The world ends on Saturday, says US preacher

Joseph Kinuthia, 40, will spend Saturday meditating and praying for mankind. This is because the father of two is convinced beyond all doubt that Saturday will be the last day on earth for mankind — the dreaded Judgment Day.

The father of three believes that by 6pm today, 200 million people who have lived according to the will of the good Lord will ascend to heaven, leaving behind the rest of the sinners to untold suffering and torment.

Before 6pm, this tea farmer from Gatundu believes a massive earthquake, one that shall open graves to let out dead souls that died without sin, will hit the earth.

He also believes that Saturday marks the countdown to the official end of the world as we know it and that within three months after Saturday, after the good people and good dead souls have been whisked away to heaven, the final chapter of the world will be shut in October.

Word that Saturday is judgement day has been spreading across the world, thanks to numerous billboards mounted by FamilyRadio.com and its leader, Harold Camping.

According to Camping, Saturday marks the 7,000th year since the good Lord destroyed the world using water.

According to Mr. Camping, by the end of Saturday, the good Lord will destroy the world as we know it with a massive earthquake — one that will crack open tombs to let out the dead, and flatten the world’s cities to rubble.

Over 2,000 billboards announcing Saturday as the end of the world have been erected in the United States alone. In Kenya, the first billboard announcing Saturday as the end of the world first sprang up in Nairobi, at Globe Cinema round-about, early this year.

The billboards have since spread to other parts of the city, and to upcountry towns like Nyeri and Bungoma.

Joseph, a tea farmer in Gatundu, says he first stumbled on FamilyRadio.com and its doomsday prophecy as he tried to tune his radio. From then, he says, he has been digging into his Bible, and grown convinced that Harold Camping’s prophecy is true.

“It is not a prediction, it is a prophecy, I have no doubt in my mind that it is going to happen,” he says.

He has been praying and meditating during these last moments, he says.

But being a practical man, he still went on with his daily chores ensuring the tea is picked and the tea farm operations proceed normally. And no, he will not be selling off his farm and property. He will just sit, and pray, that the end comes with a promotion to heaven’s glory.

On Saturday, he will not go anywhere, he will sit and do more meditating, say his last prayers, all the time waiting for the sound of the last trumpet, expecting the first news that the devastating earth quake has begun.

But theologians and church leaders say Mr. Kinuthia might just be another victim of misinterpreted Biblical teachings about judgment day. The good book, they say, clearly states that no human being knows the exact day and time of the last trumpet.

“Even Jesus Christ himself does not know,” says Dr Kabiro wa Gatimu, a theology lecturer at St Paul’s University, Limuru.

The good book, theologians argue, clearly states that Jesus will come back unannounced, like a thief at night.

But Kinuthia has an equally convincing argument as to why he knows that judgment day is today. The ‘thief” in “he will come like a thief” verse, he says, has been misinterpreted by church leaders and theologians.

The very same church that his mentor Harold Camping dismisses as ‘satanic.’ (According to Mr. camping, the devil took over the church in the 1980s).

According to Mr. Kinuthia, like his subjects down here on earth, the good Lord, too, respects protocol.

“Think, if President Barack Obama was visiting Kenya, do you think they would keep it secret? In the same way, if Christ is coming back, do you think he would do it in secret?” poses Kinuthia.

Neither Kinuthia’s wife nor his two children believe that the world will be over by 6pm today. In fact, the closest person who shares similar belief, he says, is more than 500 kilometres away in Mombasa.

Even then, he only gets to fellowship with people who believe Saturday to be the end on the Internet.

“Most of the people I share with on the end of the world are overseas, my entire family as well as my friends do not believe today is the end, I cannot change them, I can only pray for them,” he says.

Skeptics aside, this tea farmer firmly believes that Harold Camping’s prophecy will come to pass, and that by the end of Saturday only the good ones among us will be far away in heaven.

His mentor, Camping, told the press he plans to be with his wife in the last hours, and watch the end unfold on radio and TV. Kinuthia says he will spend ‘the last hours’ meditating and praying, especially for his skeptical family.

Whether Kinuthia and his mentor, Camping, are right, only Sunday will tell. But if both turn out to be right, then this will probably be the last paper you will be reading.

The man behind doomsday prophecy, Harold Camping, 89, is a preacher in Oakland, California. He is a former civil engineer, founder of Family Radio Network — a non-denominational religious broadcasting network that runs 66 stations the US alone and more in South Africa, Russia and Turkey.

This is not the first time that Mr. Camping has predicted the end of the world. He had earlier predicted 6 September 1994 as the end.