Judgment Day?

Unless you have been living under a rock you have seen a billboard like the one below or read about "Judgment Day - May 21".

There have been plenty of good articles written in response to Harold Camping's latest prophetic prediction of when the rapture will happen (click on the name of the person who wrote the following articles to read them: Jacob Prasch article, David Reagan article, Ken Ham article, Chris Mangan article, Tim LaHaye article).

My Take (for what it is worth...) -

I am of the opinion that Harold Camping is being used as a tool to bring doubt about the promises of God and to make a mockery of Christians everywhere. He (Camping) looks at verses like Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32, and Acts 1:6-7 and he dismisses them. He says "we can know". Those passages alone discount him as an authority on eschatology (the study of the "end times"). I have read of atheists holding "rapture parties" the night of the 21st and the 22nd to celebrate. No doubt they will surmise that when Camping's bible math (see: Numbers in the Bible) proves faulty that this means that God is in fact fictitious and that they are right in their assumptions that Christianity is a fairy tale of epic proportions. It is a shame that so many people are being sucked in by Camping's teachings. I read a report on Yahoo the other day where people talked about how they have sold their homes and emptied their bank accounts to pay for the billboards, tracts, and other forms of advertising that is being used to "warn" people about Judgment Day. What a shame! Judgment Day will come. Be assured of that. But don't listen to Harold Camping for knowledge of when or where it will happen. Pick up your Bible and read it cover to cover and let God tell you what to look for and how to live.

Another side effect of another false prophecy and another false claim of extra knowledge (which is at the heart/spirit of gnosticism) is that people who claim to be Christians (some are probably legitimately saved, others I wonder about) will see this as another sign that the "rapture" is nonsense and not something that the church should teach about or consider as a valid teaching. Preterists, post-millenialists, and partial-preterists who don't view the "harpazo/rapture/being caught up with the Lord" spoken of in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 as being something that the church should be concerned with or teach about will no doubt latch on to Camping's teachings and say "see we told you so, we shouldn't be concerned with the rapture or with teaching about the second coming of Christ." even though it is a topic in the Bible. In fact prophecy makes up around 25 percent of the content in the Bible, so clearly it is a topic that God wants us to study (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17). We have popular teachers like Rick Warren who says to stay away from Bible prophecy which is in direct opposition to the Lord's teachings to know the seasons and be on the alert (Mark 13:28-29, 32). In the Olivet Discourse which can be read in Mark 13 and Matthew 24-25 Jesus warns about deception four times as much as any other subject. How can we know that the end is near? Certainly not by looking to Harold Camping, but we can know by seeing the proliferation of false teaching and deception running rampant in "Christian" circles and the deception flowing from the spirit of this age in America (our gods are typically money, self esteem, lust, enjoyment...in essence we are the epitome of hedonism). I could quote statistics about earthquakes being on the increase on a yearly basis, the rise in famine, the wars and rumors of wars around the world, but the clearest signal that the return of Jesus is imminent is that there is so much deception.

If you are reading this please consider your own personal standing with Christ.


Scroll over these verses -

Hebrews 4:13

Galatians 5:19-21

Matthew 5:27-28

Hebrews 9:27

John 3:3

Revelation 20:15

Revelation 21:8

Romans 3:23-25

Romans 5:1

Romans 5:8

Romans 6:23

Romans 10:9-10

Luke 24:46-47

Ephesians 2:8-9

Titus 3:5

Mark 1:15

Acts 2:38

Acts 17:30-31

John 5:24

1 John 5:11-13

Harold Camping may be a fraud, but Jesus is not. Have you believed that He died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and rose again? Do you have faith? Have you turned to Him and Him alone for salvation from sin, death, and the punishment of hell? Let me leave you with three verses to think about.

John 3:16

John 3:36

2 Corinthians 6:2

Salvation is by faith alone, in Christ alone.

*Update
I saw this quote about the Harold Camping fiasco by Danny Moriel and agreed with it.

I am not a prophet, but as a Bible-based believer I make the 100% safe prediction that nothing predicted by Harold Camping and company will come true for May 21 or any date they set. But what we will experience, and have already experienced, is incredible damage to the church where its credibility and witness is concerned. If there is a more suitable poster child for giving offense and discrediting the ministry rather than being commended as a servant of God than Camping and company, I don’t know who to nominate. And even worse is the effect that this “crying wolf” is having on the unsaved who, when they need it most, are being desensitized to the Gospel in general and the true specific signs pointing to the return of Christ.

It was not just a colossal waste of time and money which the deceived squandered, it is not just their personal reputations and witness that are called into question, but every true believer and maintainer of biblical truth has to live with the consequences. If you’re a Christian, don’t laugh at what was so obviously a folly of the flesh; weep at what has been done to the name and message of Christ.