Camping ends silence on the failure of his prophecy

Harold Camping Concludes Silence, Predicts October 21 Rapture [Excerpts]

An unapologetic Harold Camping made a new prediction Monday [ May 23, 2011]: the rapture is actually on Oct. 21, not May 21 as he originally proclaimed.

Camping offered no sincere apology when he spoke publicly Monday for the first time since his failed May 21 Judgment Day prediction. He insisted that his predictions have been right all along, only that his interpretation was more literal when it should have been spiritual.

Judgment Day on May 21 did come, said Camping. However, he clarified that the Judgment Day arrived in a spiritual sense rather than manifesting physically.

"On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through. God again brought judgment on the world. We didn’t see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed," he proclaimed.

"I can tell you very candidly that when May 21 came and went, it was a very difficult time for me, a very difficult time. I was wondering, 'What is going on?'" he said, speaking from the organization's headquarters in Oakland, Calif.

The 89-year-old radio broadcaster said he prayed and reviewed the Bible and concluded that he had been looking at the Bible more factually than spiritually.

"The Bible is a very spiritual book. There are a lot of things that are very factual, very factual, of course, but there are a lot of things that are very spiritual. How to know whether to look at it with a spiritual understanding or a factual understanding is hard to know," said Camping.

"The fact is when we look at it more spiritually then we find that He did come."

Camping then firmly stated that Oct. 21, 2011, is still the date of the End of the World.

(Phan, "Harold Camping Concludes Silence, Predicts October 21 Rapture," Christian Post, May 23, 2011).

[TBC: Seventh day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups have used similar approaches in explaining demonstrably false prophecies.]