Tony Moise, a 47-year-old insurance underwriter from Silver Spring, quit his job to prepare. “It will be hell on Earth,” he said, taking a break from handing out material. “You won’t want to be around on May 22. There will be no electricity, no power, no water.”
Camping, an engineer by training, says he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers. It involves, among other things, the dates of floods, the signals of numbers in the Bible, multiplication, addition and subtraction thereof. Camping describes his equations with absolute conviction.
“He seems to be the only one who understands the equation,” said Paul Boyer, a University of Wisconsin historian who studies apocalyptic beliefs. “But he has a very persuasive radio voice, and he preaches with absolute confidence, and there seems to be enough people that believe it all.”
But there are also many skeptics, including LaHaye, who has made a fortune selling books about the end, although he hasn’t picked a specific date. “I would assume he’s sincere, but many people can be sincerely wrong,” he said, noting that in the Old Testament, false prophets were stoned. “Camping is very fortunate we don’t do that anymore.”
A time certain
On Thursday, Brenda Forester, visiting from Michigan, got into a somewhat heated encounter with one of Camping’s followers, citing a passage from the Bible that says nobody knows when Christ will return.
“He will return,” Forester said, “but not on May 21st.”
Another man was so perturbed by the May 21 message that he brought over a woman he found on the street who needed money. He asked whether the Camping followers would give her some cash, because there was no need for them to keep money with the world ending. They did not.
Still, those in the yellow earthquake shirts insisted that the end was near, saying all signs point in that direction.
Boyer said End Timers who pick dates almost always make their prophecies in context with current events. In the 1800s, Miller relied on financial panics. To bolster his claim that “judgment days are coming,” Camping has mentioned the massive earthquakes in Chile, Haiti and Japan, as well as the recent tornadoes in the South. And to top that off, gay people are thriving.
“There has always been some homosexuality in the world, of course, but now it is successful everywhere it turns,” Camping said. “Whole nations no longer consider it a sin, even though it is a sin. It fits into place now — God has orchestrated this to indicate we are right at the end. We are at the threshold of being destroyed by fire and brimstone.”
The end will come sometime around 6 p.m. on May 21 — not 6 p.m. California time or New York time or Hong Kong time. The world will end at 6 p.m. only when it is 6 p.m. locally, Camping said, citing his calculations. “People will see this coming to them from around the world,” he said. “It will follow the sun around.”
Camping doesn’t seem exceptionally sad to at the notion of seeing the world go: “Frankly,” he says, “I wonder why this hasn’t happened sooner.”
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