Tag Archives: Harold Camping

Monsters, Doomsday, & UFO’s for 2012

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Monsters and UFOs to Watch For in 2012

Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor
Date: 28 December 2011 Time: 07:56 PM

The Flying Saucer movie poster
Promotional poster for the 1950 film ‘The Flying Saucer.’
CREDIT: Colonial Productions

2011 was a year of weird news, and sitting on the cusp of 2012, it’s time to look back on the odd year that was — as well as look ahead to a year that promises a new level of strangeness.

Monster sightings in 2011: Researchers looking in Siberia for the yeti — the Asian version of North America’s Bigfoot — claimed in October to have found “indisputable proof” of the long-sought mystery beast. The Russian team, which included several American scientists, located some odd footprints, as well as some gray hairs in a cave. About a month later, a member of the expedition, biologist John Bindernagel, claimed his group found even more evidence, including nests and shelters made of tree branches twisted together. However, another member of the same group reported finding evidence of hoaxing and branded the whole expedition a publicity stunt.

2011 was also the year that the mystery of the chupacabra, the Hispanic vampire beast, was solved, after some 15 years of mystery. DNA testing on dead “chupacabras” found in Texas and elsewhere revealed them to be mostly dogs and coyotes afflicted with mange, and the legendary creature’s origin was traced back to a 1995 monster movie instead of any real-life encounter.

Monsters to look for in 2012: Will the yeti footprints and hair samples finally reveal the truth? If the claims made by the Russian expedition are not hype or hoax, then perhaps the world will finally get definitive proof of the long-rumored creature. Surely after so many decades of ambiguous sightings and searches, hard evidence of Bigfoot or the yeti is long overdue. As for the chupacabra, people in North America and elsewhere will continue to find mangy dogs and coyotes and assume the unfortunate beasties are chupacabras.

Doomsday predictions made in 2011: The year began on an ominous note when fundamentalist Harold Camping, leader of the ministry Family Radio Worldwide, concluded after careful study of the Bible that the world would end May 21. The announcement made national news, and concerned many believers. Camping and his followers were embarrassed when May 21 came and went without a hitch, and he eventually admitted there must have been a miscalculation somewhere. Camping moved the date back a few months, concluding that October was the real month Armageddon would begin. That doomsday date came and went, as well, and the only thing destroyed was Camping’s credibility.

Doomsdays to prepare for in 2012: The upcoming year is certain to bring more concerns about doomsdays and apocalypse — not necessarily from Bible-thumping evangelicals but (supposedly) from the ancient Mayans, whose calendar “ends” next year. Some New Agers think the world will end along with the end of the Mayan calendar cycle; others believe a new age of global peace and harmony will emerge. For other groups, the concern isn’t so much the calendar date but a collision between Earth and the mysterious (and nonexistent) planet Niburu. Of course, people have been predicting doomsdays for millennia, and while nary one has come to pass, one day, sooner or later, the prognosticators will be right.

UFOs and aliens spotted in 2011: The summer of 2011 was an especially busy period for UFO sightings, according to an organization that tracks such reports. The Mutual UFO Network noted that sightings in some states more than doubled their usual numbers. The group could not explain the apparent increase, saying that it could be real, or possibly just a computer error.

As the reports of sightings soared, so did the lights in the skies. In early October more than a dozen strange lights were seen over the northern Utah city of Washington Terrace just after 11:30 p.m. They emitted a strange, fiery glow as they headed north at an estimated speed of about 70 mph, according to one eyewitness. The lights puzzled the public and police and had the UFO community buzzing. Finally, students at the local Bonneville High School admitted they had launched 16 lit Chinese lanterns that night; the lanterns had been reported as UFOs.

Even close-up views of alien spaceships proved to be of something else. That was the case of a “flying saucer” spotted being hauled down a main street in a Kansas town; it turned out to be a (comparatively mundane) military spy plane.

UFOs and aliens to look out for in 2012: There’s some reason to believe UFO sightings will continue at the same rate, or even increase, through 2012. UFO reports historically occur in clusters or “flaps.” And reports could be on the rise because more and more people carry cellphones with built-in cameras, making it easier than ever to report a potential sighting.

A few sightings tend to encourage even more sightings. Will extraterrestrials finally make their presence clearly known, landing on the White House lawn or staying still long enough to get some clear, sharp photos or videos? That’s been the hope and promise of UFO believers for decades now.

from:   http://www.livescience.com/17669-monsters-ufo-doomsday-2012.html

Once Again, The World Ends Tomorrow

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Why the World Will End (Again) on Friday

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 19 October 2011 Time: 01:14 PM ET
A post-apocalyptic scene
The end of the world has been predicted by dozens, if not hundreds, of “prophets” over the centuries. The most recent is Harold Camping, who believes that the end will come on October 21.
CREDIT: Jens Beste, Shutterstock

The world is about to end. Again.

Oct. 21 is the next in a long line of supposed apocalypses, stretching back thousands of years. This time, the prophet of doom is Harold Camping, a radio preacher who received international media attention in May when he predicted that Judgment Day would fall on May 21, followed by months of torment on Earth and an end to everything in autumn.

