I don’t like to see anyone’s views, right or wrong, misrepresented or distorted. In my Evangelical Protestant days, I often found myself inadvertently explaining Catholic beliefs against Protestant distortions of those beliefs, not because I accepted them as true, but simply because I felt we should be clear on what other people do and don’t think. Eventually, in explaining the Catholic faith, I began to find that it was not only more intelligible than my Protestant friends recognized, but more intelligible than what I believed as a Protestant.
This is not what happens with the beliefs of someone like Harold Camping, whom I used to listen to on Family Radio back in the 1980s. I even called into his show one time and briefly debated him on calling Mary the Mother of God (which even in my Protestant days I saw the sense of, as do many in the Reformation tradition going back to Luther and Calvin).
The better one understands beliefs like Camping’s, the more misguided and sad they appear. Even so, those who opine or comment on Camping’s views ought to take the trouble to be clear about what he did and didn’t say. Much of the online mockery and condemnation directed at Camping, understandable and human as it might be, has been not only uncharitable but misguided.
Christians should regard Camping and his followers with compassion and understanding. This doesn’t mean overlooking the seriousness of his errors. The fact is that Camping is a nut who has done great harm to his followers and to the broader world of faith. I think Camping should admit his disastrous wrongness and step down from his leadership position at Family Radio. If he doesn’t, I think Family Radio should force him out.
The wrongness of Camping’s approach and arguments has been repeatedly demonstrated, both by argument (see for example Jimmy Akin and Jimmy Akin again) and by observation, notably in 1994 when Camping first predicted Jesus’ return, and now on May 21 when the earthquakes and rapture of the faithful failed to materialize. Between now and October, we will have opportunity for further disconfirmation, and, if Jesus tarries, on October 22 the failure of Camping’s eschatology will be complete.
Let’s be clear, though, about what he did and didn’t say. For example, the Washington Post (AP) gets it wrong:
A California preacher who foretold of the world’s end only to see the appointed day pass with no extraordinarily cataclysmic event has revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21.
Wrong! Actually, Camping has been calling for the end of the world on October 21 all along. May 21 was never supposed to be The End. Instead, Camping predicted that May 21 would be “Judgment Day.”
Now, to most people from a Christian or post-Christian milieu, “Judgment Day” means “the end of the world,” because that’s basically the reality that the Catholic Church, followed by most of Protestantism, has always taught: that at the end of history comes the Second Coming, general resurrection, final judgment, and recreation of the heavens and the earth.
Among some non-Catholics, though, there are other views. One of these is the idea of a prior eschatological event, the Rapture, in which the faithful are snatched up to heaven and thus spared the final tribulation of the last days. It was this event, not The End, that Camping’s followers expected on Saturday, along with the earthquakes we didn’t get.
Confronted with a mismatch between his roster of expected eschatological events and the timetable he’s calculated for them, Camping initially pronounced himself “flabbergasted,” but quickly embraced the least tenable option open to him. Instead of sticking to the events and ditching the timetable, he’s chosen to stick to the timetable and ditch the events.
In other words, Camping now says he wasn’t wrong about May 21 and October 21—he was only wrong about the Rapture and the tribulation. Instead of a rapture, we only got a “spiritual judgment,” and instead of a time of unprecedented tribulation it now appears that we will have a relatively quiet and uneventful prelude to The End in October.
That’s about as far from hermeneutical sanity as I can imagine. Granted that one believes that (a) the tribulation and the rapture are biblically prophesied events and (b) from the Bible we have calculated when they will happen, surely the former must be considered better founded than the latter. Surely if it turns out that one must be wrong about either (a) or (b), the most reasonable option would be to reject (b) first before reevaluating (a).
That, though, is not what Camping has chosen to do. Instead, he’s concluded that “Judgment Day” came and went as scheduled, but with no outward manifestation. This is essentially the same strategy that the Jehovah’s Witnesses used after their predictions of Christ’s return in 1914 failed. Ever since then, the Watchtower line is that Jesus did return in 1914, but spiritually and invisibly.
