map of Disneyland hangs over the desk. His phone rings again as he opens his laptop and turns on a DVD for Chloe, in which talking animals teach her how to spell.
With just four days until the end, Evans has moved from attempting to accommodate reporters to actively dissuading them. "When do you plan on airing this?" he demands of the woman from Fox on the other end of the line. Her cameraman is waiting in the lobby; Evans is annoyed that she did not confirm the appointment. "Look, today and for the remainder of the week we're just going to basically prepare for Saturday. We've told the world, we've told everything about why we're saying this. He's done countless interviews. The information is accessible. It's not like it's a mystery."
He pauses and paces his office, glancing periodically at Chloe, who is completely absorbed by the spelling movie. Evans and his wife have told their children about Judgment Day—they also have a seven-month-old son—but they leave out what Evans calls "the scary stuff." (When asked what she believes will happen on May 21, Chloe looks up from the screen and answers, "Jesus!")
Having settled matters with the woman from Fox, Evans calls Camping and reviews the morning's media requests, pausing to stroke Chloe's hair. There is a knock on his office door. "I'll handle them. I'll handle them. I'll take care of that. You don't have to worry about that. Alright? Alright, goodbye, Mr. Camping." He gets off the phone and answers the door. A receptionist conveys another media request. He tells her to ignore it. "Yeah, I know, everybody wants to chat with somebody right now."
"I'm looking forward to tomorrow," he says, closing the door and falling into a chair near the window. Evans and his family will be spending the remainder of the week out of town, with friends. "We'll just go to their home, and just pop popcorn, sit around, pray, I don't know, go to the zoo or something."
The phone rings again. He studies Chloe.
"I'm very honored that God would use me in this way that is very humbling to me," he says, letting the phone go to voicemail. "But I don't know if I could do this as a full-time career."
Abby Haddad Carson and Robert Carson say Saturday is Judgment Day; the children, Joseph, Faith and Grace, right, do not. Monica Lopossay for The New York Times
In Times Square, people spread the word about the rapture, publicized by a Christian radio network as coming on Saturday. Earl Wilson for The New York Times
Gary Daniels drove to Brooklyn from Delaware to say goodbye to his family. "I know I'm not going to see them again," he said. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
By ASHLEY PARKER Published: May 19, 2011
The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.
The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to “sound the trumpet” on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.
Last weekend, the family traveled to New York, the parents dragging their reluctant children through a Manhattan street fair in a final effort to spread the word.
“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”
Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.
With their doomsday T-shirts, placards and leaflets, followers — often clutching Bibles — are typically viewed as harmless proselytizers from outside mainstream religion. But their convictions have frequently created the most tension within their own families, particularly with relatives whose main concern about the weekend is whether it will rain.
Kino Douglas, 31, a self-described agnostic, said it was hard to be with his sister Stacey, 33, who “doesn’t want to talk about anything else.”
“I’ll say, ‘Oh, what are we going to do this summer?’ She’s going to say, ‘The world is going to end on May 21, so I don’t know why you’re planning for summer,’ and then everyone goes, ‘Oh, boy,’ ” he said.
The Douglas siblings live near each other in Brooklyn, and Mr. Douglas said he could not wait until Sunday — “I’m going to show up at her house so we can have that conversation that’s been years in coming.”
Ms. Douglas, who has a 7-year-old, said that while her family did not see the future the way she did, her mother did allow her to put a Judgment Day sign up on her house. “I never thought I’d be doing this,” said Ms. Douglas, who took vacation from her nanny job this week but did not quit. “I was in an abusive relationship. One day, my son was playing with the remote and Mr. Camping was on TV. I thought, This guy is crazy. But I kept thinking about it and something told me to go back.”
Ms. Douglas and other believers subscribe to the prophecy of Harold Camping, a civil engineer turned self-taught biblical scholar whose doomsday scenario — broadcast on his Family Radio network — predicts a May 21, 2011, Judgment Day. On that day, arrived at through a series of Bible-based calculations that assume the world will end exactly 7,000 years after Noah’s flood, believers are to be transported up to heaven as a worldwide earthquake strikes. Nonbelievers will endure five months of plagues, quakes, wars, famine and general torment before the planet’s total destruction in October. In 1992 Mr. Camping said the rapture would probably be in 1994, but he now says newer evidence makes the prophecy for this year certain.
Kevin Brown, a Family Radio representative, said conflict with other family members was part of the test of whether a person truly believed. “They’re going through the fiery trial each day,” he said.
Gary Daniels, 27, said he planned to spend Saturday like other believers, “glued to our TV sets, waiting for the Resurrection and earthquake from nation to nation.” But he acknowledged that his family was not entirely behind him.
“At first there was a bit of anger and tension, not really listening to one another and just shouting out ideas,” Mr. Daniels said.
