Why May 21, 2011? Because, according to Family Radio’s president Harold Camping, it’s exactly 7,000 years to the day after God originally showed his infinite love—my words, not his—by drowning almost every woman, man, and child on earth in a worldwide flood. I’d explain the math behind Camping’s calculations, but, honestly, I don’t understand it. I tried. The timeline in the back of his book, Time Has an End, which I ordered from Amazon a few weeks ago, didn’t make the reasoning any clearer. I got hung up on passages like this: “The year 391 B.C. is the year when the Old Testament was finished, and 2,011 + 391 – 1 = 2,401, or 7 × 7 × 7 × 7. In the perfectly complete end of time, Christ will finish speaking to this present world.” How seriously do believers take this message? One guy I met in the Family Radio lobby had just returned from an RV proselyting trip that went as far as Colorado. Another told me he drove up from Los Angeles that morning just to correct a translation error in one of the ministry’s tracts. Some listeners in China have sold their homes and are donating the money to Family Radio’s campaign. NPR reports that in the U.S., one couple—with one kid and another on the way—cashed out their savings accounts and budgeted to run out of money on the big day.
more from Ted Cox at Killing The Buddha here.