We have collected nearly 500 religion stories this week. Most of them we never post, but simple file instead to have information on hand should we need it.
But we have hand-selected 5 news stories from the past week that we think deserve a closer look.
Harold Camping, the Doomsday radio preacher who sparked international media attention by predicting the end of the world last month, has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke at his Alameda home Thursday night.
The cult leader recently moved the end-of-the-world date to October 21.
Doomsday cult leader Harold Camping who predicted — wrongly — that the end of the world would begin on May 21 revised his prophesy on Monday, saying now that the end is due in October.
He now believes that May 21 had been “an invisible judgment day,” of the spiritual variety.
The man who said the world was going to end on May 21, 2011 — and Christians were going to be raptured to heaven — appeared at his front door in Alameda, California a day later.
While refusing to give an interview Camping told a reporter that he’s got to live with the fact that his predictions failed.
Harold Camping’s prophesied doomsday has come and gone without any of his predictions coming true. Again.
The false prophet last week told Reuters “There is no plan B.” Camping has not yet been heard from, and his Family Radio website still sports a countdown clock saying their are ’00 days left.’
According to cult leader Harold Camping earthquakes would today already have obliterated various locations at the international date line, with the destruction rolling east time zone by time zone.
None of that has happened. The false prophet had earlier scheduled the earth’s destruction in 1994.
If preacher Harold Camping is right, Jesus will return on May 21, 2011 and the righteous will fly up to heaven, leaving behind only their clothes.
But as far back as 1994 Camping was proven to be a false prophet, and his subsequent teachings have marked his movement as, theologically, a cult of Christianity.