Harold Camping
Harold Camping served as the President of Family Radio starting in 1958, a broadcasting group which eventually reached over 150 American radio markets. He also served as an on-air broadcaster, authored numerous books, and created a calendar describing the age of the earth based on biblical evidence.
Camping established in his work that the Creation occurred in the year 11,013 BCE. As part of his calendar research, Camping discovered that a biblical calendar had been concealed, a reference made in the Books of Daniel and Revelations and that the date of the End Days is revealed in that reference. According to Camping, the end of days, beginning with the Day of Judgment, was to be May 21, 2011.
Camping previously established the date of September 6, 1994, as the probable day of the return of Jesus. These predictions and others of similar vein made in several books led to the solicitation of donations to create the publicity to warn the faithful, and presumably, those sinners who were running out of time, to prepare for the coming end. In his book We Are Almost There, Camping established May 21, 2011, as the day of the coming rapture, when approximately 200 million people worldwide would be raptured. Another publication, To God be the Glory, established October 21, 2011, as the date that the world would end. Money to spread the word of the coming end poured in.
On May 22, 2011, Camping came out of his home which had spent the previous day curtained from the world and expressed surprise at the prevailing normalcy, promising answers in the following days. On May 23 he described the rapture as having taken place, but that it was of a spiritual nature, and October 21 would be the date of the physical rapture, coincident with the end of the world. When questioned whether any of the money donated to spread the erroneous earlier messages would be returned Camping appeared to be surprised at the question responding, “We’re not at the end. Why would we return it?”
The following year Camping acknowledged the error of his prediction and said that he would no longer issue announcements regarding the timing of the end of the world. With his congregation dwindling, Camping largely withdrew from the public eye and died in December 2013. Family Radio claimed major losses of revenue following the inaccurate predictions, and no solicited funds were returned to donors.