Harold Camping Statement: “There is other language in the Bible that we still have to look at…”

November 6, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

For a time, after October 21st, there was no record of Harold Camping’s ill-fated prediction on the Family Radio website.  Reference to the supposed doomsday had been scrubbed, and in its place was a general encouragement to be ready for the time of the Lord’s return.  At the same time, it was falsely reported in a “Harold Camping Exclusive” in the Christian Post that Harold Camping was retiring from leadership at Family Radio, on the basis of a claim by Brandon Tauszik, a “documentarian” who presented himself as a member of Camping’s “church” and a sort of chronicler of Camping and Family Radio.  Tauszik displays pictures of Camping and his followers at his website.

It now appears that Tauszik was an interloper, representing himself falsely in order to enter into Camping’s inner circle.  The Christian Post was duped:

Espinoza also claimed that Tauszik used deceit to enter the Camping’s Alameda, Calif., home and interview the radio evangelist and his wife, Shirley, and that he was asked to leave after it was suspected that he might be a reporter.

“Brandon misrepresented himself in order to enter the Camping’s home. Within 5 minutes they realized he was a reporter and politely asked him to leave. They did not tell him Mr. Camping is going to retire,” Espinoza contradicted the documentarian in the email.

I was duped too, alas.  I wrote a very brief summary piece for World Magazine that assumed the Christian Post had the story right.  Unfortunately it already went to press and is too late to correct.

According to his daughter, Camping is staying on as General Manager of Family Radio ministries.  Also, Family Radio recently posted an audio message from Camping.  I’ve rendered a transcript below (emphases are obviously mine):

We are living in a day when one problem follows another. And when it comes to trying to recognize the truth of prophecy, we’re finding that it is very, very difficult. Why didn’t Christ return on October 21? It seems embarrassing for Family Radio. But God was in charge of everything.

We came to that conclusion after quite careful study of the Bible. He allowed everything to happen the way it did without correction. He could have stopped everything if he had wanted to. I am very encouraged by letters I have received and are [sic] receiving at this time concerning this matter. Amongst other things, I have been checking my own notes more carefully than ever. And I do find that there is other language in the Bible that we still have to look at very carefully and will impinge upon this question very definitely. And we should be very patient about this matter.

At least in a minimum way, we are learning to walk more and more humble before God. We’re ready to cry out, and weep before God, “Oh Lord, you have the truth. We don’t have it. You have the truth.” This is another place where we have to cry out for it. There’s one thing that we must remember. God is in charge of this whole business and we are not. What God wants to tell us is His business. When He wants to tell us is His business. In the meanwhile, God is allowing us to continue to cry to him for mercy — oh my, how we need his mercy — and continue to wait on him. God has not left us. God is still God. But we have to be very careful that we don’t dictate to God what He should do.

In our search in the Bible, we must continue to look to the Bible, look to the Bible, because there is where truth comes from. And God, in his own timetable, and in his own purposes, will reveal truth to us when it’s His time to do it. In any case, we do not have to have a feeling of calamity, or a feeling that God has abandoned us. We are simply learning. And sometimes it’s painful to learn. We are learning how God brings his messages to mankind. And my, my, we have claimed to be a child of God, and therefore as we search the Bible, we’re bound to feel the darts of the Lord as sometimes He gives us the truth and sometimes He gives us something that causes us to wait further upon Him.

Whatever we do, we must not feel for a moment that we have been abandoned by God, that He is no longer helping us or interested in us. Oh my, what an encouragement it is to be able to go to the Lord again and again. “Oh Lord, I don’t know anything. Lord, you teach me.” That’s the attitude that has to be a part of each one of us. God will not abandon us. He will provide. But we have to be just very careful that we don’t dictate to Him when that has to happen.

Incidentally, I have been told that I had said, back in May, that people who did not believe that May 21 should be the rapture date probably had not become saved. I should not have said that, and I apologize for that.

One thing we know for certain: that God is merciful. Merciful beyond anything that we would ever expect, and so we can pray constantly, and should be praying constantly, “Oh Lord, we look to thee for thy mercy, and we’re so thankful that we know that Thou art so merciful.”

How wonderful to know that God is still on the throne. That He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that He hears every one of our prayers. And let’s not hesitate. Let’s be, if anything, let’s be praying more than ever for God’s mercy and keep praying, and God will provide. But God is in charge, and we must always keep that in mind.

