4 Reasons Why Harold Camping Is Wrong

Harold Camping of Family Radio has predicted that Christ will return to rapture His church on May 21, 2011. His whole approach is wrong for the following reasons.

1)     Jesus said, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). Jesus did not know the day or the hour while He was on earth, but of course, now He does.

2) “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple” (Psalm 19:7). The Bible is written in such a way that even simple people can understand how to be saved and how to live. It is not filled with coded messages that can only be unraveled with careful calculations, mystical insight, or computer programs.

3) It will always be possible to manipulate numbers in order to come up with a new date for the second coming. The false prophecy of Christ’s return in 1844 came to be called “The Great Disappointment.” In 1988 thousands of pastors received a booklet by Edgar Whisenant (which I still have). He predicted the return of Christ between September 11 and 13. The next year he said he’d been a year off, and I received another booklet. I guess he either ran out of dates or money because I didn’t get one in 1990. Harold Camping has also been wrong before (1994). Will he live long enough to hope that the third time will be the charm? If he doesn’t someone else sure will.

4) The apostle Paul wrote, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). In Paul’s day, Judaizers were adding Jewish circumcision and other Old Testament ceremonial laws to the gospel. Harold Camping has added leaving the apostate churches (i.e. all the churches) to the gospel as a requirement for being saved. It is a false gospel, which falls under the curse of God.

The Church and Israel

What should the church’s attitude toward Israel be in this age?

This question (supplied by Mark & Julie Perry) needs to be addressed from historical, moral and theological perspectives.

Historical. Beginning in the nineteenth and continuing into the twentieth century, calls for a Jewish homeland emanated from three sources:

Ø  Influential Christians who believed that the Bible predicts a re-establishment of the Jewish state and a mass conversion of the Jews before the return of Christ.

Ø  Jewish Zionism, which arose somewhat later, motivated by both secular and religious concerns.

Ø  Political leaders from America and Europe who sympathized with the persecution of the Jews under Russian pogroms and the German Holocaust. These leaders recognized that Jewish refugees would end up somewhere, but they didn’t want them all showing up on European or American doorsteps.

Early calls for a Jewish homeland never materialized, but in 1947 a UN Resolution authorized the establishment of Jewish and Palestinian states. Israel declared its independent existence in 1948. The Arab states, refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist, immediately attacked.

The war of Jewish independence resulted in the expulsion or flight of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs. Except for Jordan, the neighboring Arab nations refused to grant citizenship and civil rights to the refugees. This refusal has resulted in a large number of stateless Arabs who are demanding the right to return to Israel and reclaim lands that they or their ancestors once inhabited. If this ever took place and they were granted citizenship, the Jewishness of the nation of Israel would at once be compromised.

In the years since its creation, modern Israel has been in an almost constant state of siege, fighting major and minor wars and suffering from ongoing terrorist attacks.

Moral. Unfortunately, many Christians (especially in the United States) have adopted an uncritically supportive stance toward Israel. God’s promise to Abraham (I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, Genesis 12:3) has been cited to prove that our national blessing is dependent on always siding with Israel. However, God Himself has never adopted an uncritical support for His people. Just read the prophets. If we want to adopt a biblical attitude toward Israel’s actions, we ought to weigh them by the biblical standards of justice and mercy, which God commanded Israel to show even toward aliens (Deuteronomy 10:16-19).

On the other hand, Israel is often blamed unfairly by western media.

Ø  The issue of stateless Palestinians should not be laid at Israel’s feet alone. The United States and Europe have taken in millions of Muslim refugees, people whose religion and cultures were vastly different from the majority of their citizens. Why did the Muslim nations surrounding Israel refuse to grant citizenship to their own co-religionists?

Ø  Although Israel has at times exacerbated tensions by its harsh treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in general its restraint under constant threats to its survival can hardly be matched by any other nation in history.

Ø  We ought not take the words of Israel’s enemies at face value. Too often their blatant lies have been reported without correction. When talking western reporters, they have condemned suicide bombers, but when speaking to their own people, they have praised and supported them.

Ø  Time and time again, Israel has been blamed for killing civilians, but Palestinians targeting Israel with their rockets have not been blamed for using those civilians as human shields.

