[EDIT: This just in: Camping is “flabbergasted” after a “really tough weekend.” Okay. I’m glad he’s candid and honest enough to admit that Saturday didn’t go according to plan, instead of trying to spin things in some spiritual, invisible direction. Now he needs to have the integrity to step down, to retire from public ministry in recognition of the harm he has done to his followers and to the faith as a whole.]
This past Saturday, May 21, a major supernatural event predicted last week by Jimmy Akin occurred around 6:00 PM. Suzanne and I both witnessed it, as did many other people, although Jimmy was right there and got a much better view than the rest of us.
What’s more, we witnessed an apocalyptic sign in the sky! Not exactly of the world-ending variety. More like the opposite.
On Saturday evening, Suz and I saw our third child, James Sebastian, confirmed at St. John in Orange, N.J., with his godfather Jimmy at his side as sponsor. It had been raining for much of the day, and before the Mass, walking into the church, James spotted a bright rainbow in the sky. It was still there after the Mass. I took a picture from my house.
Meanwhile, there has been no statement so far from Harold Camping*, and Family Radio followers are trying to cope with the absence of global earthquakes—and the continued presence of believers, whom they believed were supposed to be caught up to God and thus be spared the tribulations of the coming months. (The end of the world isn’t scheduled until October 21.)
I’m glad to read that at least one Family Radio board member is contritely acknowledging that Camping seems to have gotten it wrong. I hope there will be discussions among board members about Camping’s retirement, voluntary or otherwise.
Some Campingites are apparently trying out alternate interpretations of the event expected on Saturday—just as 1994, the year Camping originally predicted the rapture, was later reinterpreted as the end of the Church age. “Judgment day has come and passed, but it was a spiritual judgment on the world,” says one follower quoted in the above story. “There is no more salvation. Salvation is over with. The fact is we have 153 days, and on the 21st of October, the world will end.”
Questions multiply like hydra heads. If there is no more salvation, what is the purpose of the delay? What does God hope to accomplish in the coming months, if the fate of everyone on earth is now sealed? Are believers now to suffer the coming tribulation along with unbelievers? Are Camping’s followers really readier to give up belief in the rapture itself than in the October 2011 deadline for Christ’s return? If I believed the pretribulation rapture was a biblical teaching, I can’t imagine giving up that belief in order to maintain belief in an end-of-the-world date.
What will they say on October 22? Will they lose their faith? Will they say the world has ended, but in a spiritual way? What will that mean?
While it would be nice for this story to go away, it looks like we’re going to have to live with it until at least October. That’s a bad thing, not only for the Campingites, but for all of us. It’s easy to scoff at the idea that Saturday is Judgment Day, but harder to scoff while maintaining a lively belief that any day could be Judgment Day. Few verses have been more quoted in the last week or two than “No man knows the day or the hour,” but “No man knows” doesn’t mean “It’ll never happen” or “It’s a long way off.”
The pious expression “If Jesus tarries” expresses the right attitude, I think. It combines a healthy admission of ignorance with a lively sense of anticipation and trust.
Happily, next October will be soon followed—if Jesus tarries—by Advent, and we can turn our focus away from failed predictions toward the positive business of waiting for Jesus. Whenever He comes, let us be found doing the things He gave us to do. Praying. Loving God and our neighbor. Celebrating the sacraments.
Have you had any encounters with Campingites? Any other thoughts?
* Edit: This just in: Camping is
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while maintaining our right belief that any day could be judgement day, i think we’re safe in assuming that if it hasn’t happened on oct 21st, then we’re good till at least the 23rd. no way a prediction will come true.
Ah, the sign of the covenant with Noah! In your own neighborhood, at such an opportune time! That’s very cool. Congratulations to James. (What age do they do confirmations at your church? Too many parishes do it as late as possible to keep kids in CCD longer.)
@ Pachyderminator: I couldn’t agree more. I am all in favor of celebrating confirmation as early as possible.
In our parish we are blessed with special permission from our bishop for homeschooled children to receive confirmation as young as nine. (James is 11.)
Of course that’s still after first holy communion so we are still doing the sacraments of initiation out of order. It’s madness!
Excellent post as usual, Steven. I especially liked the last paragraph.
