Posted on 05/17/2011 2:23:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
If you happened to learn about Harold Camping’s May 21 rapture prediction from a placard on a subway car or bus shelter in New York City, the ad was probably funded by Robert Fitzpatrick – a 60-year-old, retired transit worker from Staten Island who invested his entire life savings of $140,000 into the campaign.
“I’m trying to warn people about what’s coming,” Fitzpatrick told the New York Daily News. “People who have an understanding [of end times] have an obligation to warn everyone.”
Fitzpatrick isn’t the only person to empty his bank account to warn others based on Camping’s prediction.
NPR recently reported on another one of Camping’s followers, 27-year-old Adrienne Martinez, as saying, “Knowing the date of the end of the world changes all your future plans.”
So, instead of going to medical school like she planned, she gave up that idea. She and her husband, Joel, quit their jobs and moved from New York City to Orlando, where they rented a home and are currently passing out tracts. Joel says they are spending the last of their savings because they don’t see a need for one more dollar.
“You know, you think about retirement and stuff like that,” he said. “What’s the point of having some money just sitting there?”
“We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won’t have anything left,” Adrienne added.
As sincere as Camping’s followers are when it comes to warning the world about the rapture, and ultimately Judgment Day, several Christian leaders are issuing a different sort of warning.
“The Christian church has seen this kind of false teaching before,” said Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on his blog. “William Miller and his Adventist followers (known, surely enough, as Millerites) believed that Christ would return on March 21, 1844. In the 1970s, popular Christian preachers and writers predicted that Christ would return on various dates now long in the past. All this is embarrassing enough, but now we have the teachings of Harold Camping to deal with. Given the public controversy, many people are wondering how Christians should think about his claims.”
Mohler went on to say Christ specifically admonished his disciples not to claim such knowledge. And, he said, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. Instead, he said, while Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes, we are not to draw a line in history and set a date.
“We are not to sit on rooftops like the Millerites,” Mohler said, “waiting for Christ’s return. We are to be busy doing what Christ has commanded us to do.”
W. Robert Godfrey, president and professor of church history at Westminster Seminary California, pointed out on the seminary’s blog, Valiant for Truth, a glaring omission from Camping’s prediction.
“Camping’s teaching reaches the status of heresy in his recent appeal to the world, ‘Judgment Day,’ an eight page statement online,” Godfrey said. “The saddest and most distressing element of Camping’s latest theological statement is that it is Christless. He does not write about Christ’s return, but about judgment day. In his eight pages of warning and call for repentance he writes only this of Christ: ‘Because God is so great and glorious He calls Himself by many different names. Each name tells us something about the glorious character and nature of God. Thus in the Bible we find such names as God, Jehovah, Christ, Jesus, Lord, Allah, Holy Spirit, Savior, etc. Names such as Jehovah, Jesus, Savior, and Christ particularly point to God as the only means by which forgiveness from all of our sins and eternal life can be obtained by God’s merciful and glorious actions.’”
Slightly differing versions of the document can now be found on the Family Radio website. One includes the quoted material mentioned by Godfrey. Another, the .pdf version, includes another paragraph directly below the one above, about the forgiveness of Christ.
Also joining the debate, Cal Thomas took on Camping in his recent column, saying the prophesized events of Matthew 24 haven’t been completely fulfilled yet. He concluded by saying, “I’m not expecting the end on May 21. That’s because of something else Jesus said. He said he would return when people “least expect it” (Luke 12:40). By that standard, Mr. Camping is wrong because he expects the end to come this Saturday. And so it won’t.”
Camping was recently interviewed by New York Magazine which pointed out that he was wrong about his first end of the world prediction in 1994, and wondered if he had any reservations about his ability to predict such things.
