Be Ready for Christ¹s Return May 21, and Sometime in 2012
Harold Camping is a preacher who claims that Jesus Christ is coming for his church next Saturday, May 21. I hope you are ready, but not because Camping is right. As the president of Family Radio, a so-called Christian radio station that has 150 outlets, and his exposure on the Internet and numerous billboards throughout the nation he has caused quite a stir with his predictions. Unfortunately this is not the kind of publicity true Christians need because it can make all of us look like crazy ignorant nuts. It appears that many believe Camping is a Christian scholar who is a little confused, and he has just enough truth to bewilder many folks. The reality is he is a false teacher who is causing damage to the real cause of Christ. Unfortunately Camping is not the first, nor will he be the last, in a long line of what we call ³apocalyptic cult² leaders. You would think that after two thousand years Christians would learn that Jesus meant what he said when he said that no one, not even Christ himself, knows the time of his return (Mark 13:32). A major part of the problem is that so many Christians do not know their Bible or what it says about his return. They are therefore left confused by the biblical arguments false teachers come up with to substantiate their claims and new theories. There is one thing, however, we do need to take seriously about Camping¹s prediction. To be better equipped to talk about Camping with your family and friends let me point to a long history of false date setters in church history. Some, like William Miller, who predicted Christ would return 1844, led thousands astray. Charles Russell, founder of the Jehovah¹s Witness cult, proclaimed Jesus would return in 1874. When that did not work out the Jehovah¹s Witnesses proclaimed 1914 as the date of his return. When that did not come about either, they said that was when Christ came spiritually to earth. When I was in seminary Edgar Whisenant wrote a book saying there were 88 reasons Christ was coming in 1988. When that date came and went he said he made a small mistake in his calculations because of an accident in the Gregorian calendar and moved the date to 1989. He then revised his dates back several more times before finally giving up. Expect Camping to come up with excuses or recalculations once his date does not work out. My prediction is that he has enjoyed the spotlight so much he will come up with a revised date, and I believe my prediction has a much higher chance of being true than any of his. Almost as dangerous as the apocalyptic cult leaders who set specific dates are those who do date suggesting. To avoid the embarrassment of being wrong about a specific date and the charge of being a false teacher they claim to know that Christ¹s return is ³very near² or ³close.² They often suggest a time frame, like Christ will return within one year. They often try and correlate modern events, especially with regards to Israel and the Middle East, to biblical passages. Both those setting a specific date and those who do date suggesting employ a faulty interpretation system of Scripture. Camping, for example, makes so many wild and crazy assumptions about some biblical passages that his conclusion is a joke. But he is right about one thing, we need to be ready for Christ to return on May 21, and on any other day for that matter. Do not be led astray.