Judgment Day didn’t bring the promised earthquakes and Rapture, but Camping now says May 21 marked a spiritual Judgment Day and that the world will still end “quietly” on Friday. It may seem odd that Camping’s faith remains strong, but apocalypse experts say that doomsday prophets have often built their entire lives around their end-of-the-world views, and that worldview is hard to shake. For an elderly preacher like Camping, who suffered a stroke in June, apocalypse beliefs may also reflect his struggle with his own mortality.

I would not be surprised to discover that Mr. Camping sees this prediction as his life’s work, the culmination of decades of intensive Bible study, filtered through the sieve of faith,” said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal. “If this is correct, then perhaps he sees in the world a reflection of his self.”

The appeal of the end

Doomsday predictions, whether secular or religious, often attract those who feel theworld is unsalvageable. Sometimes the world-ending catastrophe is nuclear winter; sometimes it’s the Mayan apocalypse. But religious doomsday groups often draw on mainstream faith, said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta.

“Almost all apocalyptic beliefs show Christian influence,” Kent told LiveScience.

That’s because a central tenant of the faith is that Jesus will return — although many mainstream Christians point to the Bible verse Matthew 24:36 to condemn doomsday prophets such as Camping. That verse says that no one knows the day or hour of the end, “not even the angels in heaven.”

Those who try to predict when doomsday will occur often focus on the world’s sin. Camping, for example, has said that God left all churches in 1988, leaving Satan to rule those institutions. Famous 1800s doomsday prophet William Miller, who predicted that the end would come on Oct. 22, 1844, was “disillusioned with humanity,” Kent said. [Read: Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions]

“He read a considerable amount of history and came to see humans as brutes,” Kent said.

With this worldview, the end of the world is a welcome way to wipe Earth clean.

“Despite fire, death and destruction, the god of apocalypticism is a god of order, not chaos,” DiTommaso told LiveScience in May. “That’s the reassurance.”

The personal is the prophetic

An individual’s psychology and environment may contribute to the apocalyptic worldview. Followers often live and socialize in small groups where outside opinions aren’t heard, DiTommaso said. This “social encapsulation” keeps faith-shaking questions at bay.

Camping and his followers are also operating from a worldview that holds that the Bible and its prophecies cannot be wrong, DiTommaso told LiveScience.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/16612-world-oct-21.html

Sooo, Maybe October 21 Will be the End of the World…If not, then wait ’til next weel

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Mark Your Calendars: End of World Coming Oct. 21, Camping Says

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 14 October 2011 Time: 05:20 PM ET
Rapture
Radio preacher Harold Camping predicted that May 12, 2011 would mark the beginning of the end of the world
CREDIT: Karl Tate, TechMediaNetwork

The radio preacher who predicted Judgment Day on May 21 has not backed down from his claims that the end of the world is near, despite the lack of a Rapture or world-devastating earthquakes leading up to the doomsday.

In an announcement on his Family Radio Network website, Harold Camping stands by his earlier predictions that the world will end on Friday, Oct. 21. Originally, Camping had predicted hourly earthquakes and God’s judgment on May 21, to be followed by months of torment on Earth for those individuals left behind. Using numerical codes extracted from the Bible, Camping set thedate for the end of everything for Oct. 21.

When May 21 came and went without fanfare, Camping revised his story. The “earthquakes” he had predicted did occur, he writes on his website in a post titled “What Happened on May 21?” — only instead of shaking the Earth, God shook mankind “with fear.” Likewise, although no one was raptured, God is no longer saving souls, Camping writes.

“What really happened this past May 21st?” Camping wrote. “What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen.”

Camping, who suffered a stroke in June and is now at home recuperating, also said in an audio message on his site that the end on Oct. 21 will come quietly.

It’s not unusual for failed doomsday predictors to claim that their prophecies were true, just slightly misunderstood.

“Most often, the answer given by the group is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong,” Concordia University professor of religion Lorenzo DiTommaso told LiveScienceduring Camping’s rush of publicity in May.

The modern Seventh-Day Adventist church, for example, got its start as a splinter group of Baptist preacher William Miller, who predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844. In the post-doomsday letdown, Miller’s followers struggled to explain what went wrong. The group that would become the Seventh-Day Adventists concluded that on that day, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth.

Other groups have also survived failed predictions of Armageddon. The Jehovah’s Witnesses made specific predictions about the apocalypse until the early 1990s, when they switched to more vague prophecies. A 1950s doomsday cult known as The Seekers actually bragged to the media after their end-of-the-world prediction failed, saying that their devotion had saved humanity.

Believing in the end of the world even without evidence may seem strange, but sociologists say that a belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense of the world and their place in it. Others have suggested that apocalyptic worldviews stem from the overwhelming feeling that one’s problems are too big, and, as such, the only possible solution is a clean slate. Over the past 40 to 50 years these doomsday beliefs have increased, according to DiTommaso, though not all “believers” are as extreme as Camping.

to read more, go to:   http://www.livescience.com/16561-mark-calendars-world-coming-oct-21-camping.html