Posted on 10/05/2011 1:51:56 PM PDT by Cronos
Yes, this again.
There are fewer billboards this time, but the people who brought you the popular Rapture "scare" of May 2011 are back with a more subdued sequel titled "Wait, Wait, We Meant October."
You may recall the excitement earlier this year when Grand Rapids received a visit from the followers of Family Radio Worldwide, a California-based Christian group led by 89-year-old Harold Camping, who were traveling the country to loudly and colorfully proclaim Judgment Day's imminence.
It didn't happen. OR DID IT!? The conspicuous lack of a world-ending earthquake left Camping and his followers scrambling to explain why life somehow continued as normal after May 21. Here, according to Family Radio's website, is what they've settled on:
What really happened this past May 21st? What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God’s salvation program would be finished on that day. For the next five months, except for the elect (the true believers), the whole world is under God’s final judgment. To accomplish this goal God withheld from the true believers the way in which two phrases were to be understood. Had He not done so, the world would never have been shaken in fear as it was.
What does that mean? The statement goes on:
Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period. On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21.
In the months since the non-Rapture, Camping turned 90, suffered a stroke, and was awarded an Ig Nobel prize for his dubious contributions to human knowledge.
As his revised date approaches, Camping seems less confident -- the Christian Post notes Camping's proclamations about Oct. 21 have been heavy on the probablys. So if you find yourself unable to muster the same enthusiasm for Rapture 2011 this time around, you're definitely not alone.
Congratulations — maybe it’ll be a Rap party :)
“Intuition tells me if they’re strong followers of Camping they harbor beliefs apart from - if not antithetical to - Christianity.”
Intuition tells me that most followers of Camping are not “strong” followers of Camping. Their faith, before any attraction to Camping was weak - not strongly founded - to begin with, and their following of Camping was no stronger and mostly a matter of convenience meeting a certain context - that context being “is this the end times” and what if it is.
The Book of Revelations in particular offers lots of room for interpretations, and prognostications, that have seemed most pertinent to “today” at sometime in every century of the last 2000+ years.
When those prognostications meet real times of world-wide crises, many people become vulnerable to the pull of people like camping.
It is always a time of testing on many levels and sometimes failure is the life lesson we need, the life lesson intended for us; a lesson intended to strengthen us in the long run.
Call me an optimist, but my prayers are that those who followed Camping with sincere simple-mindedness will benefit, not fail, after all, from the failure of his predictions.
I was not - never was - implying Camping was a Christian.
However, I do believe that some of his followers were Christians whose foundations in their faith were weak; not strongly informed; not well studied. To use a descriptive phrase that may not fully describe some his lesser followers, let me call it “simple minded” (uneducated) Christian sincerity.
“Christians” (on an individual level) have fallen prey to the Harold Campings of the world in every century in the last 2000+ years.
I believe it is like “throwing out the baby with the bath water” to insist that WE KNOW that EVERYONE who got caught up in what Harold Camping offered were ALL - to a man, woman and child - as “unChristian” as Mr. Camping.
Personally, I leave that judgment to G-d, as the knowledge of it is His and His alone; not mine.
Camping, you are a stone-cold mental case. STFU and GTFO.
Exactly. For just about every group, it only takes a few loud people to give the entire group a bad name. Sad.
If they're so weak in the faith that they'd walk away over the failed prognostications of this charlatan, I'm pretty certain they never met the real Jesus in the first place.
Don't waste time praying for these deceived ones to come back to A Jesus they've never known; pray they'll come for the first time to the Real Thing.
Our God is a consuming fire, and His eyes are ablaze with fire; He is love — not that He fits into our definition of "love", rather His being defines what love is. Jesus is jealous for our very souls; he is bent on removing all that is in our lives that hinders our unrestrained love for Him. Our God is a warrior; He is actively destroying the works of evil, and we are the prize for which He fights. God loves us all so much that He came down here Himself and died to have fellowship with us. He delights in us; we are His joy and His song, and He is zealous for our reconciliation to Him. He WILL ultimately judge, condemn, and utterly annihilate all evil, but His fiery heart of love is toward us, wooing us to Himself, and whosoever will may come.
If that isn't the Jesus you know; you don't know Jesus. That certainly isn't the Jesus Camping talks about; I wonder whether Camping's followers would even recognize the Rider on the White Horse from Revelation 19:11 & ff.
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