But his family has come around to respect — if not endorse — his views, and he drove from his home in Newark, Del., on Monday night in a van covered in Judgment Day messages to say goodbye to relatives in Brooklyn. “I know I’m not going to see them again, but they are very certain they are going to see me, and that’s where I feel so sad,” he said. “I weep to know that they don’t have any idea that this overwhelming thing is coming right at them, pummeling toward them like a meteor.”
Courtney Campbell [ http://oregonstate.edu/cla/philosophy/campbell ], a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University, said “end times” movements were often tied to significant date changes, like Jan. 1, 2000, or times of acute social crises.
“Ultimately we’re looking for some authoritative answers in an era of great social, political, economic, as well as natural, upheaval,” Professor Campbell said. “Right now there are lots of natural disasters occurring that will get people worried, whether it’s tornadoes in the South or earthquakes and tsunamis. The United States is now involved in three wars. We’re still in a period of economic uncertainty.”
While Ms. Haddad Carson has quit her job, her husband still works as an engineer for the federal Energy Department. But the children worry that there may not be enough money for college. They also have typical teenage angst — embarrassing parents — only amplified.
“People look at my family and think I’m like that,” said Joseph, their 14-year-old, as his parents walked through the street fair on Ninth Avenue, giving out Bibles. “I keep my friends as far away from them as possible.”
“I don’t really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore,” he said, “because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.”
His mother said she accepted that believers “lose friends and you lose family members in the process.”
“I have mixed feelings,” Ms. Haddad Carson said. “I’m very excited about the Lord’s return, but I’m fearful that my children might get left behind. But you have to accept God’s will.”
The children, however, have found something to giggle over. “She’ll say, ‘You need to clean up your room,’ ” Grace said. “And I’ll say, ‘Mom, it doesn’t matter, if the world’s going to end!’ ”
She and her twin, Faith, have a friend’s birthday party Saturday night, around the time their parents believe the rapture will occur.
“So if the world doesn’t end, I’d really like to attend,” Grace said before adding, “Though I don’t know how emotionally able my family will be at that time.”
"I'm glad John Lennon is dead": Mel Gibson facing fresh outrage over rant claims
Mel Gibson, ugly Australian, religious-right celebrity .. allegedly Joe says .. Gibson says no way, not me ..
The Beatles icon was not the only target of Gibson’s attacks, according to claims by top screenwriter Joe Eszterhas
REX .. Eszterhas and Gibson War of words: Eszterhas and Gibson
Controversial Hollywood star Mel Gibson faced fresh outrage yesterday over claims he said John Lennon deserved to die.
The astonishing allegation was made by top screenwriter Joe Eszterhas in a leaked nine-page letter to the Braveheart actor.
Eszterhas, best known for the Sharon Stone hit Basic Instinct, wrote the script for Gibson’s planned film about biblical Jewish hero Judah Maccabee.
But after his screenplay was rejected by Warner Brothers studio this week, he launched a string of attacks on Gibson, who he says sabotaged the project.
He alleges Gibson once ranted about the murdered ex-Beatle: “I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to be shot.”
Gibson, 56, allegedly added: “He was f*****g messianic. Listen to the songs! Imagine. I hate that f*****g song,” ..
[...]
fter details of Eszterhas’ letter were revealed, Gibson hit back by saying the claims against him were “utter fabrications,” adding: “I will acknowledge like most creative people I am passionate and intense”.
And he said he was “extremely disappointed” with Eszterhas’s script, which he described as “a waste of time”.
Gibson added: “Contrary to your assertion that I was only developing Maccabees to burnish my tarnished reputation, I have been working on this project for over 10 years and it was publicly announced eight years ago.
"I absolutely want to make this movie; it’s just that neither Warner Brothers nor I want to make it based on your script.”
Mel Gibson - Mel Gibson Completes Anger Management Course 02 March 2012 05:02:34 AM
Mel Gibson Completes Anger Management Course
Mel Gibson has completed the anger management course he was ordered to attend as part of his sentence for pleading no-contest to a misdemeanour battery charge against ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.
Mel Gibson has completed his court-ordered anger management course. [.. ok ok 4/4 .. we get the message..]
The 'Mad Max' star was sentenced in March 2011 to three years' probation - including a 12-month domestic violence counselling programme - over an alleged attack on ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.
According to TMZ.com, the 56-year-old Oscar winner's lawyer told Los Angeles judge Stephanie Sautner yesterday (02.03.12) that in addition to completing the required course hours, Mel has also undergone extra therapy sessions.
Although the actor was not present, the report claims the father-of-eight - who also had to carry out 16 hours of community service after pleading no-contest to the misdemeanour battery charge - will be officially released from probation if he stays out of trouble for the next two years.
The case began when Oksana alleged he hit her with a closed fist and broke a veneer on her tooth during a row in January 2010. Mel admitted to slapping her but said he did it because she was ''shaking and tossing'' their then-baby daughter Lucia around whilst arguing. He maintains that he did not punch her.
The 'Braveheart' director was previously married to Robyn Moore for 26-years before they separated in 2006.
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