Christian group predicts calamity Saturday

By Terry Evans

tevans@star-telegram.com

If you feel it shake, you're gonna bake.

If a prediction advertised on billboards across America comes true, two huge events will happen simultaneously Saturday. Upwards of 200 million Christians will disappear, and the planet will be rocked by a giant earthquake.

It's Judgment Day, according to 89-year-old Family Radio founder Harold Camping and his followers.

"There's going to be a big, worldwide earthquake, and the rapture goes simultaneously with the earthquake," said John Dekruyff, a Family Radio spokesman.

Equally terrible events will follow in the coming months before the world is destroyed with fire, Dekruyff said. "Oct. 21 will be the destruction of the world," he said.

Thanks to the massive billboard campaign, Camping's claim has gained tons of national attention, even though his previous prediction that the rapture would come in September 1994 was a bit off.

Carrying Camping's latest prediction, a bunch of billboards have gone up around Dallas-Fort Worth warning people to get right with God before Saturday. The campaign is promoted by the producers of a Christian website in Raleigh, N.C.

The specific time of Saturday's event has not been predicted, according to Allison Warden, a spokeswoman for wecanknow.com. Warden said her family bought some of the billboards and estimated that there are more than 530 of them across the country, paid for by various groups.

Instead, there will be a "rolling rapture." It will move gradually through the time zones, beginning at the international date line, and the first major landmass it will reach is New Zealand, Warden said.

Others say not to cancel your Saturday plans.

The Rev. Michael Dean, senior pastor at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, said that a Judgment Day is in the future.

But the date, that's privileged information, he says.

In Acts 1:7, one of the last things Jesus says is that it is not for anyone "to know the seasons and the times that have been set by the father," Dean said.

"The other thing that we have to consider is what God says about false prophets," Dean said. "He was very clear about the track record of false prophets and that they are to be shunned, and he deals with them severely."

Newell Williams, president and professor of church history at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, points out that Camping is far from the first to predict Judgment Day.

"The most famous date-setter in American history is William Miller, a farmer in New York who thought Jesus would return about the year 1843," Williams said.

When the time passed and Jesus didn't show up, Miller revised his prediction, then revised it again when that date passed, then yet again, Williams said.

In baseball lingo, that would be called going 0-for-4.

Some groups are using the prediction to get out their own message.

Zachary Moore of the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason -- the atheistic group that recently sponsored bus advertisements saying "Millions of Americans are good without God" -- is having a rapture party Saturday at Cedar Hill State Park.

Moore feels sorry for people who believe that they'll be taken up to heaven that day.

"There are people who have spent their life savings advertising for this event," he said. "Some have budgeted so that their money runs out Saturday. That's the real tragedy."

Fortunately, Moore said, most Christians see how ridiculous Judgment Day predictions are.

Williams agreed on that point.

"I don't think that the Bible is a text with secrets that can be unlocked by which specific future events can be predicted and dated," he said.

So go ahead, have the garage sale. Mow the yard. Plan on watching Game 3 of the Mavs-Thunder series.

Chances are, even most religious leaders say, we'll survive -- again.

This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.

Terry Evans, 817-390-7620

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