Family Life

05.23.11 | Sarah Harnisch

   The rapture didn't happen at 6 p.m. Saturday, as Harold Camping predicted. Camping and his followers spent more than $100-million-dollars worldwide on billboards and posters, financed by the sale and swap of radio stations. What happens to his followers now?
    Psychologists say a third will become disenchanted, a third will find a stronger reason to support Camping, and on average, about a third will fall somewhere in between. Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the history of doomsday predictions, says ""if you have a strong leader, the group survives. Most often, the answer given is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong." Harold Camping-- by the way-- has gone incognito. Giving no interviews, he has been holed up in his house since Saturday. Camping said Sunday he would issue his first statement on what happened in a "public forum" sometime today-- to explain why his prediction had failed. When asked why he'd been silent until now, he said he "needed time to think and recover after the rapture didn't happen"-- but that he'd explain "everything" Monday.

    Meanwhile, the Reverend Billy Graham's grandson Will responded to this. He said though Camping had the date wrong, judgement day is "very real". He told the Christian Post "Harold couldn't be more right. The end of the world is coming. We just don't know the time of it. From his calculations, he was off. I don't think there is any man on earth who can ever really calculate to any degree when the return of Christ is going to be. Whether Christ comes or judgment comes, we never really know when death might come so we should always be ready to stand before God."