Bob CollinsI’m going to have to start a new News Cut category — billboards. People in the Twin Cities, especially, are adept at spotting the more interesting ones.
Take today, for example. This was spotted by occasional News Cut contributor Eric Ringham, who spied it on Central Avenue NE in Minneapolis.
This is the work of Harold Camping, who says the second coming will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011. He must have people who believe it; he’s got 29,000 “likes” on Facebook, which also will be destroyed if you’re looking for the silver lining here.
His Web site contains plenty of Bible passages, but none that says that May 21 is the day. Camping, 88, says he has a mathematical formula that proves his assertion. But he doesn’t provide it.
But the Website, ReligiousTolerance.org, says this is at least the second time Camping has pinned down our demise:
Harold Camping, president of Family Radio predicted on his radio programs that the end of the world would happen sometime between 1994-SEP-5 and SEP-27. He said that he did not know the precise day because Matthew 24:36 of the Christian Scriptures says that “no man knows the day nor the hour.” He interpreted a reference in John 21:1-14 to the disciples being 200 cubits from the shore in the Sea of Galilee as meaning that there would be 2,000 years between the birth and the second coming of Jesus. He estimates that Jesus was born on 0007-OCT-4 BCE. 5
