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May 21 was actually beginning of Christ’s judgment, Camping says

Is Family Radio preacher Harold Camping now just taking cues from the Advent movement’s investigative judgment theology playbook?

OAKLAND, California (AP) — As crestfallen followers of a California preacher who foresaw the world’s end strained to find meaning in their lives, Harold Camping revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21. . . .

Camping, who made a special appearance before the press at the Oakland headquarters of the media empire Monday evening, apologized for not having the dates “worked out as accurately as I could have.” Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, the light dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a “spiritual” Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ’s judgment, he said. . . .

 

“We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning,” he said.

Does that sound like what another group said in their disappointment over what didn’t happen on Oct. 22, 1844? Is this some sort of performance art created for Seventh-day Adventists to reflect on our own history of belief?

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