Harold Camping has been predicting the end of the world for quite some time. He's always been wrong, but now he is insisting absotively posilutely that the earth really will end on 21 May of this year, and he's got teams of brainwashed, deluded followers roaming the country claiming the end is nigh.
I've always wondered how he comes up with his specific dates, and now here's a short article that lays the math out for us.
According to them, Noah's great flood occurred in the year 4990 B.C., 'exactly' 7000 years ago. Taking a passage from 2 Peter 3:8, in which it is said a day for God is like a thousand human years, the church reasoned that seven 'days' equals 7000 human years from the time of the flood, making 2011 the year of the apocalypse.
In its second 'proof' the exact date is revealed by working forward from the exact date of the crucifixion - April 1, 33 AD. According to their reasoning, there are exactly 722,500 days from April 1, 33 A.D. until May 21, 2011 - the alleged day of judgement. This number can be represented as follows: 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 = 722,500.
The church then argues that numbers in the bible have special meanings, with the number 5 signifying atonement or redemption, the number 10 signifying 'completeness' and the number 17 equalling heaven.
That is quite possibly the dumbest reason I have ever heard to throw away all of your belongings and go on the road screaming about the end of the world. I think humanity is in on some great conspiracy to forever disappoint my opinion of it.