END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?

This commercial from Chevy cracks me up!  Please watch the commercial below and then read my comments:

How can you beat Barry Manilow for a theme song at the end of the world?  I appreciated the fellow who spoke about his friend who didn’t “make it” — “He drove a Ford!”

Thankfully, the Mayan calendar was wrong.  The world didn’t end; we’re still here; and God is still on His throne!  [I wonder what Harold Camping would say about this commercial?]

But — one day this world will come to an end, according to the Scriptures!  We read texts like 2 Peter 3 which says:

³ Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. ⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” ⁵ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. ⁶ By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. ⁷ By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

¹¹ Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives ¹² as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. ¹³ But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

¹⁴ So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. ¹⁵ Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶ He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Here are several observations about the real end of the world —

1.  There will always be scoffers who mock the idea of a final day of judgment.  They were wrong during the days of Noah and they are wrong now (vv. 3-6).

2.  God delays that final judgment so that people can come to Christ through faith and repentance (vv. 8-9).

3.  The day of the Lord will come without warning, like a thief in the night.  Therefore we should be ready for that cataclysmic series of events.  How do we get ready?  Peter’s answer is that we should strive now to live holy lives! (vv. 10-13).

4.  The delay in the day of the Lord coming should bring more than laughter at car commercials with a conclusion of falling frogs!  We who know Christ should be grateful for God’s patience which means salvation for those who will believe the gospel (vv. 14-16).

Questions:

1.  If you are a believer in Jesus, have you thought about using a commercial such as this one to naturally move into the question of a final day of judgment?

2.  If you knew that the end of the world were going to happen this week, what would you do differently with your life right now?

 

A Review of Three Books on Eternal Lostness

Friends:

I’ve recently reviewed three books on eternal lostness for the Emmaus Journal.  The review is found below.  The book that really concerns me is Sharon Baker’s book Razing Hell.  Please feel free to post your comments below.

Click on the following link for my review:

review of three books on hell – pdf

 

THE DAY AFTER! HOW TO PRAY FOR HAROLD CAMPING

Harold Camping, 88-year-old radio preacher and owner of 55 Family Radio stations, was wrong about the Second Coming yesterday. Unbelievers in the gospel are already laughing at Christianity. Christians vacillate from deriding Mr. Camping for thinking he knew something Jesus said “no one knows” (Mt. 24) to anger to . . . praying for him?

Yes. We should pray for him and for Family Radio’s ministries around the world that are biblical and faithful.
But before we get too serious, please take a look at this VIDEO which shows Harold Camping’s reaction to his failed prophecy.

How might we best pray for Harold Camping?

1.  We should pray that he would publicly repent and refuse to make excuses, claim he had crunched the numbers wrong, or miscalculated.  With every news outlet he should quote Matthew 24:36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  He should spend his final days and years sharing the gospel with others and permanently resign from the prophecy business.

2.  We should pray for all who work for Family Radio and their families.  These will be difficult days for them to identify themselves as “employees” of Camping.  Rather than defend their boss, they should quickly acknowledge that he was wrong and re-focus their energies on recovering Family Radio’s ministries from this eschatological scandal.

3.  We should pray for all our unsaved friends, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers who will use this occasion to mock at or at least ignore the genuine claims of Jesus Christ on their lives.  How we believers behave can cause the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme His name.  Might I suggest that for the next few days we can engage our friends in a conversation that begins something like this:  “Aren’t you glad that Harold Camping was wrong about the end of the world?  What are your thoughts about the end of the world when it does take place?”

4.  Lastly, may I suggest that we pray for ourselves?  Most of us find this life way too comfortable to even consider the next life.  We cover over our needs with the trinkets of this world, forgetting that He has “put eternity in our hearts” (Ecc. 3:11).  C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself a desire which nothing in this world satisfies, the most logical explanation is I was made for another world.”  This world is important, but it is fallen and will one day be destroyed.  We should live our lives with those values in mind.

Discussion questions:  If you found yourself sitting next to Mr. Camping on a three-hour flight, what would you say to him?  Would you offer to pray for him?  How will you use his failed prophecy as an opening to share the gospel with someone today?

 

NO DAYS LEFT! Why Harold Camping Should Return Everybody’s Money and Retire!

According to Harold Camping, octogenarian Family Radio station owner and self-taught Bible scholar, the 2nd Coming of the Lord Jesus should have happened by now. If you’re reading this, you’re either not one of the elect, or somehow Jesus overlooked you in the rapture, OR Harold Camping was wrong again!

