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| Harold Camping |
Harold Egbert Camping (born July 19, 1921) is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the United States as well as a website.
Camping's trademarks include his deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow cadence. He has also used Bible-based numerology to predict dates for the end of the world. His most recent end times prediction is that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011 and that God will subsequently completely destroy the Earth and the universe five months later on October 21. He had previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994.
Biography of Harold Camping
Camping was born in Colorado and moved at an early age to California. He earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1942). He and his family were members of the Christian Reformed Church until the year 1988. During this time he served as an Elder and Sunday school teacher at the Alameda Bible Fellowship.
In 1958, Camping joined with other individuals of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and Conservative Christian Presbyterian backgrounds to purchase an FM radio station in San Francisco, California, KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz, to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to the conservative Protestant community and minister to the general public. Through the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Family Radio
Family Radio (Family Stations Inc.), based in Oakland, California, is a non-commercial, 24-hour, listener-supported, Christian radio religious broadcasting network in the United States, founded in 1959 by Richard Palmquist, Lloyd Lindquist, and Harold Camping. The network consists mainly of FM radio stations with non-commercial licenses (and a few commercial licenses used as non-commercial) and relays, with some AM stations and two television stations, plus WYFR shortwave in Okeechobee, Florida. The network produces programming in more than 40 languages.
In 1961, Family Radio began the Open Forum program, a live weeknight call-in program that Camping hosts. Listeners call in primarily with questions about the meaning of certain passages from the Bible, and Camping answers them by means of interpretations, often with reference to other Biblical passages. Occasionally the questions pertain to general Christian doctrine, such as the nature of sin and salvation, and to matters of everyday life conduct, such as marriage, sexual morality, and education. This program has continued to the present time and is broadcast on the more than 150 stations owned by Family Radio in the United States. The Open Forum is also translated into many foreign languages and together with other Family Radio programming is broadcast worldwide via shortwave station WYFR, a network of AM and FM radio stations, a cable television station, and the Internet.
Family Radio runs various programs on its radio stations. Programs that do not conform to Camping's understanding of the Biblical principle of comparing scripture with scripture (1 Corinthians 2:13) are normally removed from programming upon discovery. Before Camping started teaching that the "Church Age" had ended, programs produced outside of Family Radio were welcome provided they did not accept any "extra-Biblical revelation", and were associated with teachings accepted by the historic Christian faith. Now Camping refuses any ministry associated with the organized church. These programs can be heard by radio, satellite, television, short wave and Internet broadcasts.
His organization also utilizes numerous low-power television signals, for example WFME-TV digital television channel 66 in the New York City area. As of April, 2009, that transmitter has been configured to send out ten separate subchannels, with the first (66-1) carrying the main video at a low quality 480i, the second and third (66-2 and 66-3) sending out a blank video image and, respectively, carrying the audio of "Family Radio East" and "Family Radio West". The other seven have no video and are a mix of different audio content, mostly of a religious nature, and NOAA Weather Radio on 66-9.
In 1970, Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History (later greatly expanded in Adam When?), in which he dated the Creation of the world to the year 11,013 BC and the Flood to 4990 BC. This was in contrast to Bishop James Ussher's famous chronology, which placed creation at 4004 BC and the Flood at 2348 BC. Camping argued that Ussher's dates "agree neither with the Biblical nor the secular evidence" and thus Ussher's methodology was flawed.
Camping surmised that word in the Old Testament scriptures "begat" did not necessarily imply an immediate father-son relationship, as had been assumed by Ussher and others who hadn't fully studied the biblical timeline according to incomplete information. Camping noted the use of the phrase "called his name" (Hebrew qara shem), found three times in Genesis 4-5, which he characterized as a "clue phrase" to indicate an immediate father-son relationship. Despite the fact that this "clue phrase" does not occur regarding Noah naming Shem, Camping maintains that there is enough evidence to otherwise conclude that they did in fact have an immediate father-son relationship. He also points out the use of qara shem in Isaiah 7:14, where we are told, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Camping assumes that since qara shem implies an immediate father-son relationship (e.g., Adam-Seth, Seth-Enosh and Lamech-Noah), all other relationships between the Antediluvian patriarchs (except Noah-Shem) are of ancestors and their distant descendants. That is, when one patriarch died, the next one who is mentioned was not his son but was actually a distant multi-great grandson who was born in that same year, thus Camping's concept of the "reference patriarch," i.e., various events are referenced to a specific year of a particular patriarch's life as a means of keeping an accurate chronological record (in much the same way we reference historical events by year to the birth of Christ). Despite the fact that there is no evidence that any ancient civilization kept track of time in this way, Camping uses this concept as the backbone of his chronological view of Biblical history.