I doubt that Harold Camping will ever issue a definitive date for the doomsday again.  But it sounds as though he’s not giving up on a fundamental error: that there are secret, esoteric codes hidden within the Bible that provide us with the dates for major events, including the eschaton.  Rather, it sounds as though he’s suggesting that he simply didn’t take all of the data into account, that he’s now discovering “other language” that “we still have to look at.”

Harold’s now 90 years old, and many people develop some rather…different ideas when they get older.  Unfortunately, Harold’s a 90-year-old with a microphone, so his errors were broadcast to the world.  We may hope that he’ll make any future errors in the privacy of his home.  And while he has not, to my knowledge, apologized for those he led astray, he issues a partial apology here for criticizing those who did not believe him, and for what it’s worth he sounds thoroughly humbled.  That’s not a bad place to be.

As we say for princes and paupers, lords and the lowly: may God have mercy on his soul.

Filed Under: Harold Camping Tagged With: ,

Harold Camping Needs an Intervention

May 27, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Some of the intersections of faith and politics are so littered with landmines that it’s virtually impossible to navigate them without taking some shrapnel in the legs.  People of faith and good will must discuss them, however, if they’re matters worth discussing, lest we leave the conversation to those who simply enjoy or actually profit from setting off explosions.  So please bear with me.  I’m about to draw a parallel that could easily be twisted.  The parallel is not between Harold Camping and a terrorist Imam.  I have no respect for that kind of moral equivalency.  The parallel, rather, is between the way I feel toward Harold Camping and, in some limited respects, the way that some moderate Muslims seem to feel toward the preachers of Jihad.

So, to begin.  I’ve often wondered why, when we hear of another Jihadist terrorist doing another terrible thing, moderate Muslims are not stumbling over themselves to condemn him.  When an extremist Imam preaches for the downfall of America, the Great Satan, or teaching something that is completely and patently and destructively false — shouldn’t moderate Muslim leaders be angry at the harm the Imam has done to the reputation of their religion, and shouldn’t they be eager to condemn him, correct the record, and even seek to remove this Imam from power?

Some moderate Muslim leaders do speak up, of course.  And some presumably cannot penetrate the media din.  Still, even taking those things into account, I have often been surprised that we do not see and hear the majority of Muslims rising up en masse to carve this cancer out of the body of their faith and to bury it forever beneath a flood of righteous condemnation.  If peaceful Muslims are angered when non-Muslims regard them with distrust, shouldn’t they direct their anger first at the Muslims who have attacked the innocent in the name of Islam and planted the seeds of distrust in the first place?  Some moderate Muslims — including personal friends of mine — are openly frustrated when it’s suggested they should offer some comment or criticism.

Harold Camping and his ongoing doomsday debacle have helped me to understand the dynamic a little better.  There’s no equivalence between the wanton destruction of innocent human life and the proclamation of a false prophecy about the end of the world.  It would require moral obtuseness of the highest order, and abandonment of our powers of moral discernment, to equate a proclamation that the world is ending and all should take refuge in Christ with the attempt to explode school buses full of children.  So, as I said, I’m not at all equating Harold Camping with terrorists or with Imams who exhort their followers to become terrorists.

What are illuminating, I think, are the tensions in both cases between the periphery and the center.  (Of course, the more extreme critics of militant Islam will argue that the ultra-violent ideology that motivates the likes of al-Qaeda is not actually on the periphery of the Muslim world, but is more common and widespread than we care to admit.  While there are pockets around the world where those who sympathize with Jihadist terrorists outnumber those who do not, I don’t believe that’s true as a general characterization of ‘the Muslim world,’ and thankfully the Arab Spring is showing another way to struggle for reform.)

So, all qualifications aside, how is this comparison illuminating?

(1) What does he have to do with me? When I’m pressed by atheists and skeptics to respond to Harold Camping and his extreme ideas — not just the 1994 prediction and the May 21st prediction, but the numerology and the esoteric calculations, the notion of a “spiritual judgment” to justify the doomsday dud, and his teaching as far back as 1988 that Satan had taken possession of American churches — some part of me resents the association in the first place.  Why am I accountable for what Harold Camping says and does?  Why is the presumption that I am like him, unless I publicly demonstrate otherwise?  Why should I have to answer for him?  Are we even of the same tribe?

One part of this is justified.  There is no good faith from the skeptic who demands that I condemn him.  The skeptic ought to be able to see the significant differences between myself and Harold Camping; they are obvious in the things we believe and in the ways we act.  But the skeptic pays no heed to those differences because he does not really care whether or not I condemn Harold Camping; he just wants to paint me with the same brush as another Christian crackpot with crazy, irrational, unscientific ideas.  It irritates me that people cannot see — or the skeptics are not willing to see — that Harold Camping is not a representative of healthy, orthodox Christianity.  I imagine many Muslims feel this way: why should I be compelled to distinguish myself from the extremist, when the extremist does not represent my faith in the first place?

