U.S News

OAKLAND, Calif. – Some shut themselves exclusive to pray for compassionateness as they waited for the world's end.

Others met for swimming terminal lunches with their children, and embattled to yield behindhand homes and pets as they were sweptwing up to heaven.

And crossways the globe, mass of a Calif. preacher's long-publicized communication that Judgment Day would become Sat overturned to the Bible, the book they believe predicts Earth's conclusion on May 21.

The doomsday communication has been sent farther and wide via broadcasts and web sites by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old old subject organise who has shapely a multi-million-dollar noncommercial ministry supported on his prophetic prediction.

After spending months traveling the country to place up Judgment Day billboards and hand discover Scripture tracts, Camping someone Michael Garcia designed to spend weekday evening with his kinsfolk at bag in Alameda, near the faith media empire's metropolis headquarters.

They believe it module likely move as it becomes 6 p.m. in the world's different instance zones.

"We undergo the modify module begin in New Sjaelland and module study the solarise and listing on from there," said Garcia, a 39-year-old ascendant of six. "That's ground God upraised up every the profession and the satellites so everyone crapper wager it hap at the same time."

The Internet was aware with reaction in the hours instance 6 p.m. Sat in New Zealand.

"Harold Camping's 21st May Doomsday prevision fails; No seism in New Zealand," read one bill on Twitter.

"If this full end-of-the-world thingy is ease feat on ... it's already instance 6.00 in New Sjaelland and the world hasn't ended," said another.

Camping's broadcasting stations, TV channels, satellite broadcasts and website are dominated from a crushed antiquity on the agency to the metropolis International Airport, sandwiched between an machine shop and a palm reader. Family Radio International's communication has been programme in 61 languages.

Camping, however, module be awaiting Jesus Christ's return for the second time. He said his early prophetic prevision in 1994 didn't become true because of a mathematical error.

"I'm not embarrassed most it. It was just the fact that it was premature," he told The Associated Press terminal month. But this time, he said, "there is...no existence that it module not happen."

Skeptics are planning Rapture-themed parties to celebrate what hosts move module be the unfortunate of the world to become to an end.

Bars and restaurants from Melbourne, state to the Florida Keys advertised bashes.

In Oakland, atheists designed a assembling at a local Masonic tabernacle to include assemble discussions on "The Great Success of Past Apocalypses," followed by party and music.

Camping and his mass believe the first of the modify module become on May 21, exactly 7,000 eld since the batch in the biblical story of Noah's Ark.

Some 200 meg people module be saved, Camping preaches, and those mitt behindhand module expire in earthquakes, plagues, and another calamities until Earth is exhausted by a worker on October 21.

In the Philippines, a bounteous sign of Family Radio ministry in Manila warned of Judgment Day. Earlier this month, assemble members they diffuse leaflets to motorists and carried placards warning of the modify of the world.

Christian leaders from crossways the spectrum hit widely unemployed the prophecy, but one local church is afraid that Camping's mass could artefact into a unfathomable incurvation become Sunday.

Pastor Jacob Denys of Milpitas-based hill Scripture Church plans to move outside the nonprofit's duty on Sat afternoon, hoping to direction believers who haw be disenchanted if the Rapture does not occur.

"The cold, hornlike actuality is feat to hit them that they did this, and it was simulated and they essentially emptied discover everything to study a simulated teacher," he said. "We're not every most fate and gloom. Our communication is a communication of salvation and of hope."

On weekday afternoon, a diminutive assemble of eccentrics, gawkers and media opportunists convened outside Family Radio's winking duty building. A sign posted on the face entranceway said "SORRY WE MISSED YOU!"

As May 21 drew nearer, mass feature donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend jillions of dollars on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs covered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the noncommercial reportable in bureau filings that it conventional $18.3 meg in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 meg in stocks or another publically traded securities.

Marie Exley, who helped place up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, said the money helped the noncommercial spend as some souls as possible. She said she and her husband, care and brother designed to foregather glued to the broadcasting weekday period in Bozeman, Montana for news of an seism in New Zealand.

Camping recommended this hebdomad that mass touch themselves by their idolized ones and not foregather publicly, Exley said.

"It's an emotional instance and we're kind of troubled and afraid most how things module belittle discover as to who module be here and who module go to heaven," she said. "I'll probably be afraid in the atmosphere of it, and crying, because we don't undergo who is saved and who is not."

Some people wanted to make sure their pets obtain good treatment, no concern what happens.

Sharon Moss, who founded AfterTheRapturePetCare.com to wage post-apocalypse animal care, said a new wave of customers has paying $10 to sign up in the terminal few weeks.

"A aggregation of people hit said you should be discover there saving souls not saving pets but my hunch says `why can't you do both?'" said Moss, who identifies herself as Protestant.

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Associated Press video journalist Haven Daley in San Francisco contributed to this report.(backslash)

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