Editorial: Doomsday prophecy - lunacy or miscalculation?

If California radio evangelist Harold Camping is right, faithful Christians will be caught up in the rapture later today and the wicked ones who walk this Earth will be left to wallow in misery and mayhem over the next five months.

End-of-the-world predictions are not new; in fact, they date back to the 16th century with the seer Nostradamus. Records indicate that there are more than 40 doomsday predictions on record in recent times. The year 2000 was a particularly busy one for prophetic proclamations about the millennium, resulting in many people actually preparing their homes and businesses for the huge crisis when all computers were supposed to have crashed. Well, as we all know, nothing unusual happened.

Interestingly, Mr Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer, once predicted that the world would have ended on September 4, 1994. When that failed to materialise, he blamed it on his faulty mathematics. This time, he is basing his prediction on a 50-year study of the Bible which tells him that May 21 is the 7,000th anniversary of the Great Flood, with the biblical hero, Noah.

Camping's radio programme is broadcast in 48 languages around the world and, presumably, his followers have been helping to spread the word. His Family Radio Christian Network has reportedly got a boost from all this publicity surrounding his prophecy. Here in Jamaica, the media have given the doomsday evangelical a great deal of space, which suggests that this prediction is, if not taken seriously, at least drawing tremendous interest.

extreme happenings

As people all over the world analyse some of the extreme happenings on planet earth, ranging from violent and unpredictable weather to wars and violence, many are often heard to say these are the end times and that these events can be justified by the Book of Revelations, according to many Christians.

But these predictions are met with either ridicule or fear. There are those among us whose thoughts border on hopelessness and who may latch on to such predictions wishing for an end to misery and discomfort. But is it fair to prey on the vulnerable with predictions that are often viewed as equal parts of lunacy and misinterpretation?

In his latest predictions, Mr Camping has suggested that there will be a massive earthquake much larger than the one which devastated parts of Japan. There is no scientific basis on which this particular prediction is being made.

Giving support to the end-time prediction are the astrologists who suggest that the planets will be aligned in the year 2012. Elsewhere, there are other doomsday predictions which are linked to the alignment of the planets, as will happen in 2012. But by and large, members of our local scientific community have not had much to say about it and many people are confused.

Is it enough that Mr Camping has based his damning predictions on his interpretation of the Bible? Prophecy is sometimes described as history written in advance. Could Mr Camping be wrong?

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