© 2024 WFIT
Public Radio for the Space Coast
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Doomsday Prophet Camping Says Predictions Were 'Incorrect And Sinful'

Harold Camping inside the <em>Family Radio</em> compound in Oakland, Calif.
Brandon Tauszik
Harold Camping inside the Family Radio compound in Oakland, Calif.

Famously, Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, blanketed the country last year with warnings on bilboards and pamphlets that the world would end on May 21.

When that date came and went and the world kept spinning and everyone was still here, he said the world would end Oct. 21.

Today, Camping issued an apology . NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Harold Camping is finally out of the prediction business. The founder of Family Radio had persuaded countless people last year to give up their jobs and families to warn people about Judgment Day that came and went without event. Now, he says in his letter, his predictions were 'incorrect and sinful.'

"'We humbly recognize that God may not tell his people the date when Christ will return,' Camping wrote. And he had no further updates, he said. There is 'no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world ... and so Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date.'"

Now, all that said, Camping does say that "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," Camping wrote.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.