For one believer of the approaching Judgment Day, May 21 may come and go
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 13: Participants in a movement that is proselytizing that the world will end this May 21, Judgment Day, walk through the streets on May 13, 2011 in New York City. The Christian based movement, which claims thousands of supporters around the country and world, was founded by the Oakland, Calif.-based Harold Camping. Camping is president of Family Stations Inc., a religious broadcasting network that promotes the belief that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. Camping claims to have come to this date by a deep and complex study of religious texts. Camping was wrong on his prior end-of-the-world prediction in 1994. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Like others around the country following the May 21 prophecy, Gary Vollmer knows that the final Judgment Day is imminent. He’s also the most sensible and easy-going Doomsayer you’ll ever meet.
Dark-wooded siding lines Vollmer’s beautifully kept, two-story home, which is perched at the corner of a quiet neighborhood just outside Alexandria, Va. A front door note politely informs the FedEx man to take packages to the house’s small stone addition, just to the right by a busy intersection.
The house itself sits behind a kids play pen filled with plastic toys and a bulky, four-door SUV, with enough room for his the whole family, stickered with quotes from the Bible and the Family Radio website. The paint-job behind the quote looks like the large golden streaks of a water color sunset. It’s actually a landscape of an unnamed metropolitan being decimated by fire and brimstone.
“This,” says Gary, pointing to his SUV, “will get great mocking and scourging if I’m here on the 21st. You know what I’m saying? And the 22nd, the 23rd.”
The family has just returned from a stroll around the block. Kim picks the two little boys out of their strollers and takes them inside while Gary, in his XL shirt also advertising the May 21 Judgment Day, stands outside in the breezy heat.
He looks incredibly calm for someone who knows that the world is coming to an end. Has he even done anything to prepare for the end of times?
“Read the Bible, that’s it. That’s all I can do,” says Gary. “Can’t do any more than that.”
Gary is one of the thousands, who he describes as “quasi-Christians,” that believes in the prophecies of Harold Camping. Classic Christian themes of Judgment Day abound: Fire, death, the suddenly-missing chosen ones. Neither Camping nor his followers have been shy about their beliefs, posting billboards, handing out flyers and going on cross-country RV rides to deliver the message. They are Ezekiel’s horn section.
Based out of California, Camping’s Family Radio broadcasts the 83-year-old’s ministry messages and numerological insights across the country and world. According to journalist Jaweed Kaleem, the ministry, with 66 locations across the country, is worth more than $120 million and their teachings are available in more than 50 languages. The May 21 D-Day was the date Camping discovered after reading a series of mathematical clues within the Bible. Key numbers include the 5 (it relates to salvation or destruction), 10 (completeness), and 17 (heaven). God, says Camping, both reveals and conceals the timing of His Son’s final return through the historical hints found in recorded Biblical events, all of which are found within word of God.
In the past few weeks, journalists and an amused public have focused in on the End of Times, as the followers of Camping see it. With one day left, the fervor over this loosely connected group of Christians has only increased. Apart from heathen organizing Judgment Day dance parties and “Hahaha May 21 Hahahaha” Facebook pages, there are stories of believers selling off all their possessions arising, Lazarus-like.
Gary knows “hundreds” of fellow believers in the area, many of whom have already closed up shop and headed for nature to await The Rapture.
This isn’t true of Gary. He’s holding onto the material possessions of this world like a responsible adult male. Several reasons include his nice house, good car and his beautiful family, which it is his responsibility to keep fed and happy. Allusively citing Proverbs 14:9-14, he mentions that he is “making favor of a righteous manner.”
“Well the thing is, is being in the world but not of the world. He says occupy it until I come. Well, you know what until He comes here and stands here, He hasn’t come. So I’m going to occupy it until the last trumpet.”
Not that he didn’t try.
“I took leave for two months from my job,” explains Gary. “I had actually resigned from my job and they said, ‘No. Here — just take leave.’ So I took leave.”
With all that God has blessed him, Gary says he saved up a bit of money, particularly for the last couple of months of family-time. In those final days of contemplation, Gary had a revelation of sorts that may not sit well with other May 21sters. Namely, that there’s still a few months left of earthly living. Specifically, five months more.
“You know, a lot of people have put out that we’ve talked quite a bit that [on] that day, we’re out of here, but I’m not totally … ,” he pauses for a second. “… trusting in that right now. I’ve seen a lot of stuff and done a lot of studying in the last couple of months and it may not be the destruction that’s been [described].”
