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.