It also seems to be the same maneuver Camping used regarding previous eschatological deadlines where nothing happened, going back to 1988. That year, instead of the rapture predicted by some, Camping says the “church age” came to an end. Christ abandoned the churches to Satan, and true believers were henceforth to have nothing to do with sacraments, church membership or ordained ministry. 1988 also marked the beginning of the Great Tribulation in Camping’s timetable.
1994 is the next event in Camping’s chronology. After mistakenly predicting Christ’s return in that year, Camping later said that what instead happened in 1994 was a new eschatological outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Between 1988 and 1994, according to Camping, it was nearly impossible to be saved.
Now Camping has spiritualized the predicted events of May 21, 2011. If he finds himself on October 22 with the world rolling on as usual, he may find it necessary to find a new spiritual reinterpretation of the end of the world itself.
This sort of spiritual reinterpretation of beliefs originally held to refer to empirical realities is toxic to faith. If Judgment Day, which last week Camping was sure the Bible taught as a physical, observable event, turns out to be only a spiritual, invisible reality, can he or his followers be sure that the Second Coming is any different? Could it be that Jesus is never coming back in any visible, bodily sense? What about our future resurrection? What about the resurrection of Jesus Himself?
A friend of mine commented in another forum, “I am bummed that guys like Camping actually end up inoculating us against the joy of believing that an end is ultimately what our faith envisions. False prophecy isn’t just a lie, it is actually a cancer that gnaws on the eschatological core of our identity.”
It is not enough to reject lies. Our hearts need truth. And the truth we need is this: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
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The Sola Scriptura believer Camping would do well to heed this verse:
“But the prophet, who being corrupted with pride, shall speak in my name things that I did not command him to say, or in the name of strange gods, shall be slain.” -Deuteronomy 18:20
Also, I am annoyed with the date he picked, 21 October is my son’s 6th birthday.
Lol, Dr. Eric, May 21st was my son’s 11th birthday.
The irrationality of these people can be summed up by one of your own commmenters…one Alfred D. Smith…first he claims that Catholics misinterpret Scripture the same way that Satan did IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN. (Never mentioned WHICH Scripture Satan was using…lol) Then he says that he frequently searches Scripture to find passages that back up his beliefs.
The combination of these two thought processes sums up the whole thing in a nutshell. One, they make up beliefs and then torture Scripture to support them, and two, reason goes out the window if it interferes with those beliefs. Camping and his followers are more like cult members, than Christians. Very dangerous, and very sad.
“A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and a sign shall not be given it…” MT 16:4
“Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come.” MT 24:44
If I may take liberty of interpretation…He seems to be saying we will not be given foreknowledge of the End…Our Blessed Lord said this many times…you’d think people would listen. Thank God he wasn’t passing out kool-aid.
I very much agree with author regarding properly understand and present opinion which we discuss. In my oral debates I usually repeat what other person said, and interpret it in best possible way. Other person often accepts my positive explanation of his or her expressed opinion.
Other succesful method in debate is to react first on what is truthful in debated opinion. In most opinion truthful and wrong thought are mixed.
In opinion about date of cataclismic events, truth is that we do not know will such event happen or not, and when they will hapen.
It is good to be aware about that fact, and behave as I will live for long time, but be prepared any moment for death. Such approach to life brings real peace of mind and full activity and use of creativ possibilities.
Next point is to respect person, and judge acts or behaviour.
We in Croatia are making very strong and visible advance in public debate about homosexual behaviour when we paralelly say that we are for respect of every human regardless how she or he behave. We are against any violence, insult, humiliation, ridiculing or ironising person, but we have right to think and speak negively about homosexual, promiscuous, unfathful or any other negative acting or behaving.
Someone can feel ofended when we say that his or her behaviour is negative, but we did not offend him or her when we say that a behaviour is negative and harmful.
Such diferentiation is very important to be in our hearts, minds, our words and deeds, and we win debate.
We say to our opponents that Catholic Church is a best friend of people of homosexual, promiscuous, ar any other wrong behaviour.
CC ask for full respect of them and offer clear and convincing arguments why their beghaviour is wrong and harmful in first place to themselves.