Camping teaches that a Biblical calendar has been hidden according to Daniel 12:9, Revelation 22:10 detailing the imminent end of the world (with alleged Biblical evidence pointing to the date for the Rapture as May 21, 2011); of the "end of the church age" (which asserts that churches are no longer the vehicle used by God for salvation, 1 Peter 4:17); and of predestination (Ephesians 1:4-5), according to which God determined before the beginning of the world which individuals are to be saved. In Camping's latest publications, he states that May 21, 2011 will be "the first day of the Day of Judgment" and October 21, 2011 will be the end of the world. Critics call Camping a "date-setter" following his own method of Biblical interpretation. Camping maintains that he follows the Bible's method of Biblical interpretation.
Camping does not consider Family Radio a church and does not claim ordained or hierarchical authority within a church or institution. Camping claims that the church institutions do not employ the Bible alone as the sole authority. According to Camping, each church or denomination has its own unique set of doctrines and hermeneutics, which dictate how they understand the Bible. Family Radio's sole focus on the Bible is what he believes distinguishes it from churches. Recently, as his predicted Judgment Day (May 21, 2011) draws near, Family Radio has become affiliated with eBibleFellowship.com, another Bible-based ministry. Followers continue to listen to Camping despite the fact that he was wrong in his previous prediction of the end of the world. In his book 1994?, he claimed there was a very high likelihood that the world would end in September, 1994, although he did acknowledge in the book "the possibility does exist that I could be wrong." He makes no mention of this failure when establishing his new claims of the end of the world in October, 2011. Camping has received criticism from a number of leaders, scholars, and laymen within the Christian community for his predictions on when the Rapture will take place. His critics argue that Jesus Christ taught that no man knows the day or the hour of the Lord's return.
Central to Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, and absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence in the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather, the meaning of individual Biblical passages also needs to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning. In Camping's words, "the Bible is an earthly story with a Heavenly meaning." This stems from Mark 4:34, which states that Jesus did not speak to the disciples without using parables. Because Christ is the Word of God, therefore, the historical accounts of the Old Testament can also be seen as parables. For example, in the Book of Joshua, we find that Joshua (whose name in Hebrew is identical to the name "Jesus" in Greek), is a picture of Christ, who safely led the Israelites (who represented those who became saved) across the Jordan River (a representation of the wrath of God) into the land of Canaan (which represents the kingdom of God).
Since leaving the Christian Reformed Church in 1988, Camping has taught doctrines that explicitly conflict with the doctrines and confessions of the Christian Reformed Church and churches of the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Examples of how Camping's teachings vary from conventional Reformed doctrines include:
- Departing from Calvinist doctrine, Camping teaches a relative free will for humanity and that humans are not totally depraved. However, he subscribes to the idea that salvation is unmerited, cannot be achieved by good works or prayer, and is a pure act of God's grace.
- Departing from the doctrine of eternal torment for the unsaved in a place called Hell, Camping teaches annihilationism; that life will end and existence will cease for the unsaved soul.
- Departing from doctrines stating no one can know the time of Christ's second coming, he teaches that the exact times of the Rapture and the End of the World are to be revealed sometime towards the end of time (Daniel 12:9-13 prophecy).
- Camping teaches that all churches have become apostate and thus must be abandoned. He encourages personal Bible study and listening to his Family Radio broadcasts.
Camping gained notoriety due to his prediction that the Christian Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011 and that the end of the world will take place five months later on October 21, 2011. Followers of Camping claimed that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world's population) would be raptured. As for the remainder of the human population, Camping himself believes in annihilationism, which is the view that those who are not saved will simply cease to be conscious rather than spend eternity in Hell. Those who were "unsaved" and died prior to May 21 will not be affected by or experience the Rapture or the end of the world.