Case of Poor Judgment & Failed Predictions!

In this special forum timely news articles are cited that especially deal with currents events directly involving or affecting Jehovah's witnesses worldwide.

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Mary
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Case of Poor Judgment & Failed Predictions!

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(Please find below three (3) news articles that all mention the failures of the Jehovah's Witnesses, in predicting the end.)


Case of Poor Judgment - US Preacher Harold Camping
Gets It Wrong Again


New.com.au
From: AP
Article Source
May 22, 2011

THEY spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their bank accounts. And so they waited, eagerly or anxiously, for the appointed hour to arrive.

Nothing.

When 6pm came and went at various spots around the globe, and nothing extraordinary emerged. In Australia and New Zealand, early target of the prediction of Armageddon, and across the world, the deadline was greeted with scepticism and humour.

"People are making jokes like there's no tomorrow," was one of the top tweets.

In the US, Keith Bauer - who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 4800km to California for the momentous occasion - tried to take it in stride. "I had some scepticism but I was trying to push the scepticism away because I believe in God," he said outside the gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International, whose founder, Harold Camping, has been broadcasting the apocalyptic prediction for months.

"I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth." But he added, "It's God who leads you, not Harold Camping."

He now plans to hop back in his minivan and begin the cross-country drive back with his wife, young son and another family relative.

The May 21 doomsday message was sent far and wide via broadcasts and websites by Mr Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar nonprofit ministry based on his apocalyptic prediction.

The top trends on Twitter at midday included, at No. 1, #endofworldconfessions, followed by #myraptureplaylist.

Mr Camping's radio stations, TV channels, satellite broadcasts and website are controlled from a humble building sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader's business. Family Radio International's message has been broadcast in 61 languages. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn't come true because of a mathematical error.

"I'm not embarrassed about it. It was just the fact that it was premature," he told The Associated Press last month. But this time, he said, "there is...no possibility that it will not happen".

Why now?

Mr Camping and his followers believe the beginning of the end will come on May 21, exactly 7000 years since the flood in the biblical story of Noah's Ark.

Mr Camping believed that some 200 million people would be saved, and that those left behind would die in earthquakes, plagues, and other calamities until Earth is consumed by a fireball on October 21.

Christian leaders from across the spectrum widely dismissed the prophecy. One local church was concerned that Mr Camping's followers could slip into a deep depression in the aftermath of nothing.

"The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher," a pastor said. "We're not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope."

As the day drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5000 billboards and 20 recreational vehicles plastered with the doomsday message.

In the Philippines, a big billboard of Family Radio ministry in Manila warned of Judgment Day. Earlier this month, group members there distributed leaflets to motorists and carried placards warning of the end of the world.

Marie Exley, who helped put up apocalypse-themed billboards in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, said the money helped the nonprofit save as many souls as possible.

She said she and her husband, mother and brother were glued to the television on Friday night waiting for news of an earthquake in the southern hemisphere. When that did not happen, she said fellow believers began reaching out to reassure each other of their faith in the prophecy.

"Some people were saying it was going to be an earthquake at that specific time in New Zealand and be a rolling judgment, but God is keeping us in our place and saying you may know the day but you don't know the hour," she said. "The day is not over, it's just the morning, and we have to endure until the end."

M Camping, who lives a few kilometres from his radio station, was not home to comment on the lack of Rapture.

FIVE OTHER END-OF-WORLD PREDICTIONS:

1. Followers of William Miller believed the world would end on October 22, 1844.

2. The Jehovah's Witness religion has predicted the end of the world in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994.

3. Charles Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, predicted the world would end in 1794.

4. Famous forecaster Nostradamus predicted doomsday would happen in July 1999.

5. English mystic Joanna Southcott predicted the world would end on October 19, 1814, when she gave birth to the Messiah.


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Mary
YORWW Bible Academy Graduate (Alumni)
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 7:41 pm
Location: 2003 YORWW Bible Academy Graduate
Contact:

Re: Case of Poor Judgment & Failed Predictions!

