May 21, 2011 End Of The World

Circled dates dot a calendar on John Ramsey's refrigerator door. They show the busy life of a 25-year-old: dinner parties, birthdays, holidays. But only until May 21 is Judgement Day.

Every month after May has been crossed out. As has all of 2012.

Ramsey is one of thousands of followers of a loose-knit Christian fringe movement whose members are increasingly found on sidewalks,Harold Camping parks and at transit hubs in major cities throughout the United States.

They recite passages of the Bible line-by-line and say they have decoded a message for humanity: The world is about to end.

"God says when you see the sword come upon the land, you blow the trumpet and you warn the people," says Ramsey, paraphrasing Ezekiel 33:3. "All I'm doing is telling what I know."

 Ramsey and the movement's followers say that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, the ground will quake, graves will open and many of the dead will ascend to heaven. Two hundred million of the 'saved' -- dead or alive -- will float up. Those left behind will be doomed to live among blood, destruction and disease for five months before God annihilates the Earth on Oct. 21.

These warnings are drawn from the obscure and complex Biblical numerology of Harold Camping, an 89-year-old televangelist who owns Family Radio, a vast international network of Christian radio stations. Camping has been predicting 'The End' for the past two years. A similar prediction went unrealized in the mid-1990s.

His apocalyptic message has been broadcast via hundreds of billboards from Idaho to Manhattan and by a volunteer army of sign-toting, pamphlet-passing amateur preachers like Ramsey.

For most of his adulthood, Ramsey rarely stopped to consider the afterlife. Nights were for ecstasy-fueled rave parties, days were for catching up on sleep. There was the occasional college class, girlfriend or menial job -- most recently, at a catering company. The Bible was simply an old book collecting dust on his closet shelf in his parents’ house.

A soft-spoken 25-year-old with black-rimmed glasses, he favors bright polo shirts and tapered jeans -- garb not typically associated with doomsayers. But there are clues.