This is the guy who predicted the world would come to an end in the spring of 2012, because “The Bible Guarantees It.”
I always had a soft spot for that goofy old bloke. He had more honor than a hell of a lot of his brethren. He very studiously kept politics out of his Bible phone-in show. People would call in and ask if Obama were the Anti-Christ, and Camping was scrupulous about not discussing it.
His numerological techniques were inspired. They were also madness. John T. Sladek used to play games with numerology, showing that you could turn anything into anything. Often hilariously, and often brilliantly. He (Sladek) once “found” a secret code in the decimal digits of pi. Magnificent. Camping (poor bloody sot) went marching down that road, and we saw where it led him.
After his triumphal blunder, he stopped broadcasting for a while (too bad, as it broke the streak of the longest-running daily Bible Q&A show ever.) But then he went right back again – the dog returneth to its vomit – and to the last insisted on his interpretation of the “End of the Church Age.”
He was one of the few Bible literalists I could ever admire. Among other things, he held an “annihilationist” view, that we don’t suffer in hell for eternity, but are simply burned away and destroyed. This, however, comes after the vast shame of our condemnation by God. Being cussed out by the Creator of All Things is at least a little daunting.
RIP.