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 13: Participants in a movement that is proselytizing that the world will end this May 21, Judgment Day, walk through the streets on May 13, 2011 in New York City. The Christian based movement, which claims thousands of supporters around the country and world, was founded by the Oakland, Calif.-based Harold Camping. Camping is president of Family Stations Inc., a religious broadcasting network that promotes the belief that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. Camping claims to have come to this date by a deep and complex study of religious texts. Camping was wrong on his prior end-of-the-world prediction in 1994. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 13: Participants in a movement that is proselytizing that the world will end this May 21, Judgment Day, walk through the streets on May 13, 2011 in New York City. The Christian based movement, which claims thousands of supporters around the country and world, was founded by the Oakland, Calif.-based Harold Camping. Camping is president of Family Stations Inc., a religious broadcasting network that promotes the belief that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. Camping claims to have come to this date by a deep and complex study of religious texts. Camping was wrong on his prior end-of-the-world prediction in 1994. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Like others around the country following the May 21 prophecy, Gary Vollmer knows that the final Judgment Day is imminent. He’s also the most sensible and easy-going Doomsayer you’ll ever meet.
Dark-wooded siding lines Vollmer’s beautifully kept, two-story home, which is perched at the corner of a quiet neighborhood just outside Alexandria, Va. A front door note politely informs the FedEx man to take packages to the house’s small stone addition, just to the right by a busy intersection.
The house itself sits behind a kids play pen filled with plastic toys and a bulky, four-door SUV, with enough room for his the whole family, stickered with quotes from the Bible and the Family Radio website. The paint-job behind the quote looks like the large golden streaks of a water color sunset. It’s actually a landscape of an unnamed metropolitan being decimated by fire and brimstone.
“This,” says Gary, pointing to his SUV, “will get great mocking and scourging if I’m here on the 21st. You know what I’m saying? And the 22nd, the 23rd.”
The family has just returned from a stroll around the block. Kim picks the two little boys out of their strollers and takes them inside while Gary, in his XL shirt also advertising the May 21 Judgment Day, stands outside in the breezy heat.
He looks incredibly calm for someone who knows that the world is coming to an end. Has he even done anything to prepare for the end of times?
“Read the Bible, that’s it. That’s all I can do,” says Gary. “Can’t do any more than that.”
Gary is one of the thousands, who he describes as “quasi-Christians,” that believes in the prophecies of Harold Camping. Classic Christian themes of Judgment Day abound: Fire, death, the suddenly-missing chosen ones. Neither Camping nor his followers have been shy about their beliefs, posting billboards, handing out flyers and going on cross-country RV rides to deliver the message. They are Ezekiel’s horn section.
Based out of California, Camping’s Family Radio broadcasts the 83-year-old’s ministry messages and numerological insights across the country and world. According to journalist Jaweed Kaleem, the ministry, with 66 locations across the country, is worth more than $120 million and their teachings are available in more than 50 languages. The May 21 D-Day was the date Camping discovered after reading a series of mathematical clues within the Bible. Key numbers include the 5 (it relates to salvation or destruction), 10 (completeness), and 17 (heaven). God, says Camping, both reveals and conceals the timing of His Son’s final return through the historical hints found in recorded Biblical events, all of which are found within word of God.
In the past few weeks, journalists and an amused public have focused in on the End of Times, as the followers of Camping see it. With one day left, the fervor over this loosely connected group of Christians has only increased. Apart from heathen organizing Judgment Day dance parties and “Hahaha May 21 Hahahaha” Facebook pages, there are stories of believers selling off all their possessions arising, Lazarus-like.
Gary knows “hundreds” of fellow believers in the area, many of whom have already closed up shop and headed for nature to await The Rapture.
This isn’t true of Gary. He’s holding onto the material possessions of this world like a responsible adult male. Several reasons include his nice house, good car and his beautiful family, which it is his responsibility to keep fed and happy. Allusively citing Proverbs 14:9-14, he mentions that he is “making favor of a righteous manner.”
“Well the thing is, is being in the world but not of the world. He says occupy it until I come. Well, you know what until He comes here and stands here, He hasn’t come. So I’m going to occupy it until the last trumpet.”
Not that he didn’t try.
“I took leave for two months from my job,” explains Gary. “I had actually resigned from my job and they said, ‘No. Here — just take leave.’ So I took leave.”
With all that God has blessed him, Gary says he saved up a bit of money, particularly for the last couple of months of family-time. In those final days of contemplation, Gary had a revelation of sorts that may not sit well with other May 21sters. Namely, that there’s still a few months left of earthly living. Specifically, five months more.
“You know, a lot of people have put out that we’ve talked quite a bit that [on] that day, we’re out of here, but I’m not totally … ,” he pauses for a second. “… trusting in that right now. I’ve seen a lot of stuff and done a lot of studying in the last couple of months and it may not be the destruction that’s been [described].”
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