Harold Camping: Intervention Needed?

But another part of this is pride.  I don’t want to be associated with a Harold Camping, or a Terry Jones (the Koran burner), or etc.  However, as deceived as I believe Harold Camping is, insofar as he trusts in Jesus Christ (and I give the benefit of the doubt here), we are not only of the same tribe, we are of the same family.  As much as I resent the association, as much as I’m embarrassed by their actions and the ways in which they harm the credibility of the Church, the fact is that I am associated with them.

There are all sorts of crazy people in the Church; some of them have megaphones.  I am not called to ignore them and pretend they have nothing to do with me.  I am called to reach out to them, to listen, to rebuke and correct and restore, even as I explain to the world that they have misused the Word.

2.  I understand where he’s coming from. The truth is, even though we differ on some very important beliefs, Harold Camping and I have many things in common.  We read the same Bible and pray to the same God.  Some of our core beliefs and values are the same.  I believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the creator and author of all history.  I believe that history will consummate in judgment and restoration.

I was raised in a non-denominational evangelical church where some of the adults believed things I found embarrassing.  In various ministry settings, in the prisons and inner cities of the United States as well as on mission fields overseas, I’ve encountered countless Christians whose beliefs I found strange or implausible.  I’ve had some of the most intelligent Christians I know (objectively, dazzlingly intelligent, with doctorates and many accolades to their names) tell me that they believed Christ would return in the next few years — or that demons were active in their homes before they prayed them out — or that the world is merely thousands of years old — or that my broken neck would be healed if I believed it fervently enough.  And you know what?  They’re good people.  I love those people.  In most cases, I respect them too.  When you burrow deeper and deeper into a particular way of interpreting the world, you can find yourself coming to conclusions that seem very strange to people with different worldviews.

I’ve also spent plenty of time in places where my beliefs were regarded with suspicion and astonishment.  At Stanford, Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard, students and colleagues and faculty typically treated me with respect; I was good at what I did, good at what we did.  They knew I was no fundamentalist.  But they could not believe that an intelligent and educated person should be an evangelical, much less a conservative one.

So I feel a generous measure of sympathy for Harold Camping.  I know where he’s coming from.  I know how he came to believe the things he did, even though I find them (the beliefs and the methods through which they were reached) wrong.  And I imagine many moderate Muslims feel the same way.  Even though they deplore the violence of their fellow Muslims, they understand their sense of frustration, of disenfranchisement, of anger.  They’ve heard the criticisms of the west, of colonialism, of American support for despots, and they know those criticisms make a certain kind of sense to people who live inside of that worldview.

3.  It’s not always easy to cut out the cancer. As I’ve watched the Harold Camping travesty unfold, I’ve often felt, “Can’t someone put a stop to this?  Can’t someone intervene and show him the error of his ways?”  The answer that’s come back to me is: “Why don’t you do it?  If you’re going to call for other Christians to reach out to Camping and try to put a stop to the damage he’s doing to the church, shouldn’t you be willing to do so yourself?”

And yes, I should.  In the same way that moderate Muslims should do what they can to correct the Imams who encourage young men to go detonate themselves in crowded marketplaces, I should do what I can to correct a Christian teacher who is misleading his followers in destructive ways.  But it’s not an easy thing to do.

There are a number of reasons.  (1) Do I really want to get involved? Reaching out to Camping as a fellow believer implies that he is, indeed, a Christian leader of sorts who deserves the time and attention it would take.  It only makes the association between him and me even stronger in the minds of the skeptics and the mockers.  (2) Is there any hope of changing his mind? A man like Harold Camping believes wholeheartedly that he’s doing the right thing, and that critical voices are (perhaps literally) the voice of the devil tempting him to give up the task to which God has called him.  He’s not likely to be dissuaded, any more than an extremist Imam is.  (3) Could his influence really be curbed? Camping has substantial resources and a radio network at his disposal, as well as bitter-end supporters.  We live in completely distinct circles.  Short of physical or legal coercion, what could I really do?  (4) My life is overwhelming enough already. I have a wife, a child, another child on the way, a more-than-full-time job, side jobs and side projects, ministries.  Do I really have the time to reach out to someone I’ve never met and seek to dissuade him (as I did attempt to do, for instance, with Terry Jones)?

