APOCALYPSE BELIEVERS AWAIT END, SKEPTICS CARRY ON

            They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts.  And so they waited, viglantly, on Saturday May 21 for the appointed hour to arrive.
            When 6 p.m. came and went at various spots around the globe, including the East Coast of the United States, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, Keith Bauer-----who hoped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture----took it in stride.  "I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," he said in the bright morning sun outside the gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International, whose founder, Harold Camping, has been broadcasting the apocalyptic prediction for years.  "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth," But he added, "Its God who leads you, not Harold Camping."
            Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver, began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he "worked last week, Iwouldn't have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen."  After seeing the nonprofit ministry's base of operations, Bauer planned to take a day trip to the Pacific Ocean, and then start the cross-country drive back home today with his wife, young son and another family relative.
            The May 21 doomsday message was sent far and wide via broadcasts and websites by Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil enginer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his apocalyptic prediction.  According to Camping, the destruction was likely to have begun its worldwide march as it became 6 p.m. in the various time zones, although some believers said Saturday the exact timing was never written in stone.


             In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when 6 p.m. came and went.  He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.
            "I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists.  "I don't understand it.  I don't know. I don't understand what happened." 
            "Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here," he said.
            Many followers said though the sun rose Saturday without the foretold earthquakes, plagues, and other calamities, the delay was a further test from God to perserve in their faith.
            "It's still May 21 and God's going to bring it," said Family Radio's special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday May 21 morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda.  "When you say something and it doesn't happen, your pride is what's hurt.  But needs pride?  God said he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble."
            At Chicago's Millennium Park, hours before 6 p.m. arrived locally, people continued to take photographs of the famed Cloud Gate as they do every other Saturday----and poked fun at the Judgement Day prophecy.
            "I guess the whole school thing was a waste of time," said Sarah Eaton, a 19-year-old college student visiting the city from St. Paul, Minn.
            The Internet also was alive with discussion, humorous or not, about the end of the world and its apparent failure to occur on cue.
            Camping has preached that some 200 million people would be saved, and that those left behind would die in a series of scourges visiting Earth until the globe is consumed by a fireball on Oct. 21.