Harold Egbert Camping (July 19, 1921December 15, 2013) was an American Christian radio broadcaster and evangelist. Beginning in 1958, he served as president of Family Radio, a California-based radio station group that, at its peak, broadcast to more than 150 markets in the United States. In October 2011, he retired from active broadcasting following a stroke, but still maintained a role at Family Radio until his death. Camping was notorious for issuing a succession of failed predictions of dates for the End Times, which temporarily gained him a global following and millions of dollars of donations."Biblical scholar's date for rapture: May 21, 2011" . San Francisco Gate. January 1, 2010. Retrieved June 29, 2013.
Camping first predicted that the Judgment Day would occur on or about September 6, 1994."Harold Camping Says End did come May 21, spiritually; Predicts New Date: October 21". International Business Times. Retrieved May 23, 2011.. July 30, 2009. Retrieved December 16, 2012. When it failed to occur, he revised the date to September 29 and then to October 2. In 2005, Camping predicted the Second Coming of Christ to May 21, 2011, whereupon the saved would be taken up to heaven in the rapture, and that "there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on Earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the final destruction of the world."
His prediction for May 21, 2011 was widely reported, in part because of a large-scale publicity campaign by Family Radio, and it prompted ridicule from atheist organizations and rebuttals from Christian organizations. After May 21 passed without the predicted events, Camping said he believed that a "spiritual" judgment had occurred on that date, and that the physical Rapture would occur on October 21, 2011, simultaneously with the final destruction of the universe by God."Radio host says Rapture actually coming in October" . Globe and Mail. May 23, 2011. Retrieved May 23, 2011. Except for one press appearance on May 23, 2011, Camping largely avoided press interviews after May 21, particularly after he suffered a stroke in June 2011. After October 21, 2011, passed without the predicted apocalypse, the mainstream media labeled Camping a false prophet and commented that his ministry would collapse after the "failed 'Doomsday' prediction"."Harold Camping False Prophet: Ministry Probably Doomed". International Business Times. October 21, 2011.
Camping was reported to have retired from his position at Family Radio on October 16, 2011,"Harold Camping Exclusive: Family Radio Founder Retires" . Christian Post. October 24, 2011. Retrieved October 25, 2011. only days before his final prediction for the end of the world. However, his daughter later clarified that he had not retired outright, but was maintaining a role at Family Radio while remote working. Camping admitted in a private interview that he no longer believed that anybody could know the time of the Rapture or the end of the world, in stark contrast to his previously staunch position on the subject. In March 2012, he stated that his attempt to predict a date was "sinful", and that his critics had been right in emphasizing the words of Matthew 24:36: "of that day and hour knoweth no man". He added that he was now searching the Bible "even more fervently...not to find dates, but to be more faithful in [his] understanding.""Letter from Harold Camping to the 'Family Radio Family'" . Charisma News. March 7, 2012. After the failure of Camping's prophecies, Family Radio suffered a significant loss of assets, staff and revenue.
Biography Harold Egbert Camping was born on July 19, 1921, in Boulder, Colorado, and moved at an early age to California. Both his parents were Dutch immigrants to the United States, his mother from Friesland, his father from Groningen. They first met each other in the United States. In 1942, Camping earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1943, he married his wife, Shirley. During World War II he worked as an engineer for a government contractor. Shortly after the end of the war, he started a construction business.Doomsday minister Harold Camping dead at 92 He and his family were members of the Christian Reformed Church until 1988.
Family Radio
In 1958, Camping joined with other individuals of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and conservative Presbyterian backgrounds to purchase an FM radio station in San Francisco, California. The radio station – KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz – was used to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to the conservative Protestant community and minister to the general public. Through the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In 1961, Family Radio began running the Open Forum, a live, weeknight call-in program that Camping hosted until 2011. Listeners were invited to call in, primarily with questions about the meaning of certain passages from the Bible, and Camping answered them by means of interpretations, often with reference to other Biblical passages. Occasionally, questions were posed relating to general Christian doctrine, ranging from the nature of sin and salvation to matters involving everyday life, such as marriage, sexual morality and education. The Open Forum continued running until Camping's partial retirement in July 2011, and was broadcast on the more than 150 stations owned by Family Radio in the United States. The Open Forum was also translated into many foreign languages and (together with other Family Radio programming) was broadcast worldwide via shortwave station WYFR, a network of AM and FM radio stations, a cable television station and the Internet. In October 2012, over a year after the failure of Camping's prophecies, Family Radio began airing repeats of his broadcasts.
