Harold Camping’s Followers React to Epic Doomsday Fail

So it didn’t happen. Family Radio’s Harold Camping had used a complex set of mathematical equations to predict that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011.

That didn’t happen, however, and Camping is maintaining radio silence while his website remains untouched, still displaying a message that reads “00 Days Left!”

Many of his followers are now devastated, having quit their jobs and budgeted their money to that come May 21st, they wouldn’t have anything left.

Adrienne Martinez and her husband had quit their jobs and spent the last penny in their bank account towards a rented house in Orlando.

“We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won’t have anything left,” said Adrienne.

“I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God,” said Keith Bauer, who drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture.

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth,” said Bauer, a truck driver who started the trek last week, figuring that if he “worked last week, I wouldn’t have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen.”

Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent his own money on billboards proclaiming that the end was near, said he was stunned when the appointed hour came and went.

“I can’t tell you what I feel right now,” he said. “Obviously, I haven’t understood it correctly because we’re still here.”

Marie Exley, a Colorado woman who spent money on billboards in Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, said the money allowed Family Radio to reach as many people as possible.

“Some people were saying it was going to be an earthquake at that specific time in New Zealand and be a rolling judgment, but God is keeping us in our place and saying you may know the day but you don’t know the hour,” she said yesterday. “The day is not over, it’s just the morning, and we have to endure until the end.”

At around 4 p.m. local time yesterday, a group of rescuers, led by Pastor Jacob Denys of Calvary Bible Church in Milpitas, California, came in front of Camping’s Family Radio headquarter in Oakland with signs and banners offering to provide counseling to the dejected followers of Camping.

“We are here to reach out to those people who might have bought the lie (of Camping),” said Denys. He added that they’re not there to condemn anyone, saying, “What we are hoping is that we would be able to invite people who might have been affected to our church in Milpitas and hold a special service that would embrace them and reach out to them.”

The service will be held at 10 a.m. on May 22, 2011, the day after the failed Doomsday.

“Churches like ours, he (Camping) says, are of the devil, that the Holy Spirit has left the church and all is left now is a shell. Even though this is what they’ve been believing and they’ve been teaching, we love them and we care about them. We don’t want them to be hurt. Today is a hard day for them,” James Bynum, a deacon of the church, said.