Much Ado About Harold Camping Nothin'

With five days to go until Take Two of the Camping-senian apocalypse, I've clicked through a number of Harold Camping's YouTube videos logging his final radio shows.  Many of his adherents have sold all their possessions and eliminated their savings in preparation for the end of the world, which he predicts will happen on May 21.  These last days, his staff have been hyping up the advertisements for the end.  In today's video, his webmaster speaks with an air of expectation, like a husband who's pregnant wife is at the 'any day now' phase. 

Is May 21 going to be the end of the world?  Oh, it's entirely possible..............just like it's possible that any other random day could be the end of the world.  Other than the fact that Camping is just one end-times predictor just like all those who have gone before him (e.g. Joseph Smith Jr, the Jehovah's Witnesses), he's apparently marvelously captivating and believable. Otherwise, why would there be purportely so many families who have followed his directives to stop attending churches and crowd around the radio listening to him and him only?  Hmmmmmmm.

As I see it, Camping is really no different than any other self-glory-seeking man (and we all have a little of that in us anyway).  Perhaps the fact that he is now 90 years old and may actually see the Lord has prompted him to reclaim the fame that he had prior to his 1994 failed prediction of the end of the world.  I don't know.  What I do know is that the Bible specifically says that the exact day of the end is not known by anyone except God the Father alone.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come." (Mark 13:32-33, NIV)

If you're like me and want to know the secret formula for predicting the end of the world, we can thank Camping for generously obliging us.  Here it is:   2 (5 x 10 x 17) = Judgment Day.  Ta da! 

On a more compassionate note, if you know any Camping followers who have seriously ditched all in life to wait by their radios, I beg of you to please be kind and put together care packages for them and deliver them on May 22.  Yeah, it's their fault they are deceived and unbiblical in their belief of Harold Camping, but this going to be a tragedy for many people.  Some of them may even try to take their own lives in the days and weeks to come.  I hope that conscientious believers everywhere would reach out and care for the children of Camping adherents and help these poor folks to get back on their feet.  They will need food, jobs, and homes again.  Most importantly, they will need you to be Jesus to them.

Internet Infidels Preach on Second Coming

In a lengthy piece of prose (which contains mostly scriptural quotations) titled The Lowdown on God's Showdown, former Christian Edward Babinski lays out his case that the Apostles and Jesus Himself had to be mistaken about the "close" return of Christ. He writes:

If Jesus and his apostles, for whatever motives, were mistaken in a matter of this consequence, how could I be certain that any one of them may not be mistaken in any other matter?

and also,

So, exactly what is the lowdown on God's showdown? Is it that Jesus, the "false prophet," may not have been "neurotic" after all? No. The lowdown on God's showdown is that it never took place as predicted. And how likely is it to occur in our era, when the most "inspired" believers, living and writing in Jesus' era, including Jesus himself, were certain that it was going to occur in theirs? Believers in an inerrant Bible should wonder why the Bible's error's concerning this matter are so plainly visible. But then, as Arthur Koestler once pointed out, "Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse." Indeed, how can Christianity compete for world-wide approval against the host of faiths and non-faiths that now litter the earth, when its own holy book informs whomever reads it that the race to demonstrate the superior truth of Christianity ended 2000 years ago by Jesus' own admission?

It is commonly understood that the early Christians believed that Christ would return to earth in their lifetime. Babinski claims that Jesus had a similar expectation of His imminent return as well. It is true that their expectations went unmet. He even quotes a couple of theologians, including C.S. Lewis, that such an expectation was a mistake on Jesus' part (on account of his limited human knowledge of end-times events).

However, do the internal thoughts of the apostles affect the integrity of the Christian faith? Is a certain eschatology a fundamental? Was Jesus speaking out of ignorance and vulnerable to mistake? Is this, in fact, a "matter of this consequence?"

Even if I were to admit that both Jesus and the Apostles were mistaken, it makes little difference that they expected something that did not occur. Of the Second Coming, Jesus Himself states, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Matt. 24:36). An imminent return is nonspecific. To put things into perspective, the imminent arrival of the Messiah was also an unwavering expectation of the Jews throughout their history. Yet, from the time of the first prophecy in Genesis 3 until the actual time of the birth of Messiah was no less than six thousand years (depending on one's chronology).

Babinski may have a point worth debating, but unless it's the year 10,083, I think he's jumping the gun.