Posted on 03/18/2011 8:51:43 AM PDT by Gamecock
Spurious end-time prophecies also have a long track record.
Just as a link of interest, speaking of false prophets, here's a bit of Harold Camping's history: "JUDGMENT DAY, MAY 21, 2011? - HAROLD CAMPING & The UNTOLD STORY ".
When Camping’s first prediction failed, claiming miscalculation, he then began to reinvent his scheme with the idea that God ended the church age. “Sometime earlier” wrote Camping, “God was finished using the churches to represent the kingdom of God.”[3] In his book “We Are Almost There!” we find that Camping chose the date of May 21, 1988 for the end of the church age.[4] Why this particular date? In an obscure time scheme combined with strange mathematical formulas, Camping was able to secure this date as the end of the church age. The common answer heard over the Open Forum was that around thirty-five years ago God began to open the true believer’s understanding to know the entire timeline of history—a justification based on an obscure interpretation of Eccles. 8:5, and other detailed and often confusing studies in numerology.What Harold Camping conveniently chose not to reveal is that May of 1988, reputedly, was the month the Alameda CRC began censuring Camping from teaching the adult Sunday school class.[5] Though, according to bulletin records, the official announcement of the reorganization of the Sunday school class without Camping as the teacher was made public in the Sunday bulletin on June 5, 1988, the controversy climaxed in the weeks prior to this date, on or around the May 21 date. After a summer of conflict, church visitors were sent to assess the situation and turmoil in the congregation, and supported the Consistory’s decision to deny Camping the privilege of teaching. The official date the elders took over the adult Sunday school class was September 11, 1988.
It takes a fair bit of megalomania to hold that one, in one's own person, has eschatological significance.
Note also, he was also given to saying, as some of our more excitable dispensational friends are, “yes, but we can know the month and the year.”
It was difficult to keep reading after that one. But I did and give a resolute AMEN! to the author's Scriptural caution that we should refrain from "vain jangling" and instead work to bring in the harvest, fully aware none of us knows "at what hour I will come upon you."
The hour doesn't matter. All that matters is that men "repent and believe" now.
And not invite canines to the Lord's Supper.
We, today, look back upon the fulfilled prophecies of our Lord with grateful assurance that the one unfulfilled prophecy -- the final resurrection -- will take place as scheduled. Not to worry.
AMEN!
Amen!
And not to speculate.
The two are not contradictory. Predicting the date makes Christians look silly.
Amen! And it makes them concentrate on non-essentials rather than on preaching the Gospel today to all men everywhere in confidence and in full assurance that Christ will safely shepherd His flock home.
This life is unfolding exactly as God wills. The good, the bad, fear and faith, all of it according to His predestining will, having "declared the end from the beginning."
"That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been" -- Ecclesiastes 3:15
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." -- Matthew 10:29-31"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.
Sure.
That is it in a nutshell. People can doom and gloom about what might happen. Should we just wring our hands? The world could end tomorrow, or we might get hit by a bus, or die while tying our shoes in the morning. Instead of worrying about "what might happen" we should live as best as we can now and never forget to say, "I love you".
“And not invite canines to the Lord’s Supper.”
Pfft... next you are going to tell me that “All Dogs Go to Heaven” wasn’t based on sound scriptural authority :P
I’m preaching on 2 Peter 3:1-10 on the Lord’s Day
Which includes my favorite End Time Prediction passage in v9 which some could argue is the only true sign of our LORD's return - when the last of the Elect has been redeemed.
Amen!
There are those out there who are trying to read Biblical tealeaves. They are just sure we are in the end times. We may very well be. But that very person's life could be taken tonight. All that energy worrying about the end of the age, and their end is here now.
AMEN!
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