Alpha & Omega Ministries Apologetics Blog
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The Last Call on Yesterday's DL: "Open Air Atheist"
05/27/2011 - James White
14:15:02 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
An Open Letter to Harold Camping of Family Radio
05/23/2011 - James White
On Open Letter to Harold Camping of Family RadioDear Mr. Camping:
In July of 2009 you and I engaged in a debate on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program concerning your teaching that the church age had ended and that Christ would return on May 21, 2011. I trust you recall our exchange. I am also aware that you have at least seen my book, Dangerous Airwaves: Harold Camping Refuted and Christ's Church Defended. I have been seeking to warn people about your teachings, sir, for about a decade. I know others have been warning the church about you longer than I.
Mr. Camping I am writing to seek your repentance and the most God-glorifying outcome of the debacle of your failed May 21, 2011 prophecy/teaching. I am not writing to engage in debate with you. The time for debate ended on May 22, 2011. It is now time for you to repent and seek to undo the massive damage you have done, first and foremost, to the cause of Christ.
Let me first list the items you need to repent of, openly and publicly (for you are a public person, and your teachings were disseminated all around the world).
You need to repent of your abuse of the Bible, based upon claims of latter-day opening of understandings no one else has, allegedly, ever had, based upon the horrific misreading of the books of Revelation and Daniel. The Bible is not a code book, Mr. Camping, and it never has been. You have attacked the grammatical/historical means of honoring the intention and meaning of the original authors, and in so doing, have turned the Bible into your own private playground where you, and you alone, set the rules. You decided that certain numbers have certain meanings, and you alone decided which numbers could be added to others. You told your audiences that you were simply teaching the Bible, when you were doing nothing of the sort. Unless you honor the intention of the original authors, which means doing difficult exegetical work, studying languages and backgrounds, you have no business saying you are representing the Bible. This has been your primary error for decades on end, and I know I am not the first minister of the gospel to seek to correct you about this. Your utterly fallacious means of interpretation of the Bible has led to the mockery of the Christian faith all around the world, and you alone must repent for your willful rejection of the correction offered by many to you over the years.
You need to repent of your repeated date-setting, and your twisting of those Scriptures that plainly state that we do not now know, and will never know, the date of the coming of Christ, until it happens. You have been proven wrong multiple times now, and it is time for you to admit that you have been in error every single time you have argued that we can, in fact, know.
You must repent of your many unbiblical teachings, teachings which have grown out of your rebellion against Christ's Church. First and foremost, you must repent of your attack upon the church. You must return to the church (I would suggest the local Christian Reformed Church from which you made your original defection) in repentance and seek to place yourself under their care, repenting for your schism. You must openly and publicly abjure your teaching that Satan rules in the churches, and that all ministers of the gospel since 1988 are, in fact, servants of Satan. You must call all listeners of Family Radio to return to their churches with repentant hearts. You must instruct them to seek to learn to read the Bible aright, to seek to interpret the Bible in light of its original meanings and intention, not as a secret, gnostic code-book.
You must likewise abjure and repent of the other false teachings you have been promulgating, including, but not limited to, such teachings as Jesus having died twice, your new annihilationism teaching, etc. You once held to mainly orthodox views, but, when you refused godly counsel and went out on your own, you planted the seeds of your own destruction, which have now sprouted, over night it seems, into the crop of condemnation you now rightly face.
You must likewise repent of the perversion of the gospel you have been teaching, wherein you have not only removed repentance and faith under the guise of "works" (neither are works, both are the gifts of God to His elect by His Spirit, but remain part and parcel of the gospel call), but you clearly, in these last days, added belief in your own May 21, 2011 teaching to the gospel itself, saying that those who did not believe this teaching would experience eternal torment. You have been preaching a false gospel, Mr. Camping, and you must repent for this.