Same with protestants and people of other religions, atheists etc.
Your blog today shows you can take the evangelical out of evangelicalism but you cannot take the rapture fixation out of the convert.
There was/is plenty of worldwide coverage spent on Mr. Camping’s mis-spendings. Shouldn’t you use your skills speading to good word on what we, as Ctaholics, believe, rather thanwasting time and energy on autodidacts living in the narrow world of sola scriptura?
Mr. Greydanus, let’s spread instead our Catholic truth:
_We must ALWAYS be ready to stand before the Lord.
_All through the Gospel, we learn that we each are put upon this earth to know God, to love God, and to serve God.
_While the rapture is assumed to be a soley Protestant teaching, it’s never been denied by the Catholic Church. My mother’s “rapture” came in 1971, at the age of 49, as she was taken by the Hong Kong Influenza. Yours may come when you are in your late ‘50’s. Mine may come today.
_Unfortunately, powerfully gullible people believe the kind of thing that Mr. Camping was spewing—and THAT opens Christianity to ridicule.
_A whole slew of capitalist will always capitalize on believers’ fears.
Your blog, instead of talkig up Mr. Camping’s dubious enterprise, should discuss how the Catholics and non-Catholics alike can learn about these kinds of predictions, opening up our sharing of hope in the promise of Christ (as only you did in the last graph), not the predicts of an old man alone reading his Bible His way.
@Dr. Eric & mk: My brother’s birthday is May 22. When I called him a couple weeks earlier to wish him a happy almost-birthday in case he didn’t make it to 37, he cracked up.
I’m not sure I want to label Camping a false prophet, simply because I’m not sure he qualifies as a would-be prophet at all. I would rather call him a false teacher. AFAICT, he doesn’t claim to receive special revelation from God, only to interpret the existing deposit of faith.
Granted, it’s fuzzy with the notions of the “end of the church age” and “new ways” of understanding or “unlocking” the scriptures. But even when he claims to be “infallibly” right (e.g., “More Infallible Proofs,” a tract on the dating of the Rapture that you can still get from his website), he offers purported biblical arguments, not authoritative pronouncements directly from God, which is what prophets do.
@Felix Culpa: Dittos on the Kool-aid, absolutely. Of course we have to wait till October to see how it all pans out.
@ Marijo Zivkovic: Thanks for your comments. Your approach sounds right on to me. Blessings on your work in Croatia!
@ John: You’re way out of line, friend. For starters, even as an Evangelical Protestant I was not a Rapture believer. Why not follow the example of Marijo Zivkovic above, and endeavor to give a charitable interpretation instead of a hostile one?
You say “There was/is plenty of worldwide coverage spent on Mr. Camping’s mis-spendings.” True—and a lot of it is misleading or inaccurate. That’s my point.
Your unconventional use of “rapture” to refer to believers going to heaven when they die seems to me unhelpful. The Protestant “Rapture” belief is based on a misunderstanding of 1 Thes 4:17, which speaks of believers being “caught up” (raptured) to meet Christ in the air on His return. The misunderstanding comes in thinking that this is not the Second Coming; that Christ takes the believers away into Heaven and returns at a later date. The Bible does not speak of believers who fall asleep and go to the Lord as being “raptured.”
God bless you.
A priest in our diocese had an encounter with a rapture group who wanted to borrow his church for the occasion, because they needed a larger space where they could all be together - which causes me to wonder why they didn’t have a space large enough to be together in when they worshiped - but anyway, he told them sure, but first you have to sign over all your cars to my parish. They went somewhere else. I don’t know where they went, but I do know they drove home.
As for Mr. Camping, people who believe this sort of “teaching” seem to me to be desperately looking for certainty in a world which provides very little of it, and offers threatening shadows in almost all directions. I pray that they may be shaken enough in their “certainty” to seek the true Light of the World.
I’ve seen anti-Christian mockery from both people who think as you’ve reported and from those who do seem to have a correct understanding of “The Rapture” but lump believers of the Rapture in with the rest of Christians.