These considerations taken together indicate that evaluating Israel’s actions is not easy. The situation is morally complex and often morally ambiguous. Christians, in my view, should not lend unqualified support to everything Israel does, but neither should we be unduly negative. We ought to stand up for Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

Theological.  Numerous Old Testament prophecies predict the regathering and conversion of Israel in the latter days. It is unreasonable to suggest that these prophecies have been completely fulfilled in ancient times, that they have been taken over by the church, or that they have been set aside by God because of Israel’s sins. Romans 11 clearly looks forward to a future for ethnic Israel.

The prophetic status of Israel today can best be described in the language of Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel saw a valley filled with scattered dry bones. As he watched, the bones came together and flesh grew upon them, but the bodies were still just corpses. Finally, the Spirit of God breathed into them “and they came to life and stood on their feet.” (One wonders on what else besides their feet they might have stood J.)

The Lord explained that the bones represented the whole house of Israel that was to be regathered and made to live again. For 2000 years Israel was dead, dry and scattered. Now the bones have begun to come together again, but still there is no spiritual life in the vast majority of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is openly hostile to Christian evangelism.

From a theological perspective, the church ought to be praying for God to outpour His Spirit on His ancient people, just as He promised He would (Zechariah 12:10). We should not fall prey to the notion that Jews can be saved through Judaism without conscious faith in Jesus Christ. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge (Romans 10:1-4). Therefore, the church needs to support the evangelism of Jewish people both inside and outside of Israel.

Finally, Scripture does not enable us to date the return of Christ by referring to the reestablishment of the State of Israel. Jesus’ prophecy that “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Mark 13:30) probably refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, not to the end-time events that were foreshadowed by that destruction. Therefore, Christians should not become feverishly excited about the second coming of Christ. We should live faithfully and diligently every day as though He might come in the next blink of an eye, but we should plan for the future as though we might live to see our children’s children’s children.

Osama bin Laden is dead

And this morning crowds gathered around the around the White House and at Ground Zero in New York to celebrate. I was glad, but I was not in a celebratory mood.

I was glad because our government has finally brought to justice a man who has done great harm to our country. As I argued in my book The Beauty of God for a Broken World, God’s justice is one aspect of His beauty. It arises from His love for His Son and His love for His own intrinsic righteousness. Even on the human level, we can recognize that a just society is more attractive than a city or nation where ruthless thugs rule the roost. God has given human governments the responsibility for exercising the temporal portion of His vengeance (Romans 12:19-13:5). The eternal portion of His vengeance God reserves for Himself.

So I am glad that bin Laden has been brought to justice. However, celebration is another matter.

For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of calamity. Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;  or the LORD will see it and be displeased, and turn His anger away from him (Proverbs 24:16-18 ).

The soul of Osama bin Laden is now, no doubt, suffering the torments of God’s wrath. At the final resurrection, his soul and body will be reunited to endure forever the fiery judgment of Hell. It ought never to be a matter for rejoicing when any human being is consigned to such a fate.

In the previous sentence, I wrote never, but I didn’t quite mean it. I meant never in this life. There will come a day when all of heaven’s angels and all of Christ’s redeemed will shout for joy, praising God for His just judgment of the wicked (Revelation 19:1-6). But that day has not yet arrived. Our hearts are not yet pure enough to celebrate the judgment of bin Laden because mixed in with our celebration there will inevitably be a self-righteous smirk and the soul-deadening satisfaction that comes from taking our own revenge.

So let us thank God for the justice that has been done. Let us thank our President and his elite forces for their diligence and professional expertise. But let’s hold off on the cake, the dancing and the fireworks.

Where was God?

The tsunami that wreaked havoc in Japan on March 11 raised the same question that every other natural disaster brings to the fore: Where was God? People want an answer in twenty-five words or less. God’s answer encompasses the entire Bible from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22, so any summary is necessarily something of a distortion. Nevertheless, I will try to point out a few biblical truths that are sometimes left out of the discussion. (I explore these concepts more fully in chapter 3 of The Beauty of God for a Broken World -- click for a summary of the book.)

1. When God finished creating the earth and its inhabitants, He pronounced the result “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Nevertheless, the creation was not yet in its final state, for God told Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The word translated “subdue” means to subdue by force. God placed the first couple in a perfect garden, but the world outside was wild. Men and women were given the task of taming the wildness, not only for their benefit, but for the benefit of the whole creation.

