rapture

Apparently, we’ve all survived the end of the world. 

Or else we all need some major teachings...and have a misunderstanding of the rapture. 

Unbeknownst to me,  Harold Camping, the 89-year-old founder of Family Radio, warned the world that the Day of Judgment (Jesus’ return to earth to judge the living and the dead) would begin at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011.  Shoot, my dad’s birthday!!  Couldn’t he pick another day??  And what timeline was he using?? PST, Greenwich??

People have warned us all before, but only the real nutcases brave enough to lay it all out there with a date stand out.  The way we all prepared for the year 2000 has significantly changed my mind about how we react to such pronouncements. 

While Camping stands out as the most recent, there have been others before.  Dates, signs, planets lining up.... etc.   He now says that he simply miscalculated, but he said that before: in 1994 when he made the same prediction.   He gave the recent prediction on Family Radio that he was absolutely certain that he had the right calculation now: You have been warned!

Since we no longer live full-time in the States, the word doesn’t travel as fast re: stuff like this.  I heard the whole thing on facebook and had to make sure I researched it for myself.  According to press reports, Family Radio had put up 2,000 billboards in other nations, but I saw none here.

If you know the Bible and this prediction startled you, you are in good company.  Harold Camping apparently said  that God has revealed to him the exact dates of Biblical events and the timeline of the judgment. 

  

Others, like Charles Taze Russell (the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses) and  Joseph Smith (Mormon founder) have said the same thing...and have led many many desperate people away from the simplicity of the Gospel, and the real work of Jesus.

It’s easy to point the finger the day after and say what a nutcase this guy is... but what is difficult is telling others that all Bible believing Christians do agree that the event will happen one day.   They group us together with Camping, Russell and Smith.  My goodness, don’t even want to be in the same neighbourhood with those guys!! 

No one knows, however, when that day and hour will come.   Not angels in heaven nor people on earth, Jesus didn’t even make such predictions while he was on earth.  Only the Father knows, and it will come like a thief in the night: when we least expect it.  Don’t believe me??  What I just wrote is in the Bible.  (Mostly from Matthew chapter 24)

It’s a wonder why more people don’t read it.