Happened across something by Martin Gardner from his days of writing the Notes of a Fringe Watcher column for Skeptical Inquirer. It ran in Volume 24.1, Jan/Feb 2000, under the title, "The Second Coming of Jesus." You can guess from those data what the piece is mostly about, but skimming down, there's this delightful little nugget:
In 1992 Harold Camping published, through a vanity press, his book 1994? It predicted that the Second Coming would occur in September of that year. This was followed in 1993 by a sequel titled Are You Ready? Together, the two books totaled 955 pages. Trained as a civil engineer, Camping made enough money running a construction company to found, in 1959, Family Stations, Inc. It soon came to control thirty-nine radio stations. A non-ordained Bible scholar, Camping conducted a nightly radio talk show from his headquarters in Oakland, California. After September passed with no sign of the Lord, Camping changed his date to October 2. When that passed uneventfully, he ran out of excuses and decided against any more date setting.
Did he now.
Maybe he was just waiting until Gardner died.
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