There have been many cults that waited for the end when their leader had it all figured out to the day. So far absolutely none has been right.
I remember a woman cult leader who took her followers into the desert on judgement day. They waited and chanted. Then they went home.
She recalculated and came up with a new date. They dutifully went back into the desert and waited. Still nothing.
When will people understand that religious leaders are lying. They know nothing of the afterlife. If god exists. they know nothing about what he wants and thinks. When a leader tells you this stuff, he wants your money.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/witness8.htm Jehovahs Winesses have been doing this for a century. When they come to your door explain to them they all died several times.
From your first link:
[QUOTE=God]
…But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father…
[/quote]
How does this Matthew chap know what the Godfather knows? 
Well, Matthew claims here to be quoting Jesus Christ, the alleged Son of God.
Remember, I’m not claiming the Bible is an authority–I’m saying Harold Camping claims the Bible to be an authority. He’s claiming to have derived something from the Bible (the exact day of the End of the World) which the Bible itself says is impossible to know.
(If Camping were a supercomputer, he’d presumably be saying “Error! Error! Er…ror!” at this point and we’d have to beam him off the ship before he exploded. Since he’s just the latest in a very long line of people who have confidently asserted that the world is gonna end next Tuesday, you betcha, this time it’s for real and totally unlike all those other guys–THIS time it’s money in the bank, man!–I assume on May 22 Camping will just go off and start calculating the next sure-enough date for Judgment Day. Or become a Hare Krishna, whichever.)
That story really bothered me when I heard it, to the point where I’m scared that some people might actually go so far as to harm their kids on or shortly after May 22. It’s cast such a pall over me wrt this story that I find myself unable to treat it with the disrespectful levity that it deserves.
But the 22nd is a Sunday.
P.S. The Yes We Can Know website is longer, so they win. 
Not to veer off topic, but why would the world have to end, anyway? Wouldn’t us ending be sufficient?
Here’s your problem. Intelligent discussion would simply dismiss Camping as an imbecile and Christians as deluded in general. Eliminate those from the options and you can have no intelligent discussion, just a fool asking questions.
This could be a good entrepreneurial opportunity. Some people are offering post-rapture pet care.
Hi…long-dormant doper here…
I give Camping credit for gentility. His radio show, “Open Forum,” is produced with a lot of naivete, but he tries very hard to keep the discussion formal, proper, and Biblical. When people call and ask, for instance, if Obama is the anti-Christ, he refuses to indulge such discussion.
He also has an intriguing epistemology: he asks: “If we were educated Jewish scholars in 5 BC, given the holy scriptures of the time, could we realize the imminent birth of the Messiah?” He thinks so, and attempts to use the same techniques to deduce the dates of the events in The Revelation.
scissorhead has it exactly right: Camping is erroneous, but I do not believe he is false. Camping is actually attempting to analyze the Bible in a vague scientific manner. However, Camping also believes in personal revelation, and concludes that one must be “inspired” before one can receive truth from reading the Bible. So, his techniques are both objective and subjective.
Anyway, I think that Camping is a “genteel loon,” and, while he is (I think) wholly in error, I think his heart and his soul are very much in the right place, and, to be frank, I wish more Christians were a bit more like him. I will feel sorry for him – and will not laugh – when May 22nd dawns.
Trinopus
I just heard about it for the first time about an hour ago.
People still fall for this crap?
I was raised Baptist. As I was taught, when Jesus said, “No man knows the day or the hour,” he didn’t mean, “but it’ll be in code in some books my followers write.”
I’m not a practicing Christian now. I would say, when Jesus said, “This generation will not pass away until all this is fulfilled,” he meant the generation to whom he was speaking. The Second Coming is an expired prophecy. It’s gone bad, it’s no good, it’s not reliable, it’s proven false.
We have real problems. Overfishing, global warming, birds falling out of the sky, overreliance on high-yield cereal crops that overrely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and politicians who don’t do math. Silly doomsday prophecies based on long-dead false prophecies aren’t helping.
This is the most charitable explanation. And it is at least plausible that some of the doomsday prophecies associated with Jesus were written (albeit quite possibly after the fact) about the razing of Jerusalem.
Well, there is John’s Apocalypse, which appears to be written after 70 A.D. and looking forward to…something. That said, I’m not sure the particular religious movement John was writing to maps onto any present sect of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
This is the best rhetorical takedown of the “some of that generation are still alive” handwave I have ever seen. Bravo.
*…wait.
May 21 on the Julian calendar was 13 days earlier. That would be May 8, this Sunday. My neighbor’s cat mysteriously disappeared around then (OK, maybe between Thursday & Saturday.)
Jesus has taken kitties to heaven! Aaaagh!*
My grandmother died at the age of 95. She was 10 when 1900 came in. She said the end of the world nuts were crazy and everywhere then. They were terrified at the new century being the end of the world.
This crap is not new. There are always people who are ready to believe anything they are told by someone who pretends to have a personal connection to god.
Ha! Yes it is, but about half our population in the US works on weekends. My work schedule used to be Wednesday through Sunday.
If you DON’T work weekends, then you’ll puke before ya get to church due to the hangover I mentioned, which should be an even bigger sign to stop listening to the usual rhetoric at the weekly well behaved children / fashion show. 
Is it wrong of me to hope child services takes their kids away on May 20th?
These predictions always remind me of the old *Beyond the Fringe * sketch with Peter Cook as the prophet. Link to script- also available on You Tube but I’ve no access at the moment.
I like the final line after the world fails to end:
Since they have no plans(let alone means) to feed their children after that date, I think that there is a very good case.
Bingo. Those who believe the world’s gonna end on May 21 should have sold everything they own, effective May 22, in order to raise money for their last push to win converts to Christ before Judgment Day arrives.
If they haven’t, then it would be hard to take them seriously, if my days of not taking them seriously hadn’t already come to a middle.
So he’s already sold his broadcast licenses, effective May 22?
But what about Occam’s razor?
A day or two ago, one of my coworkers told me he saw a man who was wearing a shirt that said Judgment Day was going to be May 21. I said I would be interested to know if the guy was planning to wash the shirt after wearing it. If he is, he obviously doesn’t have faith.