Harold Camping Spent $100M on Rapture Ads: Employee

Has predicted end of world no less than 10 times
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 24, 2011 2:23 PM CDT
Family Radio's Harold Camping Spent $100M on May 21 Rapture Ads: Employee
Harold Camping prepares for a taping of his show Open Forum in Oakland, Calif., Monday, May 23, 2011.   (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Talk about unnecessary spending: Harold Camping shelled out some $100 million to advertise his May 21 Rapture claim—money that came largely from the sale of a TV channel and a radio station, says a Family Radio employee. “A lot of reporters have got it wrong,” said Matt Tuter. “The largest portion of money did not come from donors.” And it was used “to make a fool of himself to the whole world.” (Tuter emphasized he is an employee of Family Radio, not a follower of Camping, who co-founded it.)

Camping has actually predicted the world’s end at least 10 times, Tuter tells the Christian Post (and now he's predicted it again). Most of those predictions weren’t made public. Most people at Family Radio don’t subscribe to the predictions—and Tuter pushed some would-be donors not to contribute. “I remember when the organization was normal!” Tuter says. “It was not always about Harold Camping.” But Camping has long fancied himself a seer of sorts. “His brother said he has always been like that since he was a child." Click for more on Camping. (More Harold Camping stories.)

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