Harold Camping
7 days to go before judgment day!
For those of you who have not been living in a cave the last 6 months or so, you know that Harold Camping of family radio has declared that “The Bible guarantees the Church will be raptured on May 21, 2011.”
Lets launch our faithaloneradio site with some discussion on the coming judgment day prophesy. It is pretty obvious that Harold Camping is way off base here, but rather than calling him an idiot, let’s try and look at some of his errors objectively, and lets learn from them, OK?
I will start off with a few positives & negatives of my own. Feel free to discuss them, or add more. I am dealing with broad brush strokes here, but to avoid spending all day on this post, I have to refrain from adding details.
1. (positive) He believes the next prophetic event will be the Rapture of the Church off of the earth.
2. (positive) He believes that we can be absolutely certain that we can rely upon what the Bible teaches about future events.
3. (negative) He believes that saving faith is a gift, and that people who “come to faith in Christ” on their own are doing a work.
4. (negative) He holds to Reformed hermeneutics, which leans heavily on the exercise of non-literal interpretation. In other words, he does not feel obligated to adhere to the plain literal view as understood by the intent of the author of Scripture.
5. (negative) Since he holds to the non-literal view of interpretation of Scripture, he can take Biblical numerology as being what the Bible “clearly” teaches.
6.(negative) He believes the end of the church age happened in 1988, and all churches became corrupt.
7. (negative) When asked, “what will you and family radio do if you are wrong?” he responds that if he entertains that thought, then he is in direct violation of what the Bible clearly teaches.
8. (negative) When challenged about the reliability of his prediction, he states, “Prove from Scripture that my prediction about May 21, 2011 is NOT the date of the Rapture.”
9. (negative) Apparently, people are selling all they have, and quitting their jobs in anticipation of the Rapture.
10. (negative) Harold Camping is really not clear on what a person needs to do to escape the judgment day, because he believes that Christ died only for the elect. He basically just says pray that you will be one of the elect.
I will stop now. Let me know what you think.