Has any talked about this man being 89 years old and wanting to seethe rapture in his lifetime, like so many other s who believe like him. If he is wrong it will be too late to recalculate so he needs to raise money and leave it behinds his church and fund raising will be better endowed. I think he is successful in what he is championing right now.

I do question one element of your reportage and discussion. It's the use of the term "mathematics." Sorry, this is all numerology. A bunch of people pointing at some madeup systemisation of nonsense and muttering to themselves isn't mathematics. Postulates and theorems had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Oh, okay, so they're "counting" on the world to end. Yeah, right.

WRONG AUDIO posted here!
(Sorry for the all caps, just wanted to get the webmaster's attention. I'd really like to listen to the Judgement Day segment.)

It is immaterial whether the Julian or the Gregorian calendar was in use at the time Jesus was alleged to have lived. He would have used a lunar calendar, as Jews use today.

*dboy* what a name ---not by my understanding.

He's a fraud.Anyone who lacks humility in spiritual matters is.I heard him say he could not entertain the possibility that he might be wrong when asked if he would appear on a radio show the day after tomorrow if judgement day does not happen.Even Thomas the apostle had doubts.Jesus himself on the cross expressed doubt when he felt forsaken.A sure sign that he's a fraud is his lack of any doubt.That he would go through these lengths and expense only shows how determined he is to manipulate people.He is about power, the power to get thousands of people to think about what he tells them to think about.People like him give legitimacy to countries that are not so tolerant of freedom of religion because they see the dangers therein.

But what about the fact that the anglo saxon term bulls#!t did not exist in the time of Noah?

Gunna be a bunch of hungry zombies out there, tomorrow!

@The Truth from Becky

"False prophet"? Is that kind of redundant??

Any film buff can tell you that the end of the world can't come about until Peter Bogdanovich and his team finally finish Orson Welles' "The Other Side of The Wind."

Does Camping even know when the west first learnt about the decimal system? When did the 0.5 get encoded in the bible? Or does camping acknowledge that the bible was written way east and sent to the middle east to sow conflict?

Either way, what a hoot!

@hjs11211

Beyond CRAZY!!!

Every last one!

P.S.: The world has *already* been destroyed, by the way. Back about 50 million years after the third planet from the Sun was created, it was struck by a Mars-sized object which created the Moon and gave us the world we call Earth. That other Earth would have been much different from the one today. (You don't find that in the Bible...)

@ esme:
No: the Mayan calendar is based on the "rolling over" of a digit of its base-20 calendar - akin to going from year "999" to "1000".

Brian, zombies and the rapture are two different subjects. The former has to do with braaaaains. The latter, not so much.

Blasphemy - beware of false prophets

does this relate to the Mayan calendar prediction where the world ends on the 21st of december 2012 (?)

I heard Mr Camping on the radio chiding a caller that 'even the son doesn't know when the last day will be," so the caller should live every day as if it's the last. (That was @ 10 yrs ago- after he predicted the end date in 1994.)
But now Camping has come up with another definite date? Hypocritical, no?

The dead cannot "rise out of their graves" as only the dead body is left behind - the soul resides in the astral plane, awaiting reincarnation (unless already reincarnated)!

Good grief, Brian.
Really!

Follow-up on the calendrical question:

(1) The Gregorian calendar "began" in the 1750 (adoption dates vary); the Julian calendar was in use in year "zero".

(2) The "calculation" probably doesn't take into account the "lost" week in September 1752.

(3) Jesus was Jewish, so it's more likely that reckoning would have to be calculated against the lunisolar calendar - which begins its days at *sundown*, not midnight.

Did he account for the 11 lost days when England switched to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian in the 1750's ?

Blasphemy

Why are you wasting time on this sort of nonsense? There are more important things out there.

How arrogant do you have to be to believe that the Earth's demise is based on your personal interpretation of one of many religions in this world?

