This is not what Judgment Day looked like.
It was just invisible.
After a few days of silence — as thousands reveled in the fact that they hadn’t been Raptured on Saturday — Judgment Day-calculator Harold Camping figured out a way to spin his (second!) failed prediction: it actually did happen, you just didn’t see it. The 89-year-old Christian radio station owner explained on Monday night, during a Family Radio station broadcast, that rather than a physical Rapture taking place, the judgment was spiritual. But don’t worry; the real end of the world is still ahead.
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Camping did admit to at least one mistake: that he’d been reading the Bible with a factual mindset, rather than a spiritual one, which is why he’d misinterpreted Saturday’s events.
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“On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through,” said Camping. “God again brought judgment on the world. We didn’t see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed.”
So, in other words, even though Harold Camping was wrong, he was actually still right. You just don’t know it, because you aren’t Harold Camping.
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Megan Gibson is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @MeganJGibson. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.