I am often reminded that the end of the world comes for each of us when we die. Given that Camping is almost 90 years old, perhaps he should be more concerned about preparing for his own accounting to God rather than ours.
“... harder to scoff while maintaining a lively belief that any day could be Judgment Day.”
Actually, there are certain prophecies that have to be fulfilled first. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, for instance, predicted that (in spite of all contemporary appearances) the attempt of Julian the Apostate to rebuild the Temple would fail because (1) Julian may have been *an* antichrist, but he was not *the* Antichrist, and (2) the prophecy at least of “not one stone here will be left on another” had not yet been fulfilled. Needless to say, St. Cyril was right.
Yes, the Romans effectively destroyed the Temple ... but they left the Wailing Wall. Should *that* be destroyed, say by a terrorist bomb, I’d begin to take notice.
Meanwhile, there are a number of stinkers on the world stage, but absolutely no one who resembles the Antichrist in power or reputation. In fact, there’s no one who I think could become the Antichrist with the addition of power; all the present world leaders have too many obvious faults and weaknesses. In traditional Catholic teaching, the Antichrist comes before the end, so again: no immediate return of Christ.
Likewise, although Christians are persecuted in many parts of the world, the persecution is neither intense enough or global enough to be the Great Tribulation.
Finally, there are also a number of private revelations that have been deemed, well, worth consideration, and they would require considerable additional time to be fulfilled.
In spite of all of the above, we should not be complacent. There have been any number of tyrants and persecutions that have already come that would have tried me beyond the limits of my human strength, had I been forced to endure them; and such will come again before the end.
@ Howard: In principle, I agree with you; in particular, the end-times prophecy noted in Church teaching that seems to me to be most clearly in the future is the corporate conversion of Israel to the Messiah. So I’m willing to say that the signs seem to suggest that Christ’s return is not imminent.
My one caveat is that the fulfillment of prophecy has a way of upending all prior expectations. The signs illuminate the prophecies as much as the other way around, and to cling too complacantly to our prior ideas of what fulfillment will look like is to risk running aground in much the same manner as Camping.
I would be cautious even of St. Cyril’s reasoning. He was obviously correct on the material point, but I’m not sure it follows that the Wailing Wall provides the assurance he thinks it does.
Not that I’m saying we can’t speak meaningfully about prophecy before it is fulfilled. But I think we should speak circumspectly and provisionally, in full awareness that in prophecy we see through a glass darkly, and that when the clarity of full light comes we may be as surprised as anyone at what it reveals.
I couldn’t resist sharing this:
“From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end.” - Gilbert Keith Chesterton
And congratulations to James. I wish my parish did confirmations at that age.
@ Evan: I know it’s a cliché, but your Chesterton bon mot really did make me almost spit a mouthful of tea all over my keyboard and monitor. This would have been more unfortunate than usual, since it’s (a) a brand-new keyboard and (b) newly brewed Maeda Fukamushi select Sen-cha (green tea). Still worth the stress of keeping my mouth shut! Thanks for sharing.
@Mr. Greydanus:
Some years ago, a nine-pound cat was warming his tummy by lounging on my wife’s scanner. She happened to have a cup of tea near her right hand. When Oro decided to jump down, his right back foot kicked her teacup over, drowning the keyboard of her laptop.
We spent some time trying to dry the keyboard with a hair-dryer. The computer repair people were able to save the memory, copying it into a new laptop. The old laptop was recycled.
Be careful about setting cups of liquid near your computer.
TeaPot562
@ TeaPot562: This happened some years ago, and you remember that it was Oro’s right back foot? It must have been a traumatic incident! Yet from your handle I intuit that even this incident has not caused you to swear off tea.
I try to practice safe tea drinking as well as good computer practices. Even a serious spill is unlikely to cost me anything pricier than a stand-alone keyboard. My iMac at home would survive virtually any foreseeable fluid disaster, and Time Machine is always saving the data to a standalone drive. At work I use a PC notebook with a docking station, so the notebook is always closed, hence reasonably protected. Using my work notebook at home is slightly more risky, but what can I do? I love my tea. Since I am allergic to cats, no worries there.
Of course, even a catastrophic data loss is not, you know, the end of the world, or anything.
@ Steven D. Greydanus: I’m glad you liked it, and I’m glad your computer avoided getting doused with tea.
