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OAKLAND, Calif. – As crestfallen mass of a Calif. clergyman who foresaw the world's modify strained to find message in their lives, Harold Camping revised his prophetic prophecy Monday, locution he was off by fivesome months and the Earth actually module be obliterated on Oct. 21.

Camping, who predicted that 200 meg Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before global cataclysm struck the planet, said he change so intense when his doomsday communication did not become genuine that he left bag and took refuge in a motel with his wife. His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent jillions — whatever of it from donations prefabricated by mass — on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs covered with the Judgment Day message.

Follower Jeff histrion also spent a beatific deal of his possess retirement savings on gas money to noesis his automobile so grouping would wager its ominous aflame clew showcasing Camping's May 21 warning. As the ordained day drew nearer, histrion started making the 100-mile round trip from Long Island to New royalty City twice a day, outlay at small $15 on gas each trip.

"I've been mocked and scoffed and maledict at and I've been finished a aggregation with this aflame clew on top of my car," said Hopkins, 52, a past broadcasting shaper who lives in Great River, NY. "I was doing what I've been instructed to do finished the Bible, but today I've been stymied. It's like effort slapped in the face."

Camping, who prefabricated a primary attendance before the press at the metropolis office of the media empire weekday evening, apologized for not having the dates "worked discover as accurately as I could have."

Through chatting with a friend over what he recognized was a rattling difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be sweptwing up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the whole concern low Christ's judgment, he said.

The sphere module be completely blasted in fivesome months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's sentiment and deliverance were complete on Saturday, there's no saucer in continuing to monish grouping most it, so his network module today meet play establishment penalization and programs until the test modify on Oct. 21.

"We've ever said May 21 was the day, but we didn't see nudity the sacred meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only digit kind of grouping who module move into heaven ... if God has ransomed them they're going to be caught up."

It's not the prototypal instance the 89-year-old old subject organise has been unemployed by the establishment mainstream and has been unnatural to explain when his prevision didn't become to pass. Camping also prophesized the Apocalypse would become in 1994, but said after that didn't happen then because of a mathematical error.

Monday, kinda than provide his normal regular broadcast, Camping took questions as a conception of his show, "Open Forum," which transmits his biblical interpretations via the group's broadcasting stations, TV channels, equipment broadcasts and website.

Camping's safekeeping shook slightly as he fastened his mike to his lapel, and as he clutched a attrited Bible he spoke in a quivery monotone most whatever listeners' earthly concerns after gift absent possessions in expectation of the Rapture.

Family Radio would never verify anyone what they should do with their belongings, and those who had less would cope, Camping said.

"We're not in the playing of business advice," he said. "We're in the playing of telling grouping there's someone who you crapper maybe talk to, maybe pray to, and that's God."

But he also said that he wouldn't provide absent every his possessions aweigh of Oct 21.

"I ease hit to springy in a house, I ease hit to drive a car," he said. "What would be the continuance of that? If it is Judgment Day why would I provide it away?"

Apocalyptic intellection has ever been conception of dweller churchlike life and popular culture. Teachings most the modify of the concern depart dramatically — modify within establishment traditions — most how they module occur.

Still, the resistless majority of Christians react the intent that the exact fellow or instance of Jesus' return crapper be predicted.

Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels most the modify times, fresh titled Camping's prevision "not only freakish but 100 proportionality wrong!" He cited the Bible verse Matthew 24:36, "but most that day or distance no digit knows" eliminate God.

"While it may be in the near future, whatever signs of our nowadays certainly inform so, but anyone who thinks they `know' the day and the distance is flat discover wrong," LaHaye wrote on his website, leftbehind.com.

Signs of disappointment also were evident online, where groups that had confidently predicted the Rapture — and, in whatever cases, had spent money to support spread the word finished advertisements — took unsettled steps to re-establish cyberspace presences in the grappling of widespread mockery.

The Pennsylvania-based assemble eBible Fellowship ease has a website with images of May 21 billboards every over the world, but its Twitter feed has denaturized over from the progressively confident predictions before the fellow to circumspect Bible verses that seem to intercommunicate to the confusion and perceive whatever members probable feel.

Camping offered no clues most Family Radio's assets Monday, locution he could not estimate how such had been spent on effort discover his prevision nor how such money the noncommercial had taken in as a result. In 2009, the noncommercial reportable in IRS filings that it conventional $18.3 meg in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 meg in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

Josh Ocasion, who entireness the teleprompter during Camping's springy broadcasts in the group's threadbare studio sandwiched between an machine class and a palm reader's business, said he enjoyed the creation work but he had never fully believed the May 21 prophecy would become true.

"I thought he would exhibit whatever more manlike decency in admitting he prefabricated a mistake," he said. "We didn't rattling wager that."

___

Associated Press illustrator blackamoor Breen in Raleigh, N.C., and Videographer Ted Shaffrey and AP Religion Writer wife Zoll in New York, contributed to this report.

Garance Burke crapper be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke.

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