Have you noticed these billboards? Or seen the CNN report which aired Sunday?
It's all a campaign by a conservative Christian radio broadcaster, 88-year-old Harold Camping, who has calculated that Jesus Christ will return this Spring. As the date is approaching, his organization is ramping up publicity. They want to warn people.
One little caveat: he's been wrong before. He told his followers that the world would end in 1994; it didn't. However, Camping is nothing if not unflappable. He takes everything in stride. Making new calculations, he arrived at a new date: May 21 of this year.
I won't go into a long explanation; the San Francisco Chronicle did a fine piece on Jan. 1 of this year, and in 2003 a Berkeley alt weekly, the East Bay Express, wrote a splendid feature on Camping and his followers. Both pieces are well-written and informative.
Camping is an engineer by training who claims no ordination, saying his theories and beliefs are all the result of self-study. His radio network calls him a "Bible teacher." He not only doesn't call his group a church, but says churches are the domain of the devil. For this reason, among others, he isn't very popular among fellow conservative Christians.
One thing those articles don't mention is Camping's unique voice. If you took the guy that voiced Eeyore for the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons, slowed him down to about half speed, and let him run on and on about obscure mathematical calculations based on selected Bible verses, and then added a dash of unshakeable certainty that he is right, you'd have Camping.
But you can hear him for yourself on his flagship program, "Open Forum," on his network and on the internet at familyradio.org. Listen for a few minutes. It's quite an experience.
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