The sins of Harold Camping

Yesterday morning, reader Jerry sent along a note with a link to a story about Harold Camping:

I'm waiting for the media to feature this story. Are you?

Now, the Harold Camping story about his failed predictions for the rapture were huge news last year. So big, in fact, that only six religion news stories were deemed bigger.

Now he says that his predictions were "incorrect and sinful." So I bet we'll see tons of follow-ups about this man's repentance, right?

Eh, I wouldn't count on it.

But I did want to highlight that the story was carried by Religion News Service:

(RNS) Radio evangelist Harold Camping has called his erroneous prediction that the world would end last May 21 an "incorrect and sinful statement" and said his ministry is out of the prediction business.

"We have learned the very painful lesson that all of creation is in God's hands and he will end time in his time, not ours!" reads the statement signed by Camping and his staff and posted on his ministry's website.

"We humbly recognize that God may not tell his people the date when Christ will return, any more than he tells anyone the date they will die physically."

The "March 2012" letter, which included multiple mea culpas, was released with a note from the board of California-based Family Radio.

It goes on with more detail about the repentant letter and how it was distributed. It even includes Scripture references and the basis on which Camping has rejected his previous teaching.

All in a very brief wire report.

There is this part that confuses me:

The letter makes no reference to Camping's explanation last year that he had miscalculated by five months and the world would instead end on Oct. 21, 2011.

But that's not what happened, was it? He always had that Oct. 21 date for the end of the world. The May date was for a judgment day or rapture of believers.

We discussed the mistakes on what the two dates represented last year.


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