It’s the end of the world, and we feel fine!

Well, here we are. Still here.

Despite dramatic and widely publicised predictions that the Rapture—where true believers fly to heaven while everyone else suffers on earth—would take place on May 21, the day came to a close with a whimper instead of a highly anticipated bang.

Harold Camping, 89, who founded a California-based Christian broadcast chain called Family Radio, was behind the faulty doomsday prediction.

He told CNN that a series of earthquakes would roil the globe on May 21 until the earth is destroyed, and the “people who died as true believers, they will come out of their tombs with their glorified spiritual bodies and will be caught up to be with Christ. … For the unbelievers, the moment they die, they will never again have conscious existence.” The dead bodies of heathens would then be “thrown out of the grave and the way the Bible describes it, be like dung or manure,” he said.

Although Camping’s version of events didn’t happen exactly as predicted, a 3.6 magnitude earthquake rattled the San Francisco Bay Area at 7:04 p.m., an hour after the Rapture was slated to begin.

A nation of skeptics

But Camping’s message was generally met with incredulity and mockery in the United States. Comedian David Letterman made a few quips about it on his nightly TV programme, and the event has launched a cottage industry of Rapture T-shirts (my favourite slogans: “Rapture Reject” and “UGH. You’re Still Here?” 5.21.11).

Across the country, Rapture parties were announced and  publicised online . I attended one such fete myself, where non-believers were encouraged to stay past midnight, the final hour of the Rapture, to finish our drinks since there’s “no need for leftovers when the end is nigh,” according to the e-mail invitation.

It was ultimately difficult to take Camping seriously because this is not the first time the 89-year-old radio broadcaster has made such bold and off-base forecasts. He previously predicted the Rapture in 1994, and penned a book about the religious doctrine behind his impaired prognostication.

Furthermore, Camping is a UC Berkeley-trained engineer who has no formal religious training; he based his Rapture augury on a calculation using dates he found in the Bible that he then adjusted to the Gregorian calendar.

But even fundamentalist Christian groups, citing Matthew (24:36-37), took issue with Camping’s soothsaying, arguing that the Bibles states that “no one knows," when Christ will return.

“I am as sure of the return of Jesus Christ to planet earth some day, as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow," wrote a blogger for the Christian Post. “But I have no idea when, nor will I engage in speculation…”

Going to extremes

Still, a number of Camping’s devotees embraced his divination—and with great aplomb. According to The Bay Citizen , some followers emptied their bank accounts to support the campaign, and one man said he would risk getting fired at work in order to proselytise.

When nothing happened on Saturday evening at the appointed hour, some of Camping’s followers responded with utter disbelief. “I do not understand why…,” one New York follower who spent $140,000 on Rapture ads told   Reuters as he stood in Times Square at 6 p.m. “I do not understand why nothing has happened.”

Meanwhile, theologists and Christian leaders said Camping was leading people horribly astray. Dave Nederhood, a pastor at Christian Reformed Church in Alameda, told The New York Times that he worried about Camping’s followers who had left jobs or given away their worldly possessions in anticipation of the Rapture. “This guy is not an evangelical, he’s not a minister,” Nederhood told The Times. “He is self-deluded.”

A global campaign

The prediction received an especially buzzy reaction because it was announced via a global multimillion-dollar ad campaign—some 200 billboard ads written in Sanskrit were posted  throughout India alone.

Stateside, billboards proclaimed “Have you heard the awesome news? The End of the World is Almost Here!” Another eye-catching campaign read: “Judgment Day May 21… Cry Mightily Unto God.”

Camping spoke with utmost certainty about the Rapture, and Family Radio’s web site and many of the Judgment Day ads confirmed that there was no doubting the event because “The Bible Guarantees It.”

The Family Radio leader has not yet made a public statement about his erroneous prognostication. Although he was off the mark yet again with the May 21 prophecy, there’s apparently more to come.

By Camping’s calculation, October 21, 2011 marks The End of the World, and Camping has predicted that “ fire, brimstone and plagues ” is in store for some of us.