Harold Camping

Harold Camping is an elderly Christian radio broadcaster who is president of Family Radio, a California-based radio station network that broadcasts religious programming in more than 150 markets in the United States. As of 2011, his radio network was reportedly worth more than $120 million. Camping has gained notoriety for using numerology to interpret Bible passages to persistently predict dates for the end of the world. He has long been associated with failed predictions of the end of the world.

His 2011 rapture prediction was that on May 21, 2011 Jesus would return to Earth, the righteous would fly up to heaven, and that there would be a massive, global earthquake and tsunami followed five months of fire, brimstone and plagues, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on Oct. 21, 2011 with the end of the world.

He had previously predicted judgment days on May 21, 1988, and September 7, 1994.

His 2011 prediction was supported with a global PR and media campaign including the purchase of over 2,000 billboards, truck-mounted billboards in foreign countries, posters, transit ad, a caravan of custom-painted RV's that drove across the United States for months promoting May 21 as the date of the Rapture, and a similar campaign in which Camping dispatched groups of people to foreign countries to tell natives of those countries the world was about to end. His own campaign was augmented by his followers, who liquidated their savings, quit their jobs and sold their worldly goods to put additional money into advertising to inform others about the end of the world prediction. One estimate put the final number of billboards purchased for his campaign and 5,000 globally. After May 21 passed without serious incident, Camping said he believed that a "spiritual" judgment had occurred on that date, and that the physical Rapture would actually occur on October 21, 2011, simultaneous with the destruction of the universe by God.