“In 1992, two years earlier than that, I had already begun to see that there was a good likelihood that 2011 would be the end,” Camping said, “but at that time when my research in the Bible was not nearly complete – there were whole books of the Bible that I had not gone through yet very carefully – I thought that at that time that there was a possibility it might be 1994, and so I wrote a book, '1994?' but I put a big question mark after it, and in the book it also indicated that 2011 was also a good possibility. And so it was just a preliminary study that I've been able to complete during the last fifteen years.”
Camping believes the rapture will occur May 21 and that God will destroy the earth on October 21.
The billboard in my area had been up for over a year saying Christ was coming on May 21. They took it down last week.
The billboard in my area had been up for over a year saying Christ was coming on May 21. They took it down last week.
I saw the movie “Knowing”. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars. It has a cool plane crash scene.
It was fiction. So is this, especially if they are claiming to be Christian. The Bible explicitly warns against doing exactly what they are doing, and does so in multiple ways and places.
RE: They took it down last week.
Hmmm... why is that? Either their lease was probably up or they’re not as sure of the date as they claim.
It is unschooled, unbibilcal people like this that give Christ, our Lord and Savior, a bad name.
I would not want to be him when he stands before God’s throne.
It is sheer evil to mislead the Lord’s flock.
Back in 1988 there was a little book written about Jesus coming back that year
Is this the same group ???
“...the ad was probably funded by Robert Fitzpatrick – a 60-year-old, retired transit worker from Staten Island who invested his entire life savings of $140,000 into the campaign.”
When it doesn’t come true will he be able to get a refund?
This is how the world is going to end.
(flash animation)
http://www.endofworld.net/
GoogTube version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs
(warning: bad language)
It is sheer evil to mislead the lord’s flock.
_________________________________________
well dont know which lord or which flock you refer to
But the LORD Jesus Christ is the Lord of lords
His flock, the church, cannot be mislead...
so lets see what the LORD Jesus Christ who is God hasd to say...
For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—IF IOT WERE POSSIBLE ..Matthew 24:24
So He says that it is not possible for Hids flock to be mislead...
Nor will the flock follow strangers
THe LORD Jesus CHrist the Good Shepherd says...
“...The man who enters by the gate is the Shepherd of His sheep. The watchman opens the gate for Him, and the sheep listen to His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When He has brought out all His own, He goes on ahead of them, and His sheep follow Him because they know His voice.
BUT THEY WILL NEVER FOLLOW A STRANGER. IN FACT THEY WILL RUN AWAY FROM HIM BECAUSE THEY DO NOT RECOGNISE A STRANGER’S VOICE.” John 10:2-5
No it is not possible for true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who is God to be mislead...
Either God is Truth or God is a liar...
OK
The flock that is listening to the false prophecy.
NOW, do you deny that those who are to lead are responsible to NOT mislead their church?
I am mystified that you think that I was saying that Christ is a liar.
Don’t you remember that Christ will tell some “I never knew you, go away?” So, there will be those who CLAIM to follow Christ AND will mislead their flock.
Clearer now?
I think that might have been the JW’s.
There might have been others as well.
Lots of people were thinking that a generation was forty years, and added that to 1948. Israel was declared a nation that day, fulfilling the prophecy that in one day the nation will exist again. It was to be the generation who saw that, and before it passed away, would the Lord return.
It was guess work. Granted, who knows how many people who could be alive today that “saw” that happen? Even the flood of Noah depend on the death of Methushael, who lived longer than Adam.
Bump to the 22nd...
Its so sad so many lives are disrupted (at least not ruined completely) over such false prophecies.
Even when we see the abomination of desolation as spoken of by Daniel, we’ll know we’re half way through the tribulation but the exact day is still a bit of a question.
It was nice of God to hold the Rapture on a Saturday.
Has all prophecy been fulfilled:
www.propecyquestions.wordpress.com
Now he can't run his scam past May 21st!
But there are plenty of others willing to carry on his work...
(sarcasm)
RE: It was nice of God to hold the Rapture on a Saturday.
Why the use of the past tense?
I thought Camping was Reformed. Shouldn’t that mean that he doesn’t believe in the “rapture” at all?
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