I can’t resist a challenge. So when I read this in the Tennessean newspaper, I knew I had to leap into the fray:
There are 24 shopping days left till Christmas.
And 171 days left until Jesus’ second coming.
That’s the message on 40 billboards around Nashville, proclaiming May 21, 2011, as the date of the Rapture. Billboards are up in eight other U.S. cities, too.
Fans of Family Radio Inc., a nationwide Christian network, paid for the billboards. Family Radio’s founder, Harold Camping, predicted the May date for the Rapture.
Tom Evans, a spokesman for Family Radio, insisted the predictions are true, and he and other Family Radio supporters want to save their friends and neighbors from God’s judgments. The billboards are also up in Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, Little Rock, Omaha, Kansas City, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Bridgeport, Conn. In cities with Family Radio-affiliated stations, the message is on the air.
The latest prediction comes from a verse in Luke 17: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”
It’s a matter of simple math, said Evans.
According to Camping’s prediction, the Rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning.
Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture.
“We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” he said.
So I sat here pondering this question. Is there anything in the Bible that would prove this wrong? Where could it be? I thought and thought, bringing all of my limited knowledge of Scripture to bear. And then, approximately one-tenth of one second later, it hit me:
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Jesus, in Matthew 24:36)
Any questions?
(Via Mark Shea.)
December 2, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I was approached by a “Camping person” at a rest stop in Maryland in the fall. He tried to hand me a tract about this May date. Well, I told him that I might have believed him (I really wouldn’t have!!) except for the fact that a show on Family Radio the week before had been on “Raise up a child…when they are old they will not depart.” I said to this person, “If the world is going to end next may, why are you mentioning your children getting old?” He had no answer and just moved on to the next person!!
December 2, 2010 at 12:59 pm
LOL!
December 2, 2010 at 1:23 pm
The Camping hermenuetic is severely flawed and his conclusions are based on so called “deeper spiritual meanings,” which only he can divine. He thinks that every number has a special meaning hidden behind it. What I find even more grievous than his date setting is his insistence that Satan rules in all the Christian churches, and his teaching not to be baptized or take the Lord’s supper. He says everyone must depart from all churches, or else we are in grave danger of being annihilated in hell’s flames. Yes, he also embraces annihilation. It is sad to see.
December 3, 2010 at 11:12 am
It seems these people hang-out at rest stops alot! We were at a rest stop & saw a car with a bumper sticker from this organization that said, “We Can Know” and the date 5-21-2011 printed below. This last week, with Luke 24 as the lectionary passage, I couldn’t resist visiting their website to see what this group did with that verse. Sure enough, there’s a 7-minute audio (7 minutes which I’ll never get back), in which Camping confirms the traditional teaching of Scripture that no one knows, but the Father only, and he says that *was* God’s plan at that time tht no one know. But now, God’s plan has changed, and God is revealing through Scripture that only certain people can understand, that the date is 5-21-2011. As the Church Lady said, “How conveeenient.”
December 3, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Rev. Kim: LOL!