“Were you Raptured” was a common mocking question on non-religious forums the next day.
It’s a shame that people will use this individual’s error to misrepresent all Christians as being “stupid.”
I’ve experienced first hand that people like Mr. Camping make Christianity a laughing stock. I’ve heard it in my office, people (believers or not I don’t know) joking about, “I guess I better get praying more” or “I’m gonna predict the end and start making money”. Another co-worker, a claimed atheist, asked me if the world doesn’t end Saturday doesn’t that de-bunk the Bible. I told him NO it does not debunk the Bible because the Bible DOES NOT tell us when the end will be, it does tell us that Christ will come back again like a thief in the night and that we are not to fear the end BUT have to be prepared for it whether it is our own personal end or the end of the world.
My infallible source for the date of the Rapture is Dr. Jack Van Impe. He says the it will happen sometime in 2012. Or not.
I have a friend who posted her thoughts on Harold Camping, which I think we should all read and consider. Besides some beautiful writing, I think she presents a valuable and refreshing perspective on the issue:
http://icnebavo.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/on-harold-camping/
Steven, I’d be interested in your reaction.
I heard on TV that Harold Camping has followed the example of the Seventh-Day Adventists (who originally predicted that the world would end in the 1840s) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses (who predicted dates from 1914 to 1975) and claim that something “spiritual” happened.
As Catholics, of course, we don’t even believe that “spiritual” means invisible to the senses, and so regard Titus 3:5 as refering to baptism rather than a “spiritual” [invisible] event.
For a couple of good “end of times” lectures go to http://www.audiosancto.org/archive/2003 and listen to 2003-01-05 and 2003-01-06.
Thank you, Jeffrey Thayne, for the link. It’s a beautiful article indeed. Yes, God is not interested in us saving our faces and yes, some will always find Christianity foolish.
Camping and their followers are prophecies that must take on center stage…as scriptures say it would….false prophets under false religious systems.
My assessment of Camping is that he is guilty of spiritual arrogance. Scripture is very clear that only the Father, not even the Son or angles, knows when the end of the world will come, nor how the world will end. To assume that one can juggle scripture passages to come up with a date of the Judgment Day, end of the world, or rapture, is an expression of arrogance. As the saying goes, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Mr. Greydanus,
We burned Savonarola at the stake for similar things.
@ Jeffrey T.: I think your friend’s blog post eloquently makes a valuable and necessary point: If we reject Camping in order to preserve our self-image or the image we think others have of us, we are on the wrong path. I think the points I’m making are worth making too.
@ Dr. Eric: (a) Burning Savonarola: not one of the Church’s prouder moments. (b) Savonarola was a Catholic monk sworn to religious obedience. Camping is a radical anti-ecclesiastical fundamentalist with a half-millennium of Protestantism under the bridge. The two cases are not really comparable.
Point being that the whole thing is tragc, becuause so many people have been misled by the radio preacher, and some have ben misled into spending vast sums of money in support of his advertising campaign, telling their friends and coworkers and neighbors that the world was about to end. This brings scorn to the cause of Christ. This is the only resonable message a Catholic who has a column (or even just a blog) should write about.
After all, it was St. Paul who, in Romans 2:24, penned: “It is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’”.
There’s enough of this in the world, please do not add any more.
Has anyone thought of PRAYING for Mr Camping that God will open his eyes to the truth? He IS someone Jesus shed his blood for just like the rest of us. It is sad that this whole thing gives Christianity a bad name and unbelievers just something else to joke about.
@ Glenn: “Has anyone thought of PRAYING for Mr Camping that God will open his eyes to the truth?”
Yes. For instance, last week I created a Facebook Event to pray for Camping and his followers over the weekend. As I said in this post, we should regard Camping and his followers with compassion and understanding. Ultimately, though, my heart goes out more to Camping’s deluded followers than Camping himself, who freely took on the role of a quasi-prophetic teacher and bears the greater responsibility that goes with that role.
Everyone maybe too soon to jump on the bandwagons on Camping if we are wait down and analyze what went on in Joplin and the rest of the heartlands the next day Sunday. May 22. Aren’t we not seeing likened guided-missile with pin-point accuracy snatching off people, while even from a mother’s arm holding on to her baby?
