Posted on 05/21/2011 1:31:43 PM PDT by SquarePants
Well, Harold Camping's prophesied Judgement Day has raged through Europe and is headed here to NY... with no sign at all that Mr. Camping's devoted little band of followers will be vindicated. A lot of those people spent thousands of dollars spreading Mr. Camping's false teachings. Some of them left jobs and lost families.
It's sad, and it's a situation made much worse, in my eyes, by Camping's billboards and messages about May 21, 2011 that "The Bible Guarantees it!" - it does no such thing. Mr. Camping guaranteed it. Mr. Camping's cultish insistence that his followers leave their churches and depend upon his divination of scripture seals the deal. Camping is the worst kind of false prophet.
Having listened to Family Radio in my car, I noticed years ago that, behind Camping's bible-thumping, there were distinctly un-biblical messages coming from him. His weird mix of numerology, predestination, and message that Jesus died for SOME of us (not ALL of us as I have been taught), led me to think he was a crank a long time ago, but I feel bad for the people who got sucked into his doomsday message. The bible is quite clear about God's feelings towards false teachers, but the shattered faith and destroyed lives of his devoted, yet biblically illiterate followers, will be hard to patch up.
Like every other false prophet in history, he set his views against the Word of God. However, Camping was right about one thing- May 21, 2011 may not be judgement day for the rest of us, but it sure is Judgement Day for Harold Camping's false doctrines.
As a evangelical Christian I think people like Harold Camping and his cult of followers give the bible a bad name. Jesus clearly stated that no one would know the time or the hour of his return and using numerology won’t help. I’m glad this guy went out on a limb and foolishly predicted an exact day for ‘the Rapture’ to occur so that God can show the world how wrong he is. However, his silly prediction simply gives unbelievers that might have been reached and saved ammunition to dispute the veracity of biblical scripture and laugh off real Christianity. Mr. Camping is a false teacher and will answer to God for his actions.
“There’s a sucker born every minute”
Some things never change
This guy is an idiot and the folks who follow him are real shmucks.
No one can give the Bible a "bad name", they can only give themselves a bad name ...which Mr Camping has succeeded in doing ..
As hard as it may seem to believe..God will be glorified in this ...it was not ever Gods "mistake" it was the words of a false prophet..
God remains sovereign over the end of time .... He knows the end from the beginning...
Years ago (back in the early 90’s or 80’s) I used to listen to Camping. Family Radio was a great station and Camping seemed to teach like a real scholar.
Gradually I realized he was making serious hermenuetical errors. (I recommend reading a good book; back before computer streaming I read Hermeneutics by Walter Martin. http://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/comm_topic.cfm?AuthorID=35&commInfo=62&GroupID=0 )
One night on Open Forum I heard him tell a distressed woman, whose husband was beating her regularly the bible told her to take it. When she started to cry and tell him she thought he was going to kill her, he told her he was very sorry for her but the bible gave her no recourse but to “turn the other cheek” and she had to stay with him or be in disobedience to God.
I never listened to him after that.
The concept of the Bible as direct communication from God only makes sense if each person uses it individually to determine their own path.
Listening to any man, robed or not, about how to interpret the Bible is very dangerous and unnecessary. Why would you insert a man in between yourself and your God? Why would God want or condone such a thing?
Dumb and Dumber
I feel sorry for those who were deceived by Camping. What a painful lesson for them. Hope they realize that they need to put their faith in God and Jesus, not in man. They put so much faith in this man and seemed to have forgotten the word of God, which states NO MAN KNOWETH when Jesus will come again.
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