Silent as Judgment Day hours tick by

Harold family Radio, the Christian stations network headed by Harold Camping which had spread his message of an approaching doomsday, was on Saturday playing recorded church music and devotional messages unrelated to the apocalypse.

Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.

In his latest pronouncement, he had said doomsday would begin in Asia, but with midnight local time come and gone in Tokyo and Beijing and those cities already in the early hours of May 22, there was no sign of the apocalypse.

The Oakland, California, headquarters of the network of 66 U.S. stations, which has international affiliates and had posted billboards around the country warning of a May 21 Judgment Day, were shuttered with a sign in the door that read "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!"

The headquarters, which appears to be normally closed on Saturday, was also shuttered on Friday.

"If it will be"

It was a sunny day in downtown Ferndale when I was first introduced to Family Radio by a rather conspicuous mobile billboard with a rather casual message: "Save the date, May, 21, 2011, Judgment Day." It was the largest invite I had ever received and I did not plan on attending – I had to work.

And I know what you are thinking because I am thinking it, too — why Saturday? Why not Monday morning or Tuesday afternoon, or even Sunday morning when I will want the world to end anyway because of my massive hangover. But according to Bible scholar Harold Camping, Judgment Day waits for no one.

Camping, 89, is the president of the nonprofit Christian religious radio network Family Radio, based in Oakland, CA. He is responsible for discovering – and being very vocal, if I may add — about a theory extrapolated from the Bible that the rapture will take place May 21, 2011.

The rapture is a Christian belief that the faithful will be carried into the air to meet with Christ as the end of the world unfolds.

"That is a very, very serious admonition 'cause that is the nature of the believer," said Gunther Von Harringa, 59, about the thought-provoking advertisements. "God tells us to do it."

The need to spread the word to the masses through a media campaign of fliers, billboards and even motorcade is fueled by the belief that if you know of impending doom and you do not warn others, you are just as responsible for their ill fate.

Ohio-based Harringa is the international director of Bible Ministries and a big follower of Camping's theory. This is the second end of the world prediction for Camping – he also predicted the end of the world in 1994 – but maybe the second time's a charm.

"I would not say it is his belief," Harringa said. "It is more like what the Bible says and what it says he(God) will do.