Some of the same reasons must come up when moderate Muslims are asked, “Why don’t you remove the cancer of Islamic extremism from your community?”  Moderate Muslim Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water, like everyone else, and may have no connections with, and no influence over, the extremist Imams.  It’s much easier to insist that the extremist does not represent your faith than it is to correct the extremist or remove him from influence.

These are some of the tensions between the middle and the periphery in religious communities.  Do you get angry at the extremists whose words and deeds tarnish the reputation of your faith?  Or do you get angry with those who use the extremists for their own partisan purposes to smear the whole faith?  Or both?  Do you resent the embarrassing association with the crazies on the margins, or do you accept the association, accept that there are crazies in all communities and do something to heal and restore them?  Do you confess that you understand where they’re coming from, or do you pretend there’s no overlap between their views and yours?  And are you bound to involve yourself in the near-impossible task of changing their minds or undermining their influence, when you are overwhelmed already with the life God has given you?

I think Christian leaders, rather than lobbing criticisms from a distance, or in addition to that (since it’s important to correct the record on what the Christian faith teaches), should reach out to Camping and see whether he can be persuaded to end this damaging charade.  And I should do the same.  Camping should be encouraged to repent, to seek forgiveness, and to make amends.  Even if it seems hopeless, it’s the right thing to do.  And you never know what might happen.  God has done much more astonishing things.

Filed Under: Harold Camping, Judgment Day, Peace Between Religions, Rapture, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Harold Camping's Statement: What Should it Say?

May 23, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Oddly enough, Harold Camping chose the International Business Times to be the conduit for his message that he will deliver a statement by tomorrow evening on the reasons for the failed prediction and how he is responding to it.  Camping, says the IBT, looked “dazed and confused,” and “said he needed some time to think and recover.”  He told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was “flabbergasted.”

What should Harold Camping's statement say?

I don’t doubt it.  I’ve never listened to Mr Camping’s radio program, and I certainly can’t claim to any privileged insight into his state of mind.  But I’ve known folks like him, people so consumed by an idea — an unlikely idea, a scandalous idea, an idea that most others find absurd — that they come to believe it in their bones and tendons, in their viscera, and that idea animates their lives.  It gives their lives coherence and significance, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a Heroic Struggle to fight.  I’m pretty confident he was a true believer.  And when you’re surrounded by other people who believe the same thing, and you taught them to believe the same thing, the pressure to justify and sustain that belief is extreme.  You cannot cease believing it; if you ceased believing, then others would cease believing, too.  Their trust in you would crumble — and become anger.  They would come to believe that you’ve horribly misled them.  And they would be right.  That prospect becomes so horrible that you simply must believe in what you’re teaching.

Let’s assume that Camping was indeed a true believer in what he taught.  What does he do now?  Believing in his teaching, his followers skipped their final exams, left their jobs, euthanized their pets, spent their life savings, in order to proclaim the coming of the End and save as man souls as they could.  Families were divided.  People’s hopes were shattered and their faiths deeply broken.  One disturbed woman even tried — unsuccessfully, thank God — to kill herself and her children by slitting their throats, lest they suffer in the tribulations that were to follow the rapture.

What should he say, and what should he not say, in his statement tomorrow?

