The man shouting in German and Hebrew on the UC Berkeley campus Monday was David Temple, 77, a Berkeley resident of 20 years and firm believer that the world will end on Oct. 21, 2011.
Temple handed out flyers next to a chalk board sign that read: "74 days left!" The flyer, titled "Yah's Coup De Grâce!" warned that the spiritual beginning of the end of the world started on May 21 and will end exactly five months later, as suggested by Family Radio's Harold Camping.
According to Temple, 200 million people will be saved, and the rest will be killed, starting with members of churches and religious organizations.
"He will kill all the churches," said Temple. "He is angry with them."
Temple said he tuned in to Family Radio while searching for some music almost four years ago, and began listening regularly to Camping's sermons on the end of the world.
Camping had prophesied that the rapture would occur on May 21 at 6 p.m. and the forsaken would be forced to wander the planet until its destruction in October. When nothing happened on the specified date, Camping suggested that the earthquakes he had predicted were in fact spiritual, not literal, and that "all of mankind was shaken with fear." The "rapture," too, was more subtle than Camping had assumed. Camping claimed later that there was to be "no more salvation activity to be done anywhere in the world by God" and that, despite still remaining on earth, "each and every true believer had become eternally safe with God in Heaven."
Temple explained that the destruction of our world will begin at 6 p.m. on Oct. 21 at the International Date Line, beginning with New Zealand and Fiji. "God will take up his people in those nations and then destroy those nations," said Temple. "It will get here 17 hours later."
Although Temple aligns himself with no church or religious organization, both his father and his grandfather were Methodist ministers. For a while, Temple considered the role himself, but left the seminary after one semester after experiencing the "hypocrisy there," he said. Instead, Temple studied law at Trinity Law School, a gospel-based university in Santa Ana, Calif.
When asked why he was handing out flyers in Berkeley, Temple said that it was not to offer redemption. It is too late for that. The 200 million who will be saved have already been chosen. Instead, Temple said it was necessary to "give glory to God whether we're going to be saved or extinguished."
"If I don't happen to make it, I should give glory to God anyway," said Temple.
Temple added that Christians are wrong about their interpretation of hell as an eternal fire pit. God simply kills the unworthy.
"There are people on this campus who believe they came from monkeys," said Temple. "God will kill them for that. He is a vengeful God."
