The end is near.

By the end of the week, people will quit talking about the billboards proclaiming: “Judgment Day May 21.”

The billboards come with a biblical guarantee. But one way or the other, the suspense is almost over.

The doomsday ad campaign, on billboards and at bus stops coast to coast, is courtesy of Family Radio, a California-based nonprofit Christian network.

The leader is Boulder-born, 89-year-old Harold Egbert Camping.

The campaign also launched an armada of colorful end-times vans and RVs, of which at least one has been circling Denver’s Civic Center like a vulture.

“The End of the World is Almost Here,” vehicle inscriptions announce.

Undaunted by the lack of support from the religious mainstream, the Family Radio website offers up Camping’s mathematical formulas as proof that May 21 is the big day. (It’s a rather complicated series, which is why Camping once incorrectly picked a day in September 1994 for the Rapture.)

The Rapture entails God plucking up true believers into heaven. Camping’s followers, whose numbers aren’t known, estimate this will include about 3 percent of the world population, roughly 207 million.

Those left behind will hunker down or slug it out until God destroys the world five months later, according to Camping, on Oct. 21.

Until then, it’s going to be hell on Earth, Camping has said.

Not a new prediction

The Rapture will begin May 21 with a great earthquake on the Pacific Rim, and everyone’s world will begin to end at 6 p.m. local time, the prediction says.

“I penciled it in, but am really planning on missing the event, being descended from a long line of people who have survived every end-time, end-of- the-world prophecy since A.D. 33,” Stephen Stanley wrote on The Post’s Facebook page.

Nevertheless, belief in Judgment Day and the return of Jesus is part of mainstream Christianity. A 2010 Pew Research Center poll found that 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus will return within the next 40 years.

Yet no less an authority than Jesus said that no one knows the time of his return.

“But that hasn’t stopped people from putting it on their calendars ever since,” said associate professor of religion Doug Weaver of Baylor University. “During times when natural disasters abound, or when the financial picture is particularly bleak, forecasts of the Rapture are more likely to surface.”

The Rapture is a moneymaker, Weaver said, inspiring enough books, movies and toys to sink Noah’s ark.

Camping uses the Bible to date the creation of the world at 11,013 B.C. and the Flood at 4990 B.C., or 7,000 years ago (because there is no Year Zero).

“God … was declaring that sinful mankind would have 7,000 years to find refuge in the salvation provided by Jesus Christ,” Camping says.

He has learned from his reading of Daniel 12:9 and Revelation 22:10 that the Bible contains an encrypted calendar, he said, and all the evidence points to May 21. He swears he has it right this time.

The Judgment Day May 21 billboard’s inclusion of a time slot for Family Radio’s call-in program, “6:30-8:30 p.m.,” led “Westword” magazine to quip that perhaps it should be called “Judgment Happy Hour.”

Not so harmless

Camping, a native Coloradan, moved to California at a young age. He earned a B.S. in engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, according to his website’s bio. He is based in nearby Oakland.

Camping was a member of the Christian Reformed Church until 1988 but now teaches that all churches are false and must be abandoned.

“On May 21, 1988, God finished using the churches and congregations of the world,” Camping writes. “The spirit of God left all churches, and Satan, the man of sin, entered into the churches to rule at that point in time.”

No wonder most clergy don’t agree with him.

Atheist groups say they will “party, party” on May 21 and beyond. American Atheists president David Silverman said: “We’ve been here before. There have been hundreds of failed predictions like this throughout history.”

However, the group doesn’t find the effect that religious prophecies can have on “the gullible” to be funny.

“Unfounded predictions can push some people over the edge,” said American Atheist spokesman Blair Scott. “These people can end up hurting themselves and others.”

News outlets have reported that some faithful have dropped out of school, quit their jobs or blown their savings. But 130 Post readers responding to an informal poll online about the looming date largely dismissed it.

Lisa DeGraffenried said she was planning to watch a movie, “The Rapture,” and share a potluck of “last-meal” selections.

Camping is still spreading the word through Family Radio’s 140 stations. He says that while he is the network’s president and general manager, Jesus is chief executive.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com