10:12 AM ET
Doomsday ministry scrubs end of world predictions from website
By Dan Merica, CNN
(CNN) - The Christian radio broadcasting network that touted Harold Camping's failed doomsday predictions may be getting out of the prophecy business, adopting what appears to be a vaguer vision of the end times.
"We are to live so that we are ready for the return of Christ, and even pray for it," according to a Family Radio statement obtained by The Christian Post. "But we also rejoice in every new day, that we've been given another day to occupy and serve our Lord."
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Family Radio, which Camping founded in 1958, had posted an explainer detailing why Camping's prediction that May 21 would be the beginning of the end didn't come to pass.
That explainer got yanked from the Family Radio website earlier this week.
Camping had originally said that those selected for salvation would be raptured up to heaven on May 21, and those left behind would face months of judgment amid destruction before the world's end on October 21.
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The Family Radio website tweaked the prediction after May 21, saying God had shown mercy by sparing people five months of suffering. But final judgment was still slated to come on October 21, when salvation and the world's destruction would happen at once.
But according to the Christian Post, Family Radio is now painting a more fluid picture of doomsday, a departure from the definite dates that Camping set earlier in the year.
"Thy command is still to occupy until he comes," the statement obtained by Christian Post said. "We are still to go teach and tell. Every day we, who are Christians, live in attention.
CNN's calls to Harold Camping and Family Radio went unanswered.
When the world didn't end last week, Camping followers who gathered for a regular Sunday fellowship meeting questioned if they had been left behind, according to Brandon Tauszik, a documentarian who began attending the meetings this year.
"Numbers were a bit down, for the first time I had ever seen, but people showed up much like they did after May 21," said Tauszik, who attends the Oakland, California fellowship meetings out of interest and who never believed the world would end. "People were coming together, speaking outside, asking where we went wrong."
The faith of Camping's most ardent followers was not swayed by the recent news.
According to Fred Store, a longtime Family Radio listener, the general belief is "Judgment Day did in fact occur on May 21."