I believe he was wrong again. And he should do at least three things before the day is out:

1.  He should apologize to the Christian family for embarrassing the name of Christ with his arrogant, gnostic, ridiculous calculation that, even though Jesus said we couldn’t know the exact date of His Second Coming, he was sure he knew.  Perhaps he needs to read up on failed predictions by our Seventh-Day Adventist friends, Edgar Whisenant in his Eighty-Eight Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988, and one particularly troubling example from South Korea.  In 1992, Lee Jang Rim, the head of one of some 200 Protestant churches in that country, announced that the rapture would take place on October 28, 1992.  Based on a vision of a sixteen-year-old boy, twenty thousand Korean fundamentalists in South Korea, Los Angeles, and New York City took the prediction seriously.  Hundreds quit their jobs, many left their families, some women unfortunately even had abortions (presumably to make their own raptures easier).  Rim’s church bought costly ads in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.  They urged readers to get ready for the rapture and to refuse to have 666 imprinted in bar code on their foreheads or right hands.

On October 28, one researcher says, “Riot police, plainclothes officers, and reporters crowded outside Korean churches, flanked by fire engines, ambulances, and searchlights. Believers took the failure of the prophecy calmly, and there were no reported riots.  Only sadness. In December 1992 Rim was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for having bilked $4.4 million from his flock. He had invested the money in bonds that didn’t mature until the following year!”

RECENT INTERVIEW ON CAMPING

2.  Camping needs to immediately retire from the ministry and put himself under the spiritual leadership of a local church and their leadership team.  This will be extremely difficult for him to do, especially in light of his cultic understanding that God has abandoned all local churches and that all Christians should disassociate themselves from local congregations.  But he should repent of his bizarre, unbiblical perspective on the local and universal Body of Christ (which He is presently building).  He should step down from radio ministry, turn the microphone and the good work that Family Radio stations do over to others, and humble himself before the family of God worldwide.

3.  He needs to do everything in his power to return every cent which believers have contributed to his ministry based on his wayward predictions of Christ’s Second Coming.  Here is his response to a caller who suggested he do exactly that on May 22nd, 2011:  RETURN MONEY?

He should spend some of his money to place billboards across the USA to undo some of the damage he has caused.  That billboard might look something like this:

Dr. James White HERE  accuses Camping of sliding further and further away from orthodoxy (apparently Camping advocates annihilationism as well as a kind of modalism, denying the deity of Jesus).

Discussion Questions:  How should we pray for Mr. Camping?  Is there any way that the wider Body of Christ can speak the truth in love to him and seek to bring him spiritual health before he leaves this vale of tears by way of death (or Christ’s Second Coming!)?

 

TWO DAYS TO GO! HAROLD CAMPING’S PREDICTION OF THE 2ND COMING OF JESUS ON MAY 21, 2011

Harold Camping, eighty-year-old California radio preacher and owner of 55 Family Radio stations across the USA, has predicted that THIS COMING SATURDAY, MAY 21, will be the SECOND COMING OF JESUS.  He believes that he has figured out that date — which upsets a lot of the Mayan predictors of 2012! — from calculating the flood of Noah and then arguing that a thousand years is but a day in God’s sight, so when you add 7000 years to Noah’s flood, you come out with Saturday, May 21st, at 6 pm.  [By the way, I loved the special effects of the movie “2012,” but . . . can we talk?  The acting was so bad in that movie — have you ever wanted everybody in the movie TO DIE?!  I confess, that was how I felt.]

One of my friends here was sharing the gospel at Five Points, an area in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, a few weeks ago.  Camping followers were handing out their judgment-is-coming tracts.  They refused to get into conversations with my friend about how one can be saved.  They simply said, “Read the pamphlet!”

Should we warn people about God’s judgment?  Of course!  Should we do anything we can to explain the gospel to those who do not yet know Christ?  Absolutely.  Should we pull out our slide rulers or calculators or crystal balls and dogmatically predict exactly when God’s judgment is coming?  No.

The Lord Jesus Himself said in Matthew 24: ³⁶ “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  During His incarnation period on earth, Jesus said EVEN HE did not know the day or hour of His Second Coming.  Having ascended to the Father’s right hand, Jesus, of course, knows now when He will return.

Another blogger put it this way:

Harold Camping’s guarantee that Jesus will come back on May 21, 2011 only shows his ignorance of the scripture. He wrongly assumes that Christ’s coming will be 7,000 years after Noah’s flood, something the Bible doesn’t say at at all. So he has no basis for his prediction even if his dating of the flood and its seven thousand year mark are correct. Jesus made it clear in Matthew 24:36 “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” Mr. Camping’s setting a definite day and hour shows how he rejects Jesus’ clear words and replaces them with his own ideas. Don’t be deceived into believing Jesus won’t come back just because it doesn’t happen on Mr. Camping’s timetable. Whether we go to Jesus after death or he comes for us, he is the judge of everyone whom none can escape (Acts 10:42). He is the Holy one and the Just (Acts 3:14) and those who will not seek him for mercy and bow to his righteous reign now will be in terror when he comes back “In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). “This world thinks it’s finished with Jesus Christ when they haven’t even started with him yet.” -Leonard Ravenhill

Discussion Questions:  When May 22nd comes, will you boldly identify yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ — and speak of God’s judgment and mercy?  Let’s not lose this opportunity to share the truth of the gospel with our friends, relatives, and neighbors.

