Employees at Family Radio, the deep-pocketed nonprofit that has been spreading Harold Camping’s prophecy that the world will end on Saturday, don’t seem too worried about the Rapture — they’re even planning on showing up for work on Monday.
“I don’t believe in any of this stuff that’s going on, and I plan on being here next week,” a receptionist at their Oakland headquarters told CNNMoney.
According to tax filings examined by CNNMoney, the group raises about $18 million in contributions a year and is worth $72 million in total. And while it might seem quixotic to examine the business logic of a messianic cult, the tax filings do raise one obvious question: If the world is ending on May 21, why did it request an extension of its Minnesota tax deadline from July 15 to November 15?
Taxes were the last thing on the mind of Joseph, Faith, and Grace Carson as their parents, Abby and Robert, dragged them on a midtown Manhattan proselytizing run that can be safely described as the worst family vacation ever.
“I keep my friends as far away from them as possible,” Joseph Carson told the Times. His parents stopped saving for college two years ago and his mom quit her job to spread the news about the End of Days.
“I don’t really have any motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore,” he said, “because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.”
His mother said she accepted that believers “lose friends and you lose family members in the process.”
Doomsday church: Still open for business [CNN]
Make My Bed? But You Say the World’s Ending [NYT]
Related: A Conversation With Harold Camping, Prophesier of Judgment Day