  1. He should certainly not say that the calculations were sound but the data was off.  This is my personal fear.  We don’t really know when Jesus was crucified, and we certainly don’t know when the flood of Noah occurred.  Nor is there any real reason to think that the countdown to Judgment Day can be measured with reference to those events.  So Camping might say: “It’s still going to be 722,500 days from the crucifixion, but perhaps the crucifixion really happened a week after I assumed it had.”  Or “Perhaps it’s 722,500 days from the ascension and not the resurrection.”  No.  This is it.  No more predictions.  Even if he has a suspicion in his heart, an inkling that perhaps it’s May 27th (!), he must keep it to himself.  He has done enormous damage now with his two false predictions, damage to many lives and damage to the credibility of the church.
  2. He should not try to justify his prediction.  This will be very difficult, and it will tell me a lot about the state of his heart.  Human pride wants to explain, even though we were wrong, why we believed what we believed.  Even if our belief was false, we want to say, it was justified.  With all the mockery he has faced, before and after May 21, the temptation will be nigh-irresistible to explain why he was really quite reasonable in believing what he believed.  Yet this is not about him, and it’s not a time for pride.  It’s a time to focus on those who sacrificed their finances, their careers, their relationships because of their trust in him.  He needs the humility to take his lumps, end the circus, and simply bless those he harmed.
  3. So, right from the beginning he should ask for forgiveness.  He should confess not only that he was mistaken (which is obvious), but that he was wrong to enter the doomsday-prophecy business, that he should have listened to his brothers and sisters in Christ who warned him that his teaching was false and destructive, and that he let his pride get the better of him.  This is not about humiliating Harold Camping.  This is about making him whole, and making whole the people who suffered from the trust they placed in him.  They deserve a thoroughgoing apology and confession, and his restoration to the fold of the faithful will not be complete unless he repents.
  4. He should vow to do everything in his power to restore those who lost jobs, funds, and relationships with loved ones.  The world’s assessment of Harold Camping would change dramatically if he fully admitted his fault and then used the resources at his disposal to help those his teachings harmed.  His own wealth (whatever it may be), his empire of radio and television stations, these should be used to whatever extent possible to help those left destitute.  Some have suggested a fund to help the victims.  While Camping himself should not administrate that fund, he can use his media influence to raise the funds to help his victims.  This will help in their healing, and in his own.
  5. Finally, he should announce that he will make his radio show, indefinitely, into a forum for understanding what went wrong in this story and for reconciling families that were divided.  I’ve never spent much time thinking about a “Rapture,” but this story illustrates the danger that follows when we develop a very specific vision of the end times, a specific vision of what the Bible leaves mysterious and filled with symbolism, and then cling to that vision with tenacity.  Evangelicals need to have an open and thoughtful conversation about the problems of popular Rapture theology.  Even if I don’t expect Camping to change the basic contours of his eschatology – his beliefs regarding the end times – he could do great good if he could hold an edifying conversation on these things.  And he could do even more good if he invited families that were divided by his teachings into mediated on-air conversations that look to bring understanding and reconciliation.

I’ve written elsewhere the story of how I broke my neck in a gymnastics accident during my sophomore year at college.  Soon thereafter, I faced a decision.  Would I see this (on the face of it) horrible thing that had happened in my life as something accidental, something tangential to the calling God has for my life?  Or would I see this as a part of the story that God wants to tell through me?  Whether or not God meant this for me from the beginning, what could God do with it now?  The same question is faced by countless people everyday who have suffered terrible turns in life.  Is this hardship extrinsic to my vocation, or intrinsic to it?

Harold Camping’s followers are facing this decision right now, and so is Mr Camping himself.  Since nothing can separate us from the love of God, there is nothing ultimately that the love of God cannot redeem within us.  God can turn the worst of things into the best of things.  Who knows how many years Harold Camping has left.  Let us hope that he chooses to work with God in redeeming the wrong he has done and making whole the people he has harmed.

Filed Under: Harold Camping, Judgment Day, Rapture Tagged With: , , ,

On Harold Camping and May 21 – Readers Respond: Will Camping Confess?

May 22, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

The most “viral” thing I had written prior to today was Why We Have Children.  It’s probably, since I began writing for Patheos, the piece of which I am the most proud.  Yet today, the response to my Open Letter to Harold Camping and Those Who Expected Judgment Day has been something to behold.  Whether or not it’s truly “viral” depends on your frame of reference.  Compared to a piece at Huffington Post, 2,000 shares (where it stands about six hours after it was posted) is more like a mild cold than a virus.  Regardless, many thanks to those who read, shared, and commented on it — and again, please follow the Facebook or Twitter links in the sidebar to connect with me, or subscribe to the blog feed if you feel so inspired.

I wanted to post and respond to some of the more illuminating comments the letter received.

1. FIRST of all, many of the commenters called the letter “compassionate.” I confess that my writing is not always so compassionate.  It could stand to be more so, and I hope that the way in which people expressed gratitude for such compassion will inspire me to make it so.  But here’s the point: I do feel a sincere compassion for the people who were misled by Camping’s predictions, and the response to the letter reveals how many others feel compassion.  How many of us have not believed something, at some point, that we later came to view as silly?  How many of us have not felt the tug upon our belief systems that can come from a charismatic leader, or a community of mutually-reinforced belief, or a well-told story that’s filled with “too many coincidences to be chance,” or just the strong desire to believe that our lives are about to become much better?

