Save the date: May 21, 2011. If preacher Harold Camping is right, that's the exact date Jesus will return and the righteous will fly up to heaven, leaving behind only their clothes. That will be followed by five months of fire, brimstone and plagues, with millions of people dying each day and corpses piling in the streets. Finally, on Oct. 21, the world ends exactly as the Book of Revelation says it will — with a bottomless pit, a lake of fire and, at last, a new heaven and new earth.
Doomsday preachers come and go, but at nearly 90 years old, the spry Camping has managed to ignite a nationwide movement that has garnered national attention.
"God has put his stamp of approval that this is the day," McCann said in a telephone interview. "I don't doubt it, and I don't look at the possibility of May 22 happening."
Neither does Camping. Asked how he arrived at the date, he opened his Bible to Genesis and said Noah loaded animals into the ark in 4990 B.C., a number he said he arrived at years ago after looking at carbon dating, tree rings and other data. Paging forward to 2 Peter, he read aloud, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day."
Leafing back to Genesis, he said that the seven days Noah spent loading the ark was really 7,000 years. He then added 7,000 to 4990 B.C to arrive at 2010. He added one more year, he said, because there is no year one in the Bible.As for the exact date of May 21, he pointed again to Genesis, which says the flood began on the "17th day of the second month." According to the Jewish calendar, which he believes God uses, that is May 21.
Press found that 41% of Americans expect Jesus' return before 2040. But pinpointing an exact date is unusual, said John R. Hall, a sociology professor and author of "Apocalypse," an examination of doomsday groups.
Camping has wiggled before. He first predicted Jesus' return in 1994 in a book named for that year — but with a big question mark at the end. While writing the book, he said the year 2011 began to come up in his calculations, but 1994 was more prominent. When the year came and went, Camping explained that he was wrong and needed more study. "It just was a cudgel to keep studying," he said.