The time for haggling and debating has passed, Mr. Camping. Your teaching has been disproven, and your only hope is to be found in complete repentance from your false teachings. I fear if you seek to rescue your reputation, you will end your life under the wrath of God. Your unwillingness to listen to counsel has already caused great damage to the cause of Christ. You have one final chance for redemption, sir. Do not remain stiff-necked. Repent and turn from your ways.
James White
Alpha and Omega Ministries
12:41:15 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
Some Comments on Hawking's Materialism
05/20/2011 - James White
19:35:26 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
I Remember Mr. Camping
05/18/2011 - James Swan
A few days ago Dr. White mentioned some NPR broadcasts commenting on Harold Camping. These brief clips can be found here:Is The End Nigh? We'll Know Soon Enough
Divining Doomsday: An Old Practice With New Tricks
I've been following the Harold Camping situation closely. In my area, Family Radio has had a large presence. I can never recall a time when there was no Family Radio. It's always been there, same spot on the dial, the same music, the same Mr. Camping. Over the years I'd tune into to Open Forum from time to time. No matter where my theology was at, I could never follow his explanations. Then I eventually embraced Reformed theology. Listening to Mr. Camping then became a bit more interesting because I was told he was a Calvinist. I'd listen in with different ears. Sure, he'd say some Reformed-type of things, but the hermeneutic was... wacky. If Camping was Reformed, it certainly sounded a lot different than R.C. Sproul or John MacArthur.
So here I am now, listening almost exclusively to Family Radio. We all know the hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel. A few weeks back I heard Family Radio play a version with different lyrics about judgment day. The familiar chorus has been altered in this way: "Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel" is now: "May twenty, first, two thousand eleven." Here is the mp3: O Come May 21. It's an unbelievable irony when I stop and think about it. I'm willfully suffering through some of the same music and excessive broadcasts of Harold Camping. Since I'm not certain if Family Radio will continue after this week, the thought of not having Family Radio has produced a slightly melancholic feeling. It's kind of like a store that's always been on the highway, and then one day it's gone. It's not like you cared for the store, but it's something you've always known. Those of you who've moved away from your hometown know what I mean. When you come back, you see the passage of time by what isn't there.
That Family Radio may disappear off the dial is also a blessing. When I think of all the lives Camping has ruined, I'm disheartened. The Reformed community should have tried to pull his plug years ago. But since he often put forth conservative old fashioned religion, many of the Reformed tolerated him. Even churches that I love and respect tolerated Camping and broadcasted their church services on Family Radio. His hermeneutic alone should have provoked Reformed congregations to not associate with him. But, Camping was "conservative" and conservative people sometimes embrace being conservative more than they do proper Biblical hermeneutics. For some, it was more important that Camping spoke against divorce, homosexuality, and worldliness. How does he interpret the Bible? Who cares? This sort of free pass from serious Reformed people always bothered me. Now we're seeing what happens when the importance of correct exegesis is ignored.
21:33:43 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
Harold Camping Like Rome
05/18/2011 - James White
I was listening to Camping's Open Forum program tonight. I was struck by two callers. One called to ask about 1 Corinthians 15:28, "When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all." Camping's reply was that he does not understand this text, his mind is too small for it. So, when someone asks about the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the relationship of Father and Son---i.e., about real theology, the knowledge of God, Camping throws up his hands and admits he hasn't a clue. Then, with a caller only a few minutes later, he claimed that there is nothing in the Bible more clearly testified to with more proofs than his own May 21, 2011 date.How does this make Camping like Rome? Simple. Rome can tell us all about Mary's physical condition at the birth of Jesus, and about indulgences, and purgatory, and celibate priests, but she cannot tell you about the sovereign decree of God in salvation. In other words, Camping and Rome both illustrate the reality of unbiblical religion: you can't answer the deep questions, the meaningful ones, but you can have terrible certainty about utter irrelevancies. Of course, those irrelevancies are the very keys to your religious system, the things that make you differ from others, but the fact is that false religion can give you absolute certainty about unimportant things, but cannot answer the important questions of faith.
18:22:05 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
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