I’ll expand on this point in a forthcoming series on why we believe the things we believe — but one of the best pieces of advice my father ever gave me was the encouragement, as I went off to Stanford as an incoming freshman, to “seek people of wisdom and not just intelligence.”  I soon saw what he meant.  Intelligence comes cheap, so it’s cheaply spent.  It’s far more common than wisdom.  And intelligent people believe and do the silliest of things.  I’ve since come to believe that intelligence has very little to do with developing right beliefs and avoiding wrong beliefs.  At various places within elite academia, I could mention all sorts of brilliant people who believed in alien abductions, in ghosts, in ouija boards, astrology, palm reading, and the like.  I could mention a Harvard professor who believed that “King George” W. Bush was going to declare martial law rather than cede the Presidency and would install himself as a tyrant in perpetuity; or another Harvard professor who refused to buy a home in Cambridge because he was firmly convinced, in 2002, that Cambridge would be under four feet of water within a couple years due to environmental catastrophe.  Of course we could mention Truthers on the Left and Birthers on the Right.  The factors that go into shaping our beliefs are many and complicated, and my point is merely that silly beliefs are found everywhere amongst the religious and non-religious, the Right and the Left, the young and the old — and the wall between “us” and “them” is a lot thinner than we might think.

Will Harold Camping Confess?

SECOND, should Christians call on Harold Camping to confess for sin and make a public and thorough amends? “David A” wrote:

Only one thing remains. This is not the first time Harold Camping has set a date for the return of Jesus. This is the second or third time…I’m flabbergasted that NO ONE has called him to repent or apologize…Graciousness can be applied AFTER Mr. Camping makes restitution for the damage done to all of those who followed him and to all of us who expect the immanent return of Jesus [--] but don’t set dates because Jesus warned against it…[D]on’t be shy about admonishing a man who, in his pride, does not listen to the Holy Spirit and ignores Jesus.

This is certainly a fair point.  The Open Letter was really written for the followers of Mr Camping.  Camping has a lot to answer for.  Was he, as another commenter said, “laughing all the way to the bank”?  Some people point out that he did not — while someof his followers did — sell his business and use all of the funds to pronounce the forthcoming of the Rapture.  Was his intent malicious?  I sincerely doubt it.  Just another true believer who believed in the wrong thing.  Was he too proud to heed the warnings of others?  Was he selfish and arrogant to let others make extraordinary sacrifices on the basis of his unbiblical theories?

I believe he was.  I hope he does repent.  More importantly, I hope he stops making these predictions and does everything in his power to make whole the people who lost so much because they believed in him.  But I also think that mercy — not condemnation — is what moves us to confession.  Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), after all, and God’s kindness is what leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

THIRD, and finally, we should remember to pray for families that were divided by Camping’s teaching. I received two comments from people whose parents were expecting the Day of the Lord on the 21st.  The first is Josephine:

Thank you…I’m the daughter of parents who have been caught up in this May 21st deception and convinced of Harold Camping’s interpretations of scripture. For years, it has been a heavy topic of contention, causing a great divide in our family dynamic in which we once shared a common understanding of the Bible and who Jesus is. The danger of deception is all too real and I know with this date passing, it is not the end. I pray that starting today, my parents and all those who have followed Harold Camping will begin to look at the Bible without the filter of past misinterpretations–that they’d be able to examine God’s Word anew.

And the second comes from Lara:

Thank you for this. As the daughter of a man who completely bought into Harold Camping’s false teachings this is the most comforting thing that I’ve read so far. Our lives have been wrecked for the past 2 – 3 years. My father apologized to our family today. We are thanking Jesus for the miracle. We have hope that God will use evil for good. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Josephine fears that the deceptions and self-deceptions will continue.  She hopes that those who followed Camping, including her own family members, will reconsider the ways in which they’ve been reading the scripture, and be reconciled with their families.  Lara is already beginning to see that.  That’s promising.  We can pray for more of the like.

We do indeed have hope that God bring good out of evil, truth out of falsehood, joy out of trial.

Filed Under: Harold Camping, Judgment Day, Rapture Tagged With: , , ,

A Letter to Harold Camping and Those Who Expected Judgment Day

May 21, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

[Note: Many thanks to those who have shared this letter.  Thanks to Ed, Dillon, Collin, and others who've posted links so far.  Please consider connecting with me on Facebook or Twitter, and please see the UPDATE at the end.]

When people say, “It’s not the end of the world,” they usually mean those words to be comforting.  Yet those words will not be comforting to you.  Not today.  That the Day of the Lord did not arrive when you had expected it to arrive will be a source of profound disappointment, of embarrassment, and perhaps — now or in the days to come — of disillusionment with your faith.

Harold Camping

You were wrong.  Let’s face that fact.  You were confidently wrong.  You believed with all the fervency of a hopeful heart, a heart that longed to see God and longed to see the day when suffering would cease and justice would reign and the truth of God would be made known.  When people mocked you for what you believed, you thought to yourself, Just wait and you’ll see.  Today I will be thought a fool for Christ; tomorrow the world will see that we were right.

