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SALT LAKE CITY — A prediction that the world will end Saturday is getting lots of buzz in the media, but few Salt Lake area Christians are taking it seriously.
The most common reaction of those Christians contacted was to quote the well-known biblical verse found in Matthew 24:36 — "But of that day and hour knoweth no man …”
JoDee Allred, a secretary at Anchor Baptist Church in Holladay, quoted that scripture, then added, “The Lord’s coming back, no question, but it’s hard to put a date on it. I still have my hair appointment Saturday.”
“I’m prepared for him to come Saturday as much as any other day,” Allred added.
"The Lord's coming back, no question, but it's hard to put a date on it. I still have my hair appointment Saturday… "I'm prepared for him to come Saturday as much as any other day." - JoDee Allred, Anchor Baptist Church
Eugene Guerrero, pastor of the New Life Center United Pentecostal Church in West Valley City, was also quick to quote the same scripture.
“We expect him to come tomorrow, we expect him to come today, and we look to the future for him to come,” Guerrero said.
The much-reported prediction that Judgment Day is imminent comes from 89-year-old radio evangelist Harold Camping, who is based in Oakland, Calif.
Roughly, Camping arrives at his date by adding 7,000 years to 4990 B.C., which he says was the date of the Old Testament flood. Then, by subtracting one — for the lack of a year zero — Camping arrives at 2011.
While Camping has been warning the world via his radio show that he broadcasts through a chain of Christian stations he founded, the story likely got its media “legs” through a nationwide billboard campaign.
That campaign included a buy of YESCO billboards throughout the western U.S., including five in Utah, a YESCO employee confirmed. Two of those billboards are electronic. Located along freeways in South Salt Lake and West Valley City, they include a running countdown to Judgment Day.
One Camping follower, Staten Island, N.Y., retiree Robert Fitzpatrick, added his own contribution to the sign campaign. According to numerous media accounts, Fitzpatrick spent $140,000 of his life savings to buy 1,000 New York subway ads that warn: “Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever! Judgment Day May 21, 2011.”
Fitzpatrick gets more specific than Camping. He sets his predicted earthquake at 6 p.m. Eastern time Saturday. Then, he says, the Rapture — the belief that Christ's faithful will be caught up to Heaven — could happen moments later.
Camping’s radio chain includes Salt Lake’s KUFR FM 91.7, according to his website. A station representative could not be reached for comment.
To be clear, Camping does not predict the end of the world on Saturday, but only the beginning of “the Day of Judgment,” which includes the Rapture, when 200 million people worldwide will be caught up and saved, he says.
And he believes the world’s actual end will come in October.
Don Rivera, a part-time pastor at Salt Lake’s Potter’s House, says Camping’s timeline falls far outside what many evangelical Christians believe. Even if the Rapture and Day of Judgment do happen Saturday, the end of the world would not come until seven years later, according to Rivera.
But all the publicity Camping has gotten has been a good thing for Rivera. It's given him the chance to talk religion and End Times with around 30 people at work.
“To them it’s not even an interest; it’s more curious,” he said. “They’re not concerned because they’re not believers.”
For Christians and others who may be tired of hearing such predictions, the Imam Muhammed Mehtar of the Islamic Center of Greater Salt Lake brings a different perspective.
Muslims do believe that Christ, whom they count among the greatest of prophets, will come to Earth prior to the end of time, he says. And various warning signs will predate Christ's coming as well.
But Mehtar adds, “One thing Islam never does is predict the end of times — never.”
Email:lbrubaker@desnews.com
