At Apocalypse Central, Preparing for What Happens, or Doesn’t

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/us/21doomsday.html


Ray Chavez/Staff Bay Area News Group

PETA members waited outside the Family Radio headquarters to deliver vegetarian Last Supper meals in Oakland, Calif., on Friday.

OAKLAND, Calif. — If Harold Camping and his followers are correct, Gertrude Stein’s famous comment about Oakland — that there is no there there — may finally be true. If not, some local churchgoers say they will set up encampments outside the headquarters of Mr. Camping, the self-proclaimed biblical soothsayer who has prophesied the end of the world on Saturday, with an eye toward consoling the disappointed.

In a state where fringe leaders like the Rev. Jim Jones and fringe groups the Heaven’s Gate cult have often found followers, and whose beliefs ended in mass suicide, not everyone is laughing about the prediction.

“They are going to be reeling,” said Pastor Jacob Denys of Calvary Bible Church in nearby Milpitas, so he and about 20 volunteers planned to spend Saturday outside Mr. Camping’s compound to let “them to know that God still loves them.”

On Friday, the only concrete sign of anything out of the ordinary was in the window of Family Radio — Mr. Camping’s radio enterprise, which has helped pay for and promote the May 21 prediction — announcing that the offices were closed.