(CNN) – Many months after his doomsday prediction failed to materialize, a humbled California preacher has admitted his mistake and said he is out of the forecasting game.
The Day of Rapture, as predicted by apocalyptic Christian broadcaster Harold Camping, passed without calamity on May 21. Camping’s second date, October 21, also came and went without so much as a whisper.
The world, it seems, is not doomed.
“We humbly acknowledge we were wrong,” Camping and his staff wrote in a letter to supporters posted on the website of Family Radio, Camping’s California-based broadcast ministry.
He goes further, saying he and his network are no longer interested in predicting when the world will end.
Camping had originally said that those selected for salvation would be raptured up to heaven on May 21, and those left behind would face months of judgment amid destruction before the world’s end on October 21.
The Family Radio website tweaked the prediction after May 21, saying God had shown mercy by sparing people five months of suffering. But final judgment was still slated to come on October 21, when salvation and the world’s destruction would happen at once.
“We must also openly acknowledge that we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world. Though many dates are circulating, Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date. God has humbled us through the events of May 21, to continue to even more fervently search the Scriptures (the Bible), not to find dates, but to be more faithful in our understanding,” Camping wrote in the letter dated this month.
The preacher first inaccurately predicted the world would end in 1994. Despite his poor track record, he has gathered many followers. Some gave up their homes, entire life savings and jobs because they believed the world was ending.
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