Harold Camping: Laughing on way to bank

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Dinosaur

Rational Skeptic
Valued Senior Member
Many consider Harold Camping to be a fool. Actually he is a charlatan.

His ministry collects millions every year & has made a huge amount due to his end times predictions.

I wonder if he will repeat the scam by claiming he made a slight mistake, & predict that the end will come next year. I am sure he will not admit to being a fool or a charatan & he must be one or the other. My vote is for charatan.

I am an atheist who believes that most of the ministers, priests, & rabbis are basically honest people who are likely to believe what they preach.

I also believe that those higher up in religous heirarchies are charlatans who might not even be believers. The higher up, the more one is likely to be in the game for power, money, and/or prestige rather than true religious faith.

A charlatan can do a good job of acting pious, even claiming to have messages from god if it suits his purposes. The honest believer often admits to doubts & failings & would never lie about having a message from god.

To me, the worst are those who run electronic churches.

Circa 35 years ago, I had a long commute & would listen to the radio. I looked for talk shows. One day I happened upon the last 5 minutes of a Peter Popoff show. Due to his name & the nature of the last 5 minutes, I thought I had happened upon a Saturday night live type of satire.

The next time I listened to his entire broadcast & was stunned to discover that he was not making jokes. At that time his gimmick was to interrupt an appeal for donations by claiming to have just had a message from god. Something like one of the following.
I am being told about a couple with a errant son into drugs & other bad stuff. I am being told that a donation from the parents will result in his finding his way to god.

I am being told about a family having trouble selling thier home. If they donate to the lord, a buyer will come.

God gives back tenfold to those who contribute.​
I think he moved into faith healing on TV. I have not checked into what he is currently doing.

BTW: Does anyone remember Oral Roberts who claimed that god would call him home if he did not collect enough to build his hospital? The Doonesbury comic strip had fun treating it as a hostage situation.
Interview with Oral's son: Does god want the money in small unmarked bills?

Interview with Oliver North: Do not pay! It will encourage more hostage taking. The next victim might be somebody we all respect like John Wayne.​
 
Dinosaur said:
One day I happened upon the last 5 minutes of a Peter Popoff ... I have not checked into what he is currently doing.
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He got PWNED by James Randi, the sceptic debunker. Randi caught PP using an ear piece in his faith healing 'acts' where his wife would radio people's details and ailments to him so he could pretend to have a message from God about Mr Smith, of 10 Road Street, Townsville, and his [insert illness here]. Randi recorded the radio communications and exposed him on national television. PP went bankrupt a year later.

Now he's back and scamming people out of $10 million a year. Why people still give him money I don't know.
 
joepistole said:
This is no the first time Camping has made this kind of prediction. The last time was in 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping#Philosophy_and_teachings
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From reading the link i do not see any record of this campling guy stating He was a prophet and that his predictions came as a message from God.

He seems to be a guy who made calculations and came to a date when He thought the rapture would happen. As far as i know he never added the old "So sayeth the Lord" to him predictions.

So i cannot see how he can be called a false prophet. He can be called a guy who made the wrong call twice. And seeing that he is human i guess that is understandable.


All Praise The Ancient of Days
 
Adstar: You are either gullible or just accept all preachers as honest & ethical.
So i cannot see how he can be called a false prophet. He can be called a guy who made the wrong call twice. And seeing that he is human i guess that is understandable.​
Considering the money he collects via his electronic church, he looks like a charlatan to me, not some jerk who made an honest mistake twice.

The electronic church would not bother me so much if it were not for those who contribute more than they can afford.

Swaggert, Baker, Roberts, Popoff, Graham, et cetera collected millions per month in their peak years. It did not come from wealthy or even well off contributors.
 
Why did dinosaur wait until after the 21st to ask this? Could there really have been any doubt that a bunch of questionable calculations based on a book of very questionable origins would mean nothing? The reason anyone paid attention to this nutcase was that he was just crazy enough for entertainment purposes, but not too crazy to be scary.
 
Dinosaur said:
Many consider Harold Camping to be a fool. Actually he is a charlatan.

His ministry collects millions every year & has made a huge amount due to his end times predictions.

I wonder if he will repeat the scam by claiming he made a slight mistake, & predict that the end will come next year. I am sure he will not admit to being a fool or a charatan & he must be one or the other. My vote is for charatan.
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He already did:

CALIFORNIA preacher Howard Camping says his prophecy that the world would end was off by five months because Judgment Day actually will come on October 21.

The independent Christian radio host said today the apocalypse or the so-called global "Rapture" will come five months after May 21, the original date he predicted.

Mr Camping says he felt so terrible when his doomsday prediction did not come true on Saturday that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife.

(Source)
​



How is this man not in jail yet?
 
