[Straits Times] A US-BASED Christian group erupted into the streets of Manila earlier this week to preach that the end of the world is fast approaching - on May 21 at sunset, to be precise.
That does it! I'm leaving!
Volunteers from the religious group Family Radio, a Christian radio network in the United States, donned neon-coloured t-shirts and walked along Manila's main thoroughfares, handing out pamphlets to passers-by with warnings of the impending Judgement Day.
The designation of May 21 came from Family Radio president Harold Camping, who predicted that date through a series of mathematical calculations and the unravelling of codes behind the Bible story of the great flood.
But few people in this majority Catholic country appeared to be paying much attention to the warnings. 'It might really happen since there's a lot of sin in the world. It will happen, but not in the way they were predicting,'said bus inspector Rico Almasan. 'Judgement Day can't happen on May 21.'
"I'm playing pinochle that evening!"
Gerardo Lanuza, a professor at the University of the Philippines specialising in the Sociology of Religion, said that Judgement Day groups had increased in recent years due to the unstable political and economic climate around the world.
'They want to offer people some kind of security, a type of security amidst an insecure world. It's like okay, the end of the world is coming, what do we do?' he said. |