Family Radio runs various programs on its radio stations. Before Camping started teaching that the "Church Age" had ended, programs produced outside of Family Radio were welcome provided they did not accept any "extra-Biblical revelation", and were associated with teachings accepted by the historic Christian faith. Family Radio also used at least three television stations: WFME-TV in the New York City area; KFTL-CD in San Francisco, California; and KHFR-LD in Boise, Idaho. Following the digital transition of 2009, Family Radio used its subchannels of WFME and KFTL for various purposes – in WFME's case, the digital signal of that station broadcasts ten separate subchannels, the first being the main channel, and the others carrying audio feeds of other Family Radio services, as well as one broadcasting NOAA Weather Radio.
Family Radio spent over US$100 million on the information campaign for Camping's 2011 end times prediction, financed by sales and swaps of broadcast outlets.
The Biblical Calendar of History In 1970, Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History (later greatly expanded in his 1974 book Adam When?), in which he dated the Creation of the world to the year 11,013 BC and the Flood to 4990 BC. This was in contradiction to Bishop James Ussher's famous 17th-century chronology, which placed the Creation at 4004 BC and the Flood at 2349 BC.Stephen Jay Gould. Fall in the House of Ussher . Natural History. November 1991. Retrieved January 29, 2013. Camping argued that Ussher's dates "agree neither with the Biblical nor the secular evidence", asserting that Ussher's methodology was flawed.
Camping surmised that the word begat in the Old Testament scriptures did not necessarily imply an immediate father-son relationship, as had been assumed by Ussher and others who (Camping felt) had not correctly interpreted the biblical timeline. Camping noted the use of the phrase "called his name" ("" in Hebrew, found three times in Genesis 4–5), which he characterized as a "clue phrase" to indicate an immediate father-son relationship. Despite the fact that this "clue phrase" does not occur regarding Noah naming Shem, Camping maintained that there is enough evidence to otherwise conclude that they did, in fact, have an immediate father-son relationship. He also points out the use of qara shem in Isaiah 7:14, which he interpreted as meaning, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Camping assumed that, since qara shem implies an immediate father-son relationship (e.g., Adam–Seth, Seth–Enos, and Lamech–Noah), all other relationships between the Antediluvian patriarchs (except Noah–Shem) are of ancestors and their distant descendants. That is, when one patriarch died, the next one who is mentioned was not his son but was actually a distant multi-generational grandson who was born in that same year. Camping thus formulated the concept of the "reference patriarch," i.e., various events are referenced to a specific year of a particular patriarch's life as a means of keeping an accurate chronological record. Although there is no evidence that any ancient civilization kept track of time in this way, Camping used this concept as the basis for his view of Biblical chronology.
Teachings Camping taught that a Biblical calendar had been hidden according to Daniel 12:9 and Revelation 22:10, detailing the imminent end of the world (with alleged Biblical evidence pointing to the date for the Rapture as May 21, 2011); of the "end of the church age" (which asserts that churches are no longer the vehicle used by God for salvation, 1 Peter 4:17); and of predestination (Ephesians 1:4–5), according to which God determined before the beginning of the world which individuals are to be saved. In Camping's later publications, he stated that May 21, 2011 would be "the first day of the Day of Judgment" and October 21, 2011, would be the end of the world.
Camping did not consider Family Radio a church and did not claim ordained or hierarchical authority within a church or institution. Camping claimed that the church institutions do not employ the Bible alone as the sole authority. According to Camping, each church or denomination has its own unique set of doctrines and hermeneutics, which dictate how they understand the Bible. Family Radio's sole focus on the Bible is what he believed distinguishes it from mainstream churches. In his book 1994?, he claimed there was a very high likelihood that the world would end in September 1994, although he did acknowledge in the book "the possibility does exist that I could be wrong";Harold Camping (1992). 1994?. New York: Vantage Press. p. xv. Family Radio remained popular despite this failed prediction. Both before and after the failure of his 2011 prophecies, Camping received criticism from a number of leaders, scholars, and laymen within the Christian community, who argued that Jesus Christ taught that no man knows the day or the hour of the Lord's return. Camping responded to those who labelled him a "date-setter", following his own method of Biblical interpretation, by asserting that he followed the Bible's method of interpretation.