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old founder of the Family Radio Network, used his broadcast empire, two thousand billboards and a flood of tracts and posters to warn the world that Judgment Day would arrive on May 21. He expected earthquakes that would spread across the world; two percent of the world’s population would be raptured to heaven while the rest would be left behind for tribulations.  You believed it.  You kept in prayer throughout the day, you shared important words with your loved ones, and you waited eagerly for the news you were sure would come.  Yet the earth never shook.  This day was just like so many other Saturdays before it.  The sun rose, the sun fell, and the world kept turning.

Now, some of you may be wondering: What happened?  Did God change his mind?  What if Mr Camping was just a day or two off?  Perhaps the Gregorian calendar has not been perfectly kept, or perhaps Christ was crucified a day later than Mr Camping had suspected, and so perhaps we have not yet reached 722,500 days since Golgotha?  If you’re asking yourself these things, this letter is not for you — yet.  But I hope you’ll bear it in mind and return when you’re ready.  Because, my brother, my sister, I think we’ll all still be here a week from now, a month from now, a year from now.

This letter is more for those who are wondering: How did this happen?  Why was I deceived?  Why did God allow me, when I sought the truth in prayer, to believe this and go into the cities and distribute flyers and tell my loved ones that they should prepare for the Day of Judgment?  How do I face the mockers now?  And how do I know that my faith as a whole is not a falsehood as well?  When I once went about with my youth group or college group or small group and proclaimed the gospel, and told people earnestly that Christ had died for them and that they should receive God’s gracious offer before the end — was believing that and pronouncing that any different than believing and pronouncing that May 21st was Judgment Day?  What if it’s all just a silly story, and I’m a fool to believe it?

Tonight the Rapture Parties will go on.  The atheists will gloat, the mockers will mock.  Yet there’s nothing funny about this for you.  You are broken and crestfallen, left abandoned in the ruins of unfulfilled expectations, among them the very highest expectations a human can have — the hope of union with God, the hope of a world made new, the hope that every tear will be wiped away.  You are left disoriented.  You were so sure of this.  People you love and respect — perhaps your parents, your pastor, your mentor, your brother and sister — may have believed it too.  You do not feel relieved that the end of the world did not arrive.  You are not rid of this world yet, so all of its weight fell back upon your shoulders.

So let’s reflect on this together.  First, what can be affirmed? What were you right to feel and to believe?

  1. Your heart was in the right place. This may sound like a minor matter, or it may sound like condescension, but I assure you it’s not.  This is a rare and exceedingly important thing.  It’s perfectly right to yearn for the day of Christ’s return.  It’s right to desire with all of your heart that you could be with God right now.  ”Better is one day in your courts,” writes the Psalmist (84:10), “than thousands elsewhere.”  You longed to be in those courts together with the saints.  It is a good thing to thirst for God and to look forward to the day when God’s truth and grace and justice will be made known to all humankind.  I believe that desire is precious to God.
  2. You were right to believe that God will, one day, gather his children unto himself and draw history as we know it to a close. The most persuasive falsehoods are always the ones that contain the greatest proportion of the truth.  Although only a very small slice of the Christian community believed that Judgment Day was arriving on May 21st, the vast majority of the church around the globe and throughout its history has believed that Christ would come again to bring judgment and restoration, and ultimately the beginning of a new age of peace and justice.  We should always live as though Christ’s return is imminent.  Today is always the day of salvation.
  3. You were right to spread the warning.  It’s important to say this, because the Harold Camping prophecy and the movement he mobilized will be used by the skeptical press to make Christians in general look silly.  Yet given what you believed was coming, it would have been irresponsible and unloving in the extreme if you had chosen not to spread the news as broadly as possible.  Some will jeer at the billboards that were rented and the literature that was distributed.  Given your sincere belief that the end was near, sounding the alarm was the only loving option.

