US doomsday preacher dies at 92
The US preacher who used his evangelical radio network and thousands of billboards to broadcast the end of the world has died at age 92.
Family Radio Network marketing manager Nina Romero said Harold Camping died at his home on Sunday.
She said he had been hospitalised after falling.
Camping was a retired civil engineer who first predicted the Rapture would happen in September 1994.
When Judgment Day didn't come to pass, he blamed it on a mathematical error.
The fundamentalist preacher's widely-publicised his claims the world would end - many times. Photo: AP.
Camping's most widely spread prediction was that the Rapture would happen on May 21, 2011.
His independent Christian media empire spent millions of dollars - some of it from donations made by followers who quit their jobs and sold all their possessions- to spread the word on more than 5000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.
After his second failed prediction in May 2011, the preacher again revised his prophecy, saying he had been off by five months.
Harold Camping died before any of the Raptures he predicted on several occasions came to be. Photo: Reuters.
Camping said he felt so terrible after the cataclysmic event didn't occur in October 2011 either that he took refuge in a motel.
He acknowledged his apocalyptic prophecy had been wrong and posted a letter on his ministry's site telling his followers he had no evidence the world would end anytime soon, and wasn't interested in considering future dates.
"We realise that many people are hoping they will know the date of Christ's return," Camping wrote in March 2012.
"We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing."
Camping wrote about 30 books and booklets over the years.
Family Radio Network said in its statement that he is survived by a wife of 71 years.
