The other day I mentioned that reader Jerry submitted a story about Harold Camping repenting of his false predictions of the rapture and end of the world. We wondered how much coverage of the repentance we'd see relative to last year's significant coverage. While the repentance won't make it onto a list of top ten news stories for 2012, it actually has received some coverage. There was this ABC News story. And here's a link to the Los Angeles Times treatment.

I find it interesting that the stories I've been reading don't use the word "repent" when talking about Camping. They say he apologized, admitted his error and said he won't make any more predictions. Repent indicates a turning away from actions, so it's really a great word choice to describe what happened.

A reader sent in a link to this CNN article, which includes this nugget:

The world, it seems, is not doomed.

"We humbly acknowledge we were wrong," Camping and his staff members wrote in a letter to supporters posted on the website of Family Radio, Camping's California-based broadcast ministry.

He goes further, saying he and his network are no longer interested in predicting when the world will end.

The world is not doomed according to CNN? Or are they saying that Camping's group no longer believes the words of Jesus? As the reader wrote:

I realize the writer is probably attempting to be humorous, but the joke seems to fly in the face of the substance of the actual apology, which stated “But we now realize that those people who were calling our attention to the Bible’s statement that ‘of that day and hour knoweth no man’ (Matthew 24:36 & Mark 13:32), were right in their understanding of those verses and Family Radio was wrong. Whether God will ever give us any indication of the date of His return is hidden in God’s divine plan.”

Camping said they were wrong to predict a particular time, not to believe that Judgement Day will occur.

I'm not saying it's inappropriate to make jokes about the group, although maybe it is, but at least the jokes should work on some level! On this week's Crossroads, host Todd Wilken and I discuss the media's continued trouble reporting the details on this Camping story, as well as a brief discussion on the continued mess that is coverage of the HHS mandate forcing religious groups to fund things they doctrinally oppose.