Judgement Day Hoax

A prediction made by a US-based evangelist that the Judgement Day was to occur last Saturday, plunging many parts of the world into a state of anxiety, turned out to be another false prophecy about the End Time.

Although many people in Ghana had dismissed the prophecy, there was large patronage at “All Night” sessions in various churches last Friday, some of whose attendees might have gone to church to apparently exact a last minute grace from God for salvation before the ‘Doomsday’ arrived.

As the sun broke the dominance of darkness on Sunday morning, many people woke up with great relief, having shook off the trepidation of the Judgement Day hoax.

However, the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev. Dr Fred Deegbe, had cautioned that although nobody could predict the Judgement Day, “this is the time for all to be on their watch for the second coming of Jesus Christ”.

“The lesson is that we must all stay ready; let us be on the watch,” he advised, when the Daily Graphic sought his comments on the Judgement Day hoax.

Contrary to explicit biblical declaration that the Judgement Day is a classified information to God alone, Harold Camping, an 89-year-old religious fundamentalist, had deployed screaming messages on the Internet, his radio station – Family Radio – and huge billboards in Ghana and across the world to proclaim that the day of the Apocalypse, biblically described as very horrific, would occur on Saturday, May 21, 2011.

In his bid to scoop that confidential divine information and leak same to the world, evangelist Camping had, but only succeeded in fulfilling one of the categorical biblical declarations in Matthew 24 on the End Time — “there shall be many false prophets”.

This is the second false prophecy in barely two decades that Camping had made about the second coming of Jesus Christ as a similar prediction he made in 1994 failed to happen.

According to Camping, biblical texts indicated that a huge earthquake would occur in New Zealand last Saturday to mark the beginning of the Apocalypse, adding that by October 21, 2011, all non-believers would be dead.

No earthquake has occurred in New Zealand or any such natural disaster in the magnitude Camping described had been reported in any part of the world.

Despite an intact world on Sunday morning, the US-based religious fundamentalist still insists 'without any shadow of a doubt' that his prediction has not yet failed.

In response to the prophecy, atheists and humanists in North Carolina and other parts of America had planned a two-day “After Rapture Party” to damn the prediction of evangelist Camping’s Judgement Day' proclamation.

“Though the absurdity of this claim is obvious to the majority of the world, it's a great opportunity to highlight some of the most bizarre beliefs often put forth by religious fundamentalists and raise awareness of the need for reason,' a posting on the group's website as culled from the BBC reads.