May 21, 2011
Harold Camping and May 21, 2011
Well documented Prediction was later revised RaptureEnd TimesBiblical NumerologyDate SettingEvangelicalismModern PredictionsFailed PredictionsInternet Era
Quick facts
- Predicted date
- May 21, 2011
- Who predicted it
- Harold Camping, Family Radio
- When announced
- 2005
- Reasoning
- A custom chronology, a seven-thousand-year span from 4990 BC, and numerological interpretation of the number of days between events.
- What happened
- May 21, 2011 passed without the predicted events. Camping first said that a spiritual judgment had occurred and that the physical end would come on October 21, 2011. That date also passed.
- Historical status
- Well documented. The prediction and its date appear in primary or reliable secondary sources.
- Outcome label
- Prediction was later revised
- Editorial certainty
- Medium: reliable secondary sources
- Editorial review
- Pending. This entry has not yet been checked line by line against its sources. Treat details as provisional.
Prediction
What did Harold Camping predict?
Harold Camping and Family Radio taught that the Rapture and Judgment Day would occur on May 21, 2011, followed by the end of the world on October 21, 2011. A national billboard and media campaign promoted the date.
Interpretation by the author
Why did they believe it?
Camping's chronology placed the crucifixion in AD 33 and the flood in 4990 BC. He argued that the flood had been a type of the final judgment and that the Bible implied a seven-thousand-year interval from the flood, ending in 2011.
He also assigned symbolic significance to numbers associated with the date and to the count of days from the crucifixion.
Scripture as used by the author
Biblical basis cited
Genesis 7 (the flood), 2 Peter 3:8 (a day as a thousand years) and passages from Revelation and Matthew, read as a coded timetable.
Method
How the date was calculated
A custom chronology, a seven-thousand-year span from 4990 BC, and numerological interpretation of the number of days between events.
Historical record
Historical context
Family Radio spent large sums on billboards and caravans, and press and online coverage was intense. Camping, then in his nineties, was one of the few date-setters to repeat his claim in the same decade with a specific day and a named backup date.
Historical record
What happened when the date passed?
May 21, 2011 passed without the predicted events. Camping first said that a spiritual judgment had occurred and that the physical end would come on October 21, 2011. That date also passed.
Historical record
What happened afterward
Camping publicly said that he had been wrong to set a date, and he withdrew from date-setting. Family Radio stated that it would not do so again. Camping suffered a stroke in 2011 and died on December 15, 2013.
Interpretation
Later reinterpretation
Camping's reinterpretation after May 21, that a "spiritual" judgment had occurred, is recorded in Family Radio's own statements. Critics and many Christians did not accept it.
Scripture
Passages cited
-
2 Peter 3:8 (KJV)
"Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
-
Matthew 24:36 (KJV)
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."
Camping argued that this verse applied to the time of Christ speaking and not to later generations. Most Christian traditions reject that reading.
Excerpts are from the King James Version (public domain). Listing a verse here does not mean this site agrees with how the author used it.
Sources
Sources and further reading
- Harold Camping. Time Has an End: A Biblical History of the World. Vantage Press. 2005. Primary source Camping's own chronology.
- Family Radio. Family Radio public statements, May to October 2011. 2011. Website Link (opens in a new tab) The network's own statements on the passing of the dates. Specific pages should be archived and cited.
- Associated Press, Reuters and other outlets. Press coverage, May and October 2011. 2011. Newspaper Specific article citations still need to be added and checked.
Found an error or a better source? Send a correction. See also the methodology.