Once again, I have come a bit late on this Post. But to demonstrate how tragic and the harm these doomsday Prophets cause, one poor young man, was so sure this man was a Prophet and was speaking the truth. So what did the misguided boy do???? He hang himself that Saturday morning inside the Choirs’ Store in the Holy Family Minor Basilica, here in Nairobi, Kenya. This is the Seat of John Cardinal Njue, the Head of the Catholic Church in Kenya. You can imagine the sadness all of us felt at the loss of this young life as we celebrated the Sunday Mass. On the instructions of the Cardinal, the Father-in-Charge of the Holy Family Basilica had to cleanse the Room after the main 11.30 a.m. Holy Mass. Another duped believer, a father of 7, emphatic the world was coming to and end, sold the family 8-acre piece of land, their 3 solitary cows - the only source of milk for his young family - and now they are destitute and he has nowhere to take his wife and seven young children. It is unfortunate that we shall continue to be led astray by these self-proclaimed Prophets and Leaders of the hundreds of Splinter Christian Churches which preach stupefying fallacies thereby deceiving thousands of innocent people with scant understanding of Christian Faith. I am always amazed at how so many people get duped by these people and believe them, at times into fanatical dimensions. Because a little reflection, and a genuine,sober search for the truth, will lead one to discover that these people are liars. Let us always remember that Satan quoted the Scriptures to justifying the demands he has making to Jesus when he tested Him in the wilderness during His 40 days’ of Fasting. Those who interpret the Scriptures literally, or search through the Bible to find justifications for the preconceived fallacious teachings and beliefs which they hold, are collaborative instruments of Satan whom he uses to mislead mankind.
Camping’s calculations were wrong and his assumptions naive, but Rapture and Judgment Day are still relevant! Humanity needs to know the truth.
Listen to this very compelling recording from a new spiritual group making waves and getting the word out to be spiritually prepared with more than a simple prayer and some bible verses.
http://www.merkaba.org/audio/camping.htm
@Mary Why waste your time non-Catholic teaching? St Faustina was told by Our Blessed Lord to tell the world about His Mercy…“JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU”
trust ...based on faith and expressed in love. +JMJ
“And the truth we need is this: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
So what do we make of the fact that the Socomnd Coming not occur within the lifetime of the generation Jesus was speaking to ? And doesn’t “32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
sound ever so slightly like the date-setting indulged in for centuries by so many such as Camping ?
By any normal standard, Jesus was wrong, mistaken, not accurate, in error. How - if He said these words - is He not in fact as wrong as Rutherford, Miller, Camping, Whisenant, Anne Lee, etc. ? Or is there a standard of truth that allows Him to make what if we made them would be called errors, but are not errors if He says them ? That is not a pleasant suggestion - it’s a recipe for chaos.
Or do we have to spiritualise the Second Coming ? And what happens if mankind becomes extinct, or evolves into something not human, or goes to another planet, before it occurs ? The disciples did not have to contend with these possibilities - we do. It won’t be much good if He returns after the earth has become a dead planet because the sun has grown too hot to allow life to continue.
manticore: Please define what Jesus meant by “this generation”.
Bill912:
“Generation” could mean every 35 years (the time needed to father another generation) or “race” (the people genrated—i.e., the Jews).
Jesus also said that “concerning the day or the hour no one knows—neither the angels in heaven nor the Son—only the Father.” (Matthew 24:26)
Trent, aka John, among your many other pseudonyms, I am forced to conclude that you are not posting in good faith. I am accordingly removing your comments from my combox.
@ manticore: Actually, I think we misunderstand Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse because we think he is speaking primarily about the end of the world. He isn’t. As all prophets have always done, he’s speaking first and foremost about imminent events. In this case, the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem in AD 69-70. It is this that “this generation” would witness.
Dr. Eric,
If you knew your history you’d know that Savonarola was executed for taking part in a an conspiacy to turn his city into another “Jonestown” or Geneva.
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