2. Hebrews 2:8, quoting from Psalm eight’s description of man, says, “You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” Then in a massive understatement the verse continues, “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” Because of sin, Adam and Eve and their posterity were not able to fulfill the divine command of Genesis 1:28. As God said to the man after the fall,

Cursed is the ground because of you;

In toil you shall eat of it

All the days of your life.

Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.

Genesis 3:17-18

3. “The whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth,” but when Christ returns “the creation itself will be set free from its slavery corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21-22). So the final redemption of lost men and women will result in the transformation of the world. The creation will become all that it was meant to be.

4. In this present age earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and droughts bring much misery and destruction. Both the good and the evil suffer such things, and no one is entitled to point a finger and say, “They must have been worse sinners than others” (Luke 13:1-5). We suffer individually and corporately because sin has alienated us from God, and God’s curse has prevented us from exercising benevolent dominion over the earth.

5. For the most part, scientists are able to describe the physical mechanism behind natural disasters. In the case of the Japanese tsunami, the Pacific plate of the earth’s crust is gradually moving under the plate beneath northern Honshu. When the stresses became great enough, the earth fractured and the sea floor rose by several meters.

6. The physical mechanism, however, is only part of the explanation. Behind everything that happens is the concurring power of God, “who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). God does not set aside the laws that He has built into His world (at least, not very often), but He works in and through them. He is the judge of all the earth, and if He chooses to settle accounts with human beings one by one or in larger numbers, that is His prerogative.

7. While we are rightly disturbed in mind and heart by the massive devastation of March 11, the Bible, with full awareness of such disasters nevertheless proclaims that God’s mercy is greater than His judgment (Exodus 34:6-7). That mercy is available to all who will repent and trust in His crucified, risen Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:4-9).

The Greatest Gift

Several years ago on one of my trips to Siberia I taught the Old Testament to prospective pastors.  The gratitude and responsiveness of my students were very rewarding, but my most affecting experience occurred outside of class.

After church one Sunday I had lunch with a refugee family from Kyrgystan.  The couple have five children, ten years old and younger.  I think that if the wife had not looked so worn, she would have been a handsome woman.  These people have virtually nothing.  The man picked us up in a car that had to stop three times in twenty minutes for the radiator to be filled.  He cannot get a regular job because he has no working papers.

His wife had cooked a pot of pasta.  There was a little sauce on it, and I think I found two tiny specks of meat.  Our hostess gave me a big bowl of pasta.  A student with me received a little less, and my translator had about half as much.  The parents stood and watched us eat, but did not eat themselves.  I hope they and the children had something earlier, but I am not sure.  The children were in another room, so I only saw a two-year old boy for a few minutes.  He held his hand up for me to shake, but after a while he began to cry and was removed.

After the pasta, the hostess poured us some tea and put two kinds of homemade jam on the table.  I had already told the hostess how full I was because I wanted her to know that the lunch was more than adequate.  Now I praised her jam.  It was very good.  When we left, the lady presented me with a liter jar of homemade strawberry jam.  A few days later, I sent them a small gift bag provided by a family in my church.  The bag contained some toothpaste, a matchbox car, some granola bars and a few other odds and ends.  I wondered if that car was the only toy the children had to share.  Afterwards, their pastor told me with evident emotion that they were very grateful. 

To me this jar of jam represented the life of that poor woman's family.  I felt guilty, as if I had personally taken food out of the mouths of her children.  I wanted to dump the contents of my wallet on the table, but that would only have shamed her and her husband.  She gave away the little she had, but she did not simply give it to a strange preacher from a distant land.  She gave it to God.

One day as Jesus sat in the temple, He "began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.  A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.  Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, 'Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on'" (Mark 12:41-44).

I have never in my life received a gift as great and as precious as the gift of this Kyrgystani woman.  It humbles me because I have never given so much to anyone either, not even to God.  Her gift teaches me to be thankful, not for my comparative wealth, but for the lesson that God humbles the rich through the poor.  I, as an American, am by that very fact one of the rich people of the world, and I certainly need to be brought down.

No!  I must take back what I have just written.  I have received a greater gift than that jar of jam, but the greater gift came from an even deeper poverty.  On the first Christmas, the Son of God left the glories of Heaven for the pigsty of Earth.  He left the adoration of angels to be stigmatized as an illegitimate son of Mary.  He left eternal blessedness to bear God's crushing curse on our sin.