What should he be in jail for? Last I heard, getting stupid people to send you their money wasn't a crime. It may be the epitome of douchebaggery, but not really a prosecutable offense.
 
Dinosaur said:
Adstar: You are either gullible or just accept all preachers as honest & ethical.
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My post made no call on the preachers integrity either positive or negative. Of course as i believe in a second coming rapture (after a great tribulation) i never believed i predictions of the rapture that support a pre-tribulation rapture. So i have always been confident that these predictions of a pre-tribulation rapture will never happen and the ones who give them are simply wrong.

The OP put the question to the theist, will they now stop believing because of false prophecy. My reply was to give understanding to correct the perception that Camping was claiming to be a Prophet, and from what i read he never made the “i am a prophet of God” claim.

But even if He did claim to be a prophet it would make no difference to my faith. The Bible foretells that during the end times there will be many false prophets pedalling deception and lies and from my time on Christian and religious forums i have seen hundreds of false prophecies, far more then you have read about in the media i assure you.

I have my own thoughts as to the end times and the second coming of Jesus/rapture and i have shared them before on this forum but i never claimed it to be a prophet, My thoughts are deductions from a calculation based on the bible.



Considering the money he collects via his electronic church, he looks like a charlatan to me, not some jerk who made an honest mistake twice.
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Well the money issue is a totally different and separate issue to the prediction/speculation he made about the day of the rapture. He may well be a religious scammer, there are many about.



The electronic church would not bother me so much if it were not for those who contribute more than they can afford.
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Well everyone who is a Christian should investigate claims by preachers and there integrity with money. People are responsible for what they do with there money. Sadly many end up giving their money to unworthy organizations. I wish more people would just give their money to something more worthy like an Aids orphanage in Malawi, Be assured i have never donated a cent to mr Camping as i do not agree with his doctrine on this issue.



 
gmilam said:
Of course "false" and "prophet" go hand in hand... I think Dinosaur's just saying he's a liar.
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Well i disagree with your "false" and "prophet" go hand in hand statement.

But you cannot be sure that Camping is a liar. He may have truly believed in his prediction on both occasions.

Being wrong about something does not necessarily translate into automatic liar status. People can be wrong but still genuine in that they made their prediction honestly.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
 
Dinosaur said:
Many consider Harold Camping to be a fool. Actually he is a charlatan.
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This whole End Times industry is a replay of the 19th century Psychic Industry.
It needs laws to protect the gullible, but no-one in the US dares to do it.
 
Adstar said:
Well i disagree with your "false" and "prophet" go hand in hand statement.

But you cannot be sure that Camping is a liar. He may have truly believed in his prediction on both occasions.

Being wrong about something does not necessarily translate into automatic liar status. People can be wrong but still genuine in that they made their prediction honestly.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
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Did I call him a liar? No. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really believed he was on the inside track of some important information. That puts him in the fool category.
 
I have no idea what the difference is between this man who promised the end of the world and received money, and your ordinary priest who promises life after death and receives money.
 
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gmilam said:
What should he be in jail for? Last I heard, getting stupid people to send you their money wasn't a crime. It may be the epitome of douchebaggery, but not really a prosecutable offense.
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Because it is fraudulent.

He asked people to send him money, he asked and advised them to get their affairs in order (resign from work, remove children from schools, etc)..

It is fair to say that these people would not have done any of that had he not encouraged and urged them to do so. So now he has another few months to pull in a few more millions.

It's obscene and his show should be shut down.
 
Bells said:
Because it is fraudulent.

He asked people to send him money, he asked and advised them to get their affairs in order (resign from work, remove children from schools, etc)..

It is fair to say that these people would not have done any of that had he not encouraged and urged them to do so. So now he has another few months to pull in a few more millions.

It's obscene and his show should be shut down.
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While I agree with you in that it's obscene, I don't think he's broken any laws. Marketing departments, politicians and preachers have been conning stupid people out of money for years.

I mean seriously, what sort of preparations does one need to make for the end of the world? Well, other than grabbing a few pints and some peanuts...
 
I don't feel sorry for the ones who gave up everything, but I do for the children they've dragged along with them. Hopefully they see what their parents didn't, and probably still don't. Some of the quotes of people who are still willing to listen to him and give more donations are real head-on-desk thumping ones. Barnum was an optimist...it's not just one born every minute.
 
gmilam said:
While I agree with you in that it's obscene, I don't think he's broken any laws. Marketing departments, politicians and preachers have been conning stupid people out of money for years.

I mean seriously, what sort of preparations does one need to make for the end of the world? Well, other than grabbing a few pints and some peanuts...
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Well apparently the best and ideal preparation according to Camping was to send his radio network (ie him) funds to help advertise and 'save more people'. The man has made millions and millions.

And yet, one news report I read stated that his radio show was still advertising for his show on Monday - irony. The man belongs in jail for fraud.
 
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