As of the time of the posting of this article, Harold Camping has been proven a false prophet (again). Why? Because it is now 7pm standard time (yes, I remembered to factor in the daylight savings thing) in Guam, one of the first places on earth to experience the time of the “rapture” that Camping has predicted as a guaranteed biblical truth for years now.* And, according to the US Geological Survey (the clearing house for earthquake information from all over the world), no earthquake 10 or above on the Richter scale has taken place in that time zone…anywhere. Camping said the earthquake would be greater than anything known before, so I figure that’s at least a 10, probably more (since he said it would open all the tombs and throw the bodies of the dead out of their graves to be “shamed in God’s sight”). So, we begin the documentation,** which will continue through the day, of what some of us have been saying for a very, very long time: Harold Camping is a cult leader, a false teacher, and it is high time his followers finally admit it.
I have thought of some time of writing a lengthy open letter to Camping’s followers. I may well do so after the dust has settled, it all depends. I was thinking today about the categories of Camping followers, and I think I would break it down into three groups: 1) the hard-core, unsaved cultists, who love novelty and gnosis, not truth, and if they don’t keep following Harold, they will find someone else to follow, but will never follow truth; 2) the unsaved, simple, ignorant who found something compelling in his teachings; and 3) the few Christians who will, we are assured, be restored to truth and abandon his falsehoods. I would have something different to say to each of those groups, to be sure. I would be brief with the first; the second would require a lot of discussion that would be best done in person; and the third simply need to repent and return to their first love.
In any case, I will be glad when this day is over, the case is settled, the controversy over. I do not think my time has been wasted in refuting Camping: the lessons to be learned are many. But there is much else to be doing, and we must get to it.
One of the things we need to be doing is confessing, unashamedly, that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and that He will, in fact, return someday. We just need to do it biblically, just the opposite of Harold Camping and his sign-toting followers.
*I thought about using Christmas Island as my example, but after reading the incredibly complex discussion of just what time it is on Christmas Island…I decided not even the Lord could make heads or tails out of that mess, so I stuck with something a bit more…mundane.
** Don’t forget to visit www.rapturefail.org to register your “Rapture Fail” as well!