The Bible says, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9).  Because He became poor, the now risen Christ is able to offer you the greatest gift of all, eternal life.  Will you humble yourself and receive Christ that you may be rich?

Once a Year or Never

This is a bit of poetic drivel I wrote several years ago for my own entertainment. Perhaps it will entertain you as well. It is intended to be read aloud--but not too loud.

Once a Year or Never

(Being a poor poet’s imitation of Ogden Nash)

Most people think windows ought to be done in the spring and in the fall,

But I think they ought to be done once a year or not at all.

Cleaning windows is an awful chore and a terrible laborium,

And the space between the panes is a natural laboritorium—

An entomologist’s delight and Miss Muffet’s sorest fright.

What are those glass menageries

With plants and smallish creaturies?

They might be called terrariums.

Perhaps they’re planetariums.

I think I’ll call my viewing ports my little spiderariums.

If I cleaned my windows in the spring and in the fall,

I would say I do it by the semi-annu-all.

If each four years I try to do them sorterly,

May I say I clean my windows quarterly?

My neighbors are ashamed.  With me they are quite vexed.

I’ll start my annual cleaning in the year that’s after next.

                                                             John K. La Shell

Our Sense of Senslessness

The vast sufferings of humanity provide a strong argument for the existence of God.  Yes, I did say “for the existence of God,” not “against” His existence.  How so?

The thing that needs to be explained is our sense of moral outrage at suffering.  When a baby dies of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, his parents cry out, “What did we do to deserve this?”  When the mother of two young children is killed in an automobile accident, we ask, “Why now, when her family needs her so much?”  When floods leave hundreds dead and thousands homeless in Central America or Madagascar, we shake our heads in bewilderment.  It seems so unjust.

If we were only intelligent animals, we would not feel this way.  We might feel sorrow at the passing of a loved one.  (Dogs miss, and apparently mourn, their dead owners.)  We might even be angry, but sorrow and anger are not the same thing as moral outrage.  Moral outrage depends on a particular view of the world.  It has no place in a world governed by chance and survival of the fittest.  Gazelles do not lie awake at night pondering why a particular member of their herd was killed by a lion.

Whenever we call something a senseless tragedy, we imply that somehow life ought to make sense.  We are suggesting that there is a rational order to the universe.  If there is no such order, then no aspect of our lives has any meaning.  Falling in love, enjoying a beautiful sunset, building houses for the homeless and shoving an old lady out into the traffic are all equally senseless.

Many voices do insist that we are only animals and that the only meaning our lives can have is the meaning we ourselves give to them.  The problem is that the people who most loudly proclaim the absurdity of life are often the very ones most disturbed by the senselessness of suffering.  If they were being true to their theory, they should just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, well.  The lion got another one.  Maybe I should join a different herd to save my own skin.”  No matter what our lips may say, the idea of ultimate rationality seems to be hard-wired into our psyches.  From where did it come?

The Bible says that our sense of moral order comes from God.  Even people who have never read God’s written word nevertheless “do by nature the things of the Law. . . in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:14-15).  Irrationality entered the world through sin because sin is an irrational rebellion against God.  Sin is the direct cause of senseless work place murders by disgruntled employees.  It is also a more remote cause of natural disasters and disease because sin has taken away our ability to obey God’s command to rule wisely over the earth and its creatures (Genesis 1:26).  When Adam sinned, God cursed the very ground so that it would not easily yield its fruit to his labors.

Still we may wonder why God does not do something about the mess we have made of His world.  The Bible’s answer is that He has and He will.  God sent His Son Jesus into the world to undo the damage caused by sin.  By His death, He paid the just penalty of sin.  By His resurrection, He gives eternal life to believing sinners.  When He returns visibly to Earth again, He will reverse God’s curse on the natural world.  The Bible says,

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:18-21).

Finally, we may ask, “If God is going to end all suffering in the future, why doesn’t He do it now?  Why has He waited for so many years?”  Again, the Bible has an answer.  The day that Jesus comes to renew and redeem will also be the day He comes to judge.  God is waiting until human sin is fully ripe for judgment; He is also waiting to give men and women an opportunity to repent and receive Christ.  The Bible says, “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).

Friend, are you outraged by the vast sufferings of humanity?  When you face God, He will say, “Your very outrage is a testimony to My righteous Law.  Why, then did you not repent of your sins?”  If you are not yet ready to answer that question, perhaps you should not be too anxious for God to set things right in the world.