Harold Camping Oct. 21 Rapture: Westboro Baptist Church to Protest 6B Funerals
The Westboro Baptist Church plans on picketing the world's funerals just in case Harold Camping's rapture prediction takes form.
The controversial group, notorious for picketing dead U.S military funerals, has called for supporters to gather this evening and protest the six billion funerals that would occur if the world comes to end on Oct. 21.
The church also put up a huge pole outside its Kansas headquarters to count down the end of the world in a similar style to the ball over Times Square at New Year's Eve, according to the Bennington Vale Press.
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The pole displays a life-sized crucifix with an effigy of Harold Camping in drag. Its descent is scheduled for 6 p.m. local time Friday.
Camping initially predicted that doomsday would occur on May 21, and believers would ascend to heaven, leaving the rest of the world to perish.
The world didn't end on May 21 but Camping says God warned us that day, and that the “spiritual judgment” came at that time.
"What really happened this past May 21st? What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God's salvation program would be finished on that day. For the next five months, except for the elect (the true believers), the whole world is under God's final judgment," the Family Radio Web site offered an official interpretation.
The Family Radio president said that end of the world is now certain.
"We can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on Oct. 21, 2011," he says.
Camping bases his prediction on two passages from the bible. One where God tells Noah that he will bring a flood in seven days, and the other stating that for God, a day is like a thousand years; Camping thinks the world will end exactly 7000 years after the flood.