Post by Mary »

May 21 Doomsday Pictures: 11 End-of-the-World Predictions


May 22, 2011
Article Source
National Geographic Daily News

Image

Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Stock


Jehovah's Witnesses' Doomsday Dilemma

Since its founding in the 1870s, the Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian offshoot, had prophesied the end of the world in 1914 (pictured: Jehovah's Witness children hand out religious literature in an undated photo).

Though doomsday didn't arrive in 1914, ever since then, the religion's followers have been predicting that the world will end "shortly," according to the 1997 book Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses.


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Mary
YORWW Bible Academy Graduate (Alumni)
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 7:41 pm
Location: 2003 YORWW Bible Academy Graduate
Contact:

Re: Case of Poor Judgment & Failed Predictions!

Post by Mary »

Doomsday Psychology: The Appeal of Armageddon


Image

To see and hear what they said on The View about Jehovah's Witnesses,
please click here view the video on the left side of
the the middle of the page as it labeled, "The View".


By COURTNEY HUTCHISON
Article Source
ABC News
May 20, 2011

This Saturday in Times Square, amidst bewildered tourists and hot dog vendors, Robert Fitzpatrick will be waiting for the world to end.

This 60-year-old MTA retiree from Staten Island joins the hordes who follow the Biblical calculation of Family Radio preacher Harold Camping. Camping predicts that the End of Days is near -- in fact, it's tomorrow, May 21, at about 5:59 p.m. ET.

"Judgment day will begin very shortly before midnight Jerusalem standard time. I think it's going to be instantaneous. Everything will be destroyed and God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth," says Fitzpatrick, who spent his $140,000 life savings to have 3,000 posters put up in New York City's subway and bus system, warning of this impending End of Days.

Though many are chalking up this May 21 hysteria to religious zeal, leaders among mainstream Christian denominations have largely condemned date-setting, citing Bible verses that say no man can know the time of the Rapture.

Why are Fitzpatrick and those on Family Radio's recent proselytizing tour convinced that the end is upon us, despite centuries of failed predictions?

That's hard to answer, but psychologists and religious scholars say it derives from a number of very human urges: from the fear of death to the desire for justice to the fatalistic despair that this world is too broken ever to be fixed.

Although there's no way to gauge how many people actually think the world will end with a bang (or a whimper) on Saturday, doomsday is big in the U.S.

"Thirty to forty percent of Americans report believing that the end times are coming eventually, so while most reject the teachings of Camping, there is a strong strain of this kind of thinking in this country," says Christopher Lane, author of "The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty."

So for some, anxiety spurred by the recent natural and economic disasters makes apocalyptic thinking more appealing, he says. "It becomes easier to convince people that things are getting worse and that the answer will come through divine dispensation, rather than have them face the fact that humanity must fix its own problems."

Gary Laderman, chairman of the department of religion at Emory University, says the story of ultimate reckoning is very popular in religious texts and popular culture.

"It's a scenario where you can pinpoint the heroes from the villains, good from evil. It's a powerful story that people identify with. It's not so foreign to be fixated on the end of the world, our society today just fixates on it in popular culture instead, with Armageddon movies," he says.

Nevertheless, Camping's campaign isn't likely to win many converts, says Stephen O'Leary, an expert in religious communication at University of Southern California.

"The people following his predictions are apocalyptic enthusiasts already looking for signs of the end times. They want to reinforce their idea that these are the last days," he says. They are "unable to face up to the reality of their mistakes and misplaced faith when the prophecy is wrong," he adds.

Waiting For the World to End

"These people are so eager for this 'setting right of all injustices' that they make the mistakes so many have made in the past. These predictions have come and gone literally hundreds of times," he says.

But behind the eagerness is a dichotomy between hope for the "new world" and fear over the ending of this one, religious experts say.

With their buses emblazoned with slogans and their neon-colored T-shirts, Camping's followers have been, at times, jubilant as they spread the "awesome news" that "the End of the World is almost here!" Fitzpatrick seems to share none of their glee.

With only hours remaining before he believes most of the people of the world will be condemned forever, Fitzpatrick echoes his subway ads, urging others to pray. His voice has nothing of the preacher's fervor -- mostly, he just sounds tired.

"This is a time for sorrow and sobriety. We all have people we love who have no interest in this and the Bible tells us that these people will perish. A lot of children are going to die," he says.


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