Aba A Luke

Eighty-nine-year-old US preach­er, Harold Camp­ing, has pre­dict­ed the end of the world will take place to­day at 6 pm. Lo­cal­ly, the pre­dic­tion has had lit­tle ef­fect on the pop­u­la­tion, with some hav­ing nev­er even heard of such a pre­dic­tion be­ing made. Queen of Com­e­dy, Rachel Price, on her Face­book fan page shrugged it off on Mon­day morn­ing, writ­ing, "While I be­lieve the world will end one day I doubt high­ly that it hap­pen­ing this Sat­ur­day...steeee­ups. Too many things in my life have to oc­cur first {main­ly in­volv­ing Om­ba­ma and me but that's an­oth­er sto­ry.} So with World an­ni­hi­la­tion up­per­most in our minds..lol. Lehwe try to en­joy a safe pro­duc­tive week...bless."

The pre­dic­tion has, how­ev­er, been broad­cast­ed by Camp­ing around the world via The Fam­i­ly Ra­dio Net­work, a re­li­gious broad­cast­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion fund­ed en­tire­ly by do­na­tions from lis­ten­ers. The en­ti­ty is worth some USD$120 mil­lion and owns 66 sta­tions in the Unit­ed States alone. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia preach­er has been able to get his word out in 48 lan­guages via ra­dio sta­tions in Rus­sia, Turkey and South Africa, among oth­er na­tions. For us here in T&T, the buzz seems to be min­i­mal. Non­cha­lant has been a word used to de­scribe the at­ti­tude of the Tri­ni by many vis­i­tors and even some of our own. With that in mind the T&T Guardian, in its quest to see if our peo­ple would be non­cha­lant or "doh care" in the face of such news, asked four peo­ple about their views on Camp­ing's pre­dic­tion.

Here's what they had to say.

Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Anil Roberts

"I didn't hear about this, what did he say?...Well, if that is the case, I'm go­ing to can­cel all of my ap­point­ments for Sat­ur­day, now. I shall have to spend time with my chil­dren and nor­mal­ly my chil­dren go to church at 6 pm on Sat­ur­day. But let me just ask the preach­er if he has di­vest­ed all of his in­ter­ests and as­sets ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over the years from parish­ioners, to those in need? He should give away his mon­ey, his cars and re­sources. When he does that, I might take him se­ri­ous­ly," said Min­is­ter Roberts with a strong hint of sar­casm.

Vibe CT 105FM's Chris Boynes

"Hon­est­ly, I haven't giv­en it any thought per say. I don't fol­low those kind of 'world com­ing to an end' pre­dic­tions. I be­lieve that what­ev­er is to be will be..."

Boom­cham­pi­ons' Third Bass

The world com­ing to an end Sat­ur­day? Oh gosh...I will be mak­ing mon­ey on Sat­ur­day evening and I don't be­lieve in 'dem' su­per­sti­tious non­sense. When the world com­ing to an end we must get a sign. And Patrick Man­ning have to come back be­fore the world come to an end. Calder Hart have to go to jail too."

Tri­ni in New York, Akia Valen­tine

"I don't be­lieve that at all. I haven't fol­lowed the whole hype about it. The bible says no man knows the time nor the hour. I haven't been around any­body who's talk­ing about it and for me it's about what the Bible says. The mere fact that some­one is telling me that God is com­ing on a cer­tain day, I dis­miss that..."

Tong Ting So­ca singer, Cas­si

"Be­cause of my back­ground, my moth­er is a Chris­t­ian, I know the Bible says God said no one would know the time nor the hour, so be­cause man is mak­ing this pre­dic­tion I know this will not hap­pen. Cer­tain things must be ful­filled and peo­ple should not be afraid."

A 1994 Er­ror – Go Fig­ure!

In an in­ter­view with a US pub­li­ca­tion, Camp­ing said that af­ter 70 years of study­ing the Bible, he had de­vel­oped a sys­tem that us­es math­e­mat­ics to in­ter­pret proph­e­sies hid­den in it. He said the world will end this evening be­cause that will be 722,500 days from April 1 AD33, which he be­lieves was the day of the Cru­ci­fix­ion. He said the fig­ure of 722,500 is im­por­tant be­cause it is summed up by mul­ti­ply­ing three holy num­bers (five, ten and 17) to­geth­er twice. The pa­per, how­ev­er, not­ed that Camp­ing pre­vi­ous­ly thought the world was go­ing to end on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1994, but dis­cov­ered that he had made a math­e­mat­i­cal er­ror.