EXCLUSIVE: Harold Camping Will Speak Out About Failed End of the World Prediction
UPDATE: Harold Camping Predicts New Rapture Date: October 21
Family Radio’s international projects manager Matt Tuter told The Christian Post on Monday that he wants to get Harold Camping to respond on TV and radio about his failed Judgment Day prediction today.
Tuter said Camping was expected to come to the Oakland, Calif.-based office Monday morning to work, but has yet to arrive. The international projects manager, who has worked with Camping for 23 years, said he has not been able to confirm with Camping that he will come to the office to comment on the situation at the set time of 5:30 p.m. PST.
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Camping made a “mess” of the situation, Tuter told an on-site CP correspondent inside the Family Radio office Monday morning.
“People have to be at their (Family Radio Board of Directors') door continually,” he said, referring to the need for people to demand the Board of Directors put pressure on Camping to take responsibility.
Tuter was not only visibly upset with Camping, but also with the Board of Directors. He said they have not done anything since Thursday to stop or control the financial damage done to people who believed Camping's prediction. He also informed CP that the group’s spokesperson is in Ohio when he should have been back by Monday to deal with the “mess.”
“Everything is ready, the crew is ready,” Tuter said regarding Family Radio’s preparation for Camping to publicly respond.
Tuter shared he does not agree with Camping’s prediction about Judgment Day.
Camping had predicted that Judgment Day would come on May 21, 2011, based on elaborate calculations using numbers found in the Bible. Based on his calculations, he concluded that the rapture would take place 722,500 days after Jesus was crucified on Golgotha.
The co-founder of the Christian radio network with 66 stations across the country also predicted that on May 21 there would be earthquakes around the world and that approximately three percent of the world’s population would be raptured while the rest of the world would endure the tribulation until Oct. 21, when the whole world would be destroyed.
The network’s broadcasts are available in 61 languages online.
Listener Adrienne Martinez, 27, and her husband, Joel, had quit their jobs in New York City and moved to Orlando about a year ago after hearing and believing Camping’s May 21 prediction, according to NPR. Martinez had planned to attend medical school but decided not to because she believed that the world would soon end. The couple, who has a two-year-old daughter and a second child due next month, said they spent the past year distributing tracts and reading the Bible.
“We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won’t have anything left,” Adrienne told NPR.
Tuter thinks it is unlikely that the ministry will reimburse donors and those who participated in the nationwide Judgment Day ad campaign.
The Christian Post and other news media found that many within Camping’s organization did not believe his Judgment Days prediction. A Family Radio receptionist identified as Esther told CNNMoney shortly before May 21 that she estimates that 80 percent of her co-workers do not believe Camping’s prediction.
Camping has kept a low profile since May 21, only resurfacing Sunday afternoon at his Alameda, Calif., home. He told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was “flabbergasted” about why Judgment Day and the rapture did not take place on Saturday as he predicted.
“I’m looking for answers,” he said.
The radio broadcaster, who had previously wrongly predicted that Judgment Day would come in September 1994, told the Chronicle that he will return to work on Monday and would have more to say.
Hudson Tsuei contributed to this report from Oakland, Calif.