Note: Original post edited with brief comments from Camping.
My wife’s desk/table backs up to a wall; and holds a printer (left end) the scanner (right back corner), a table lamp next to the scanner, and her laptop (right front corner) plus cables, a magnifying glass, pencils & a mousepad. Oro jumping off the scanner avoided the table lamp. If he had kicked her teacup with a front foot, he would have knocked the teacup onto the floor. The laptop dated from early 2001, and she used its circuit destruction as an excuse (in March 2005) to get a newer model, still in use.
When she uses the scanner, we have to plug it into the same port where the printer customarily connects.
Ref, my net handle: We have a relative who was using “coffeecat” with a year relating to his career long before we got on the net. We drink tea each morning with breakfast, with coffee later in the day. I just thought that my relative had adopted a cute handle, and decided to sort of copy his style.
TeaPot562
I’m listening to Harold Camping right now on Family Radio. I was expecting some humility and an apology. With a room full of reporters, he’s declaring that the Lord DID return on May 21, and judgement DID come on May 21, but it was purely “spiritual”. The great earthquake and all the other horrors are still coming on October 21. We’re not out of the woods yet!
@ Tim Trainor:
Good gosh, I spoke too soon. Gave him too much credit for candor. He is taking the coward’s way out after all. Well, October will make three strikes for him. Time marches on.
Laughing agreeing that Mr. Camping is correct as a ‘spiritual’ judgement does come every day for us - hence the Catholic practice of doing a Spiritual Balance.
For many, especially religious, the spiritual balance comes three times a day - in the morning to set your day on Christ’s path and only His path, again at noon to make any mid-day adjustments to your path and finally at night before bed to give over your day and its expected mistakes and sins so you can rest in God.
All of this is both spiritual and practical and will continue until Jesus actually comes!
“The pious expression “If Jesus tarries” expresses the right attitude, I think. It combines a healthy admission of ignorance with a lively sense of anticipation and trust.”
But come on :) - who seriously imagines that the Second Coming is going to occur at all soon: *if* it ever does ? How can one look forward to an event which one knows perfectly well is extremely unlikely to happen ? It’s too much like looking forward to Britain leaving the EU - very desirable, but not remotely probable at all soon. So one can want it to happen, while knowing it’s not going to.
Christ’s return is NOT imminent !
by Bruce Rockwell
(Pretrib rapturists claim that Christ’s return is imminent, that is, capable of occurring at any moment. Theologian and pastor Norman MacPherson, in his excellent book “Triumph Through Tribulation,” offers proof that the Bible has never taught an any-moment return of Christ. Here are the points brought out and discussed at length by MacPherson:)
1. Great Commission fulfillment implies a long period of time.
2. Seed growth in Matthew 13 is a time-consuming process.
3. Paul expected death, not rapture, in II Timothy 4:6-8.
4. Jesus predicted Peter’s martyrdom in John 21:18-19.
5. Matthew 24 teaches that signs must come first.
6. Many passages speak of a large interval between Christ’s ascension and return: Jewish dispersion into “all nations” (Luke 21); “man travelling into a far country,” “after a long time the lord of those servants cometh” (Matthew 25).
7. Apostasy of last days takes time to develop.
8. Bridegroom tarried in parable of virgins.
9. Pastoral epistles teach Church’s continuing ministry, which involves time.
10. Paul says Christ’s coming is not imminent (II Thessalonians 2:1-3), for apostasy and Antichrist must come first.
11. View of seven phases of church history (seven churches of Revelation) involves big lapse of time and imminence difficulties for pre-tribs; could Christ have come before the last phase?
12. Exhortations to watch and be ready are tied to what pre-trib teachers regard as the second stage (which is necessarily non-imminent) in Matthew 24 and 25, I Corinthians 1:7, Colossians 3:4, I Thessalonians 3:13, II Thessalonians 1:7-10, I Peter 1:13 and 4:13, and I John 2:28.
(How can Christ, returning imminently, have a greater practical effect on us than the indwelling Holy Spirit should already have on us? For more on pretrib beliefs and history, Google “Pretrib Rapture Secrecy,” “Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts,” “Pretrib Rapture Diehards,” and “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty.”)
[Thanks, N.C. Register. Saw the above on the net. Arresting, eh?]
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