Harold Egbert Camping (July 19, 1921 – December 15, 2013) was an American Christian radio broadcaster and evangelist. Beginning in 1958, he served as president of Family Radio, a California-based radio station group that, at its peak, broadcast to more than 150 markets in the United States. In October 2011, he retired from active broadcasting following a stroke, but still maintained a role at Family Radio until his death. Camping was notorious for issuing a succession of failed predictions of dates for the End Times, which temporarily gained him a global following and millions of dollars of donations.
Camping first predicted that the Judgment Day would occur on or about September 6, 1994. When it failed to occur, he revised the date to September 29 and then to October 2. In 2005, Camping predicted the Second Coming of Christ to May 21, 2011, whereupon the saved would be taken up to heaven in the rapture, and that "there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on Earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21, 2011, with the final destruction of the world."
His prediction for May 21, 2011 was widely reported, in part because of a large-scale publicity campaign by Family Radio, and it prompted ridicule from atheist organizations and rebuttals from Christian organizations. After May 21 passed without the predicted events, Camping said he believed that a "spiritual" judgment had occurred on that date, and that the physical Rapture would occur on October 21, 2011, simultaneously with the final destruction of the universe by God. Except for one press appearance on May 23, 2011, Camping largely avoided press interviews after May 21, particularly after he suffered a stroke in June 2011. After October 21, 2011, passed without the predicted apocalypse, the mainstream media labeled Camping a false prophet and commented that his ministry would collapse after the "failed 'Doomsday' prediction".
Camping was reported to have retired from his position at Family Radio on October 16, 2011, only days before his final prediction for the end of the world. However, his daughter later clarified that he had not retired outright, but was maintaining a role at Family Radio while remote working. Camping admitted in a private interview that he no longer believed that anybody could know the time of the Rapture or the end of the world, in stark contrast to his previously staunch position on the subject. In March 2012, he stated that his attempt to predict a date was "sinful", and that his critics had been right in emphasizing the words of Matthew 24:36: "of that day and hour knoweth no man". He added that he was now searching the Bible "even more fervently...not to find dates, but to be more faithful in [his] understanding." After the failure of Camping's prophecies, Family Radio suffered a significant loss of assets, staff and revenue.
Harold Egbert Camping was born on July 19, 1921, in Boulder, Colorado, and moved at an early age to California. Both his parents were Dutch immigrants to the United States, his mother from Friesland, his father from Groningen. They first met each other in the United States. In 1942, Camping earned a B.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1943, he married his wife, Shirley. During World War II he worked as an engineer for a government contractor. Shortly after the end of the war, he started a construction business. He and his family were members of the Christian Reformed Church until 1988.
In 1958, Camping joined with other individuals of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and conservative Presbyterian backgrounds to purchase an FM radio station in San Francisco, California. The radio station – KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz – was used 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 AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In 1961, Family Radio began running the Open Forum, a live, weeknight call-in program that Camping hosted until 2011. Listeners were invited to call in, primarily with questions about the meaning of certain passages from the Bible, and Camping answered them by means of interpretations, often with reference to other Biblical passages. Occasionally, questions were posed relating to general Christian doctrine, ranging from the nature of sin and salvation to matters involving everyday life, such as marriage, sexual morality and education. The Open Forum continued running until Camping's partial retirement in July 2011, and was broadcast on the more than 150 stations owned by Family Radio in the United States. The Open Forum was also translated into many foreign languages and (together with other Family Radio programming) was broadcast worldwide via shortwave station WYFR, a network of AM and FM radio stations, a cable television station and the Internet. In October 2012, over a year after the failure of Camping's prophecies, Family Radio began airing repeats of his broadcasts.
Family Radio runs various programs on its radio stations. 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. Family Radio also used at least three television stations: WFME-TV in the New York City area; KFTL-CD in San Francisco, California; and KHFR-LD in Boise, Idaho. Following the digital transition of 2009, Family Radio used its subchannels of WFME and KFTL for various purposes – in WFME's case, the digital signal of that station broadcasts ten separate subchannels, the first being the main channel, and the others carrying audio feeds of other Family Radio services, as well as one broadcasting NOAA Weather Radio.
Family Radio spent over US$100 million on the information campaign for Camping's 2011 end times prediction, financed by sales and swaps of broadcast outlets.
The Biblical Calendar of History
In 1970, Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History (later greatly expanded in his 1974 book 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 contradiction to Bishop James Ussher's famous 17th-century chronology, which placed the Creation at 4004 BC and the Flood at 2349 BC. Camping argued that Ussher's dates "agree neither with the Biblical nor the secular evidence", asserting that Ussher's methodology was flawed.
Camping surmised that the word begat in the Old Testament scriptures did not necessarily imply an immediate father-son relationship, as had been assumed by Ussher and others who (Camping felt) had not correctly interpreted the biblical timeline. Camping noted the use of the phrase "called his name" ("qara shem" in Hebrew, 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 maintained 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, which he interpreted as meaning, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Camping assumed that, since qara shem implies an immediate father-son relationship (e.g., Adam–Seth, Seth–Enos, 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-generational grandson who was born in that same year. Camping thus formulated the 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. Although there is no evidence that any ancient civilization kept track of time in this way, Camping used this concept as the basis for his view of Biblical chronology.