I boarded a Hong Kong bound plane a few weeks ago and about 8 people on board were sporting those tee shirts. Most of the other passengers looked bemused but one guy standing next to me during boarding said to me, "I hope they don't feel that they have nothing to lose." 16 hours is a long flight anyway but that one was particularly long. :-)

To all the believers: Can I have your house?

did anyone read -- Maia Szalavitz Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Apocalypse Now: Why Believers Will Grow Stronger If the World Doesn't End

Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, which predicts that the more we have given and invested in a particular point of view, the less likely we will be to abandon it in the face of contrary evidence. It's the same cognitive process that kicks in when we are made to behave in ways that are inconsistent with our beliefs; in the face of that disharmony, we often change our beliefs to be congruent with our behaviors and self-perception. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable and leads people to seek resolution.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/17/apocalypse-now-why-believers-will-grow-stronger-when-the-world-doesnt-end/

Does misspelling "Judgment" count as a sign of the end of the world, or was the headline outsourced from the UK?

By the way, there is no mention anywhere of a "rapture" in the Bible. I recommend Barbara R. Rossing's "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation" (Basic Books 2005), which tells the full story of how this nonsense came to be.

by the way ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE CRAZY

it can't really be the end of the world. that would be a big story and brian's not on vacation.

Urrrgh! The pain! the pain! Please, please stop calling this numerological nonsense “math”!

Persona non grata in Heaven! It's could happen to YOU! To avert celestial confusion and to insure YOU your proper place in eternity! Act now, your thinking who the Hell do you think you are and what is it your selling? Absolutely Nothing! YOU worked very hard your whole earthly existence! "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Act Now, If your a pie in the sky when YOU die kinda guy or gal like I am. You'll want your piece of the Heavenly pie chart. All YOU have to do is sign all your worldly goods over to me. I'll hold on to them until YOU hopefully do not return! When asked I'll swear that You are one of the most giving persons I've ever met! ACT NOW, Don't be Left Behind with all that filthy lucre! Give it to me with peace of mind and have a great trip!

How many times should the world have ended by now according to all existing theories that have popped up in history?

Considering that this isn't the first time the "creator" predicted a last day, and considering that every predicted doomsday has been proven false, perhaps we should have a discussion about the rising epidemic of apocalypitiphillia (to balance the "epidemic of panic" from a few days ago).

Does This prognosticator take into account the switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The change resulted in an adjustment of a dozen or so days?

To all those who read the bible literally, good luck tomorrow. The rest of us will still be here this Sunday wondering where all of you have gone. This is one big joke on all you believers.

The world actually ended on Dec 31, 1999 - everyone was just too hung over to notice!

The end was here.

I agree with Arlo. This is from the Atlantic Wire (URL below):

"Neither, says Camping, whom I interviewed recently for my online news show TYT Now. The Rapture is at 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, where ever it's 6 p.m. first, with the "fantastically big" world-ending event taking place on a time zone by time zone basis.

That means we can expect the Rapture to start when it hits 6 p.m. at the International Dateline at 180 Longitude -- roughly the between Pago Pago, American Samoa, and Nuku'alofa, Tonga. We'll know it's Judgment Day because there will be an earthquake of previously unprecedented magnitude, Camping predicts.

So, according to these calculations, the Rapture will actually begin like a rolling brown out across the globe at 11 p.m. PST on Friday, May 20th. "Everyone will be weeping and wailing because they'll know in a few hours it'll come to their city," said Camping."

See: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/05/your-parents-think-rapture-here/37958/

Is it infallible this time? It wasn’t when he predicted the same thing in 1994.

see u all on the 22nd!

Brian,
Im not a religious man at all , but a friend pointed out that it says in Matthew 24:36 that "But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." So wouldn't it be sacrilegious to say we do know exactly when its all gonna go down?

These people don't even believe in science, so how the h*ll (no pun intended) are they going to even know what to do with math?

From what I've heard, the great earthquakes are supposed to start at 6 p.m. local standard time, which means they start in the island nation of Kiribati (Greenwich Mean Time +14 hours) which means we will know in New York when the clock strike midnight. Worth staying up for, eh?!? The reason why Kiribati is in this time zone is because they wanted to be the first to see the 2000 millenium. Now, if these escatologians are correct, the are first to see the real Millenium! Whoooeee!