Second, what can be learned? What might you learn from this experience?  I would suggest, in humility, five things:

  1. Our faith is not placed in a person or in a prediction, but in the good news of Jesus Christ. The fashionably skeptical will be eager to tell you that you are wrong about your faith in Jesus just as you were wrong about the arrival of Judgment Day.  Yet these things are worlds apart.  The core of the gospel message has stood strong for two thousand years.  It is communicated plainly in the scriptures and has undergone extraordinary scrutiny historically, philosophically, theologically and in every other way — and it has survived and thrived and spread and it is preached throughout the church all over the world.  The belief that Judgment Day would arrive on May 21st was held by only a vanishingly small minority for a very small period of time; it was not revealed (at least not plainly so) in the scriptures themselves and most Christians did not think it stood up to scrutiny.  Further, charismatic people come and go, and some propose new ideas and exciting interpretations of God’s Word.  Yet our confidence in them should never be equal to our confidence in Christ.  People and predictions come and go, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.
  2. No one knows when the end will come–so we must always be ready. Jesus tells us specifically (Mark 13:32) that no one knows when the end will come.  Mr Camping had ways of explaining that passage away, but I think we can agree that he should have taken that passage at face value.  It’s one thing to interpret the times.  It’s another to set dates on the basis of obscure mathematical formulae.  To be sure, there are many mysteries in our faith.  But that which can be known, and that which must be known, God has made known to us quite clearly.  God does not conceal important truths in esoteric codes so that only the ultra-enlightened can figure them out.  We do not know when the end will come — and this means that we must always live as though it will come tomorrow, and today is the last today to make things right with God and with God’s children.
  3. We should remember the difference between scripture and an interpretation of scripture. The Christian scriptures did not say that May 21st would be Judgment Day.  Harold Camping’s prediction was based on an interpretation of the scriptures that used some obscure tools and methods.  An interpretation of the scripture does not have the same force as what the scripture says so plainly that no interpretation is required.  So what was disproven in this case is not the scripture itself — not remotely — but an interpretation.
  4. We should always beware the power of charismatic leaders and groupthink to sway our beliefs. I do not believe that Harold Camping is a crackpot or a cult leader, though some will construe him as such.  I believe that he got caught up in a particular way of looking at the scriptures, and was eventually surrounded by people who believed likewise.  I would guess it probably gave him a sense of extraordinary insight and excitement to believe that he could find hidden truths in the scripture that others could not.  He should have been humbler.  But his followers should also have been more critical, quicker to test him, and less quick to explain away the inconsistencies.  They also should have listened to the gentle criticisms and encouragements they received from fellow believers who did not accept the May 21st prophecy.  In any case, I will soon be writing a series on this blog on why we believe the things we believe, and I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along.
  5. Finally, we should never believe that we’ve got God figured out. God always confounds our expectations.  Sometimes we have to die to one way of thinking about God in order to come alive to a new one.  And yet soon, even that new way of thinking about God may become an idol as we begin to think that this new way of thinking about God has God figured out, has God in a box.  If some of you find that “your faith” is crumbling as the reality dawns that you believed in a falsehood, let me suggest to you, gently, that any faith that capsizes when Judgment Day fails to arrive is not a proper faith to begin with.  If your faith is shattered here, then your faith was not in God but in a particular way of thinking about God and God’s plans.  There’s a very important difference between the two.

When you want to believe something, and someone you respect tells you to believe something, and everyone around you also believes and wants to believe the same thing, those are extraordinarily powerful forces.  I wish that you had not believed in the May 21st prediction, because I fear that it damaged the credibility of Christians in the eyes of some.  But I see no reason now to belabor that point.  Rather, I hope you have grace with yourselves.  Those forces operate not only in religious groups.  They operate in political movements, activist groups, even in enclaves within scientific communities.  In fact, when your friendly neighborhood atheist mocks you for what you believed, you can point him or her to scientific evidence that atheists in general are more gullible.

And you know what?  God has a way of using even our mistakes.  Perhaps your expectation of the imminent return of Christ helped you assess your life, remember what’s important, reconcile with your brother or your sister, take refuge in God’s gracious provision for sin in the work of Jesus Christ, and pray with great fervency that you have lived a life worthy of the gospel.  If you did all these things, then perhaps you should not regret that you were wrong about the whence.

UPDATE: The response to this letter has been heartening.  Among the critical responses, however, about half have said that I should have been harder on Harold Camping himself.  Honestly, the letter was written for those who followed Camping’s teachings, but I added “Harold Camping and…” into the title at the last moment.  (You’ll note the letter never really addresses him.)  That said, I think the commenters have a point.  The consequences of Camping’s false teaching have been, for many families, devastating.  Fellow believers need, lovingly but firmly, to encourage him to confess his error, seek forgiveness, and seek most of all to make amends.  To the extent that he is able to use his resources to help families recover from the wreckage his teaching has wrought, I hope and pray that he will.  In any case, there will be a time to call for accountability from Harold Camping.  It seemed to me, however, and still does seem to me, that now is a time rather to reach out lovingly to those who were misled by him.

I have a few other comments in this most recent post, as well.

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