Does the world end on May 21?

Doomsday sayers have had a field day with this as billboards across America warn, ‘Judgement Day is coming May 21st, 2011 – The Bible guarantees it!’

However, most Americans barely pay them a second glance. According to the British tabloid Daily Mail,  the end of the world at a man from California has predicted the end of the world on May 21 2011.

Harold Camping, from Oakland, California, is the founder of Family Radio, an independent ministry that has broadcast his forecast around the world. He says, "There’s going to be a huge earthquake that’s going to make the big earthquake in Japan seem like a Sunday School picnic."


Camping is a part of a group called The Rapture - the belief that Christ will bring the faithful into paradise prior to a period of tribulation on earth that precedes the end of time - is a relatively new notion compared to Christianity itself, and most Christians don't believe in it.

According to the Daily Mail, Camping is basing his prediction on decades of studying the Bible and his belief that the Noah’s Ark flood happened in the year 4990 BC. He claims that since 2 Peter 3:8 says that one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day to God, there will be seven thousand years between Noah's flood and the end of the world.

The seven days come from Noah having seven days to warn people about the coming disaster, so he assumes there will be seven days, translated to 7,000 years, between the flood and the destruction of earth. So 4990 plus 2011, minus one because there was no year '0', equals 7,000 years.

According to media reports, Dr. Don Howell, professor of New Testament at Columbia International University, has told Tv channels in America, no tto take Camping and people like him too seriously. He added, "People like this man are over-literalising certain passages that are not meant to be taken in such a strictly literal sense and they're trying to build strict chronologies by piecing together different Bible verses that were never intended to be interpreted in such a fashion."

Besides that, he points to Matthew 24, which says no one but the Father knows when the end will come, not even Jesus or the angels.

Chris McCann who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message says he plans to spend Saturday with his family, reading the Bible and praying. His fellowship met for the last time on Monday.
‘We had a final lunch and everyone said goodbye,’ he said. ‘We don't actually know who's saved and who isn't, but we won't gather as a fellowship again.’

In Vietnam, the prophecy has led to unrest involving thousands of members of the Hmong ethnic minority who gathered near the border with Laos earlier this month to await the May 21 event.