‘Doomsday Prophet’ Harold Camping Dies at 92

Harold Camping, sometimes referred to as the “doomsday prophet” for falsely predicting the Lord’s return on multiple occasions, has passed away. He was 92.

According to the Associated Press, Family Radio Network’s marketing manager, Nina Romero, says Camping died at his home on Sunday. She says he had been hospitalized after falling.

Harold Camping’s Family Stations Inc. spent more than $5 million on billboard advertising in 2011—the year Judgment Day was predicted to occur. Camping said he was “flabbergasted” when the rapture didn’t happen on May 21, 2011, but quickly offered his next prophetic utterance: May 21 was Judgment Day, in a spiritual sense, and that judgment would continue right up until Oct. 21 later that year.

Camping eventually admitted he was wrong to indicate that God stopped saving people after May 21, which he had previously described as a spiritual Judgment Day. Camping’s confession put an end to his controversial end-of-the-world predictions that first made headlines nearly two decades ago. Camping predicted the end of the world in 1992, insisting the rapture would happen on Sept. 6, 1994. When that didn’t happen, Camping said Jesus would return on May 21, 2011. Finally, he said the world would end on Oct. 21, 2011.

Camping later wrote a letter to his followers, “Yes, we humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing; yet though we were wrong God is still using the May 21 warning in a very mighty way. In the months following May 21 the Bible has, in some ways, come out from under the shadows and is now being discussed by all kinds of people who never before paid any attention to the Bible. We learn about this, for example, by the recent National Geographic articles concerning the King James Bible and the apostles. Reading about and even discussing about the Bible can never be a bad thing, even if the Bible’s authenticity is questioned or ridiculed. The world’s attention has been called to the Bible.”