 

THREE DAYS TO GO — HAROLD CAMPING’S PREDICTION OF THE END OF THE WORLD ON MAY 21ST, 2011

A caller into Camping’s radio program asked him if he would return all the money people have sent to his ministry on MAY 22ND.  His response, found HERE, was that millions would die every day after May 21st.

It is so terribly sad that this man who has preached for many years would feel compelled to make another silly prediction of the Second Coming.  He was wrong in his book 1994? 

Jesus made it quite clear in Matthew 24:36 – “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”  Predictions of when (not IF) Jesus will return have been embarrassing Christians for centuries.

What troubles me most is that my unsaved friends who have seen the billboards around our town which declare “THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!” about May 21st will be asking me on MAY 22ND “What happened?!”  I will share with them, as best I can, the gospel of Jesus Christ and my sadness that one of His servants was self-deceived in thinking HE knew something Jesus said no one knows.

Discussion Questions:  If you are a believer in Jesus, what are your plans on May 22nd?  Will you proactively engage your friends in a discussion of God’s judgment — and His provision of forgiveness in Jesus Christ?  Please don’t spend too much time defending or discussing Harold Camping.

 

EIGHT DAYS TO GO! HAROLD CAMPING’S PREDICTION OF MAY 21, 2011

Harold Camping, octogenarian owner of 55 Family Radio stations, predicts that the end of the world will be arriving in just eight days.  Jesus clearly said that no one knows when the Son of Man will return.  I guess Mr. Camping does not believe those words apply to him.

Predictions of Christ’s Second Coming are nothing new.  Christians have used their Christian calculators to figure out “the signs of the times” and to convince others that the end is near.

I understand that Pastor John Piper welcomes conversions that might come about because of Camping’s prediction.  I’m grateful when people trust Christ, but prefer those conversions to happen as a result of the truth of the gospel, not the supposed mathematical calculations of a radio preacher.  How will those converted feel on May 22nd when the end has not come?  Deceived?  Hoodwinked?  Will some reject the Christian gospel because a wayward preacher got it wrong?

I’m deeply troubled by the billboards around my South Carolina town predicting the Second Coming.  They have a bold circle which contains the words “The Bible guarantees it!”  One definition of blasphemy is claiming that God has said something when He hasn’t.

Is it right to get ready for judgment?  Of course!  But we should not trust mere man’s predictions, especially when the unpredictability of the end of the world is clear in Scripture.

People should repent and believe the Good News about Jesus because that message is true and worthy of one’s faith.  Unlike one, perhaps well-intentioned, octogenarian in California.

Discussion Questions:  What are your plans for May 22nd?  What damage control will you have to engage in with your non-Christian friends in eight days?

 

MAY 21, 2011 COUNTDOWN ALA HAROLD CAMPING

Perhaps you’ve seen a billboard like this around your town.  Harold Camping, Bible teacher and owner of 55 Family Radio stations, believes that he has mathematically figured out when the end of the world is going to take place.

Camping had made an earlier effort at predicting the Second Coming in his book 1994?  Pastor Stephen C. Meyers reviewed 1994? and says:

In his book 1994? Harold Camping states the end of the world may occur this year, somewhere between September 15-17 (p. 531). He does not know the exact day because Scripture says “no man knows the day nor the hour” (Matt. 24:36). But according to Camping we can certainly know the month and the year that Christ will return.

 The main glue that holds Camping’s book together is numerology: that part of ancient mysticism that endeavors to find hidden truths locked in literal termi­nology through numbers. Mystical num bers are the keys that allegedly unlock the hidden truths concealed in literal language. The basic theory this system operates on is that God created a perfect world and a perfect word (the Bible) which exhibit precise numerical and symmetrical design.

 Camping’s interpretation of John 21:1-14 displays his use of numerology. Jesus tells the disciples who were about 200 cubits out in the Sea of Galilee to throw their net on the right side of the boat. The result was a catch of 153 fish. According to Camping the Scriptures are teaching that the 200 cubits repre sent about 2,000 years between the first and second comings of Christ (p. 503). Since Camping states that the most likely date for the birth of Christ is October 4, 7 B.C. when the Jubilee Trumpet allegedly sounded (p. 418), one needs only to add 2,000 years minus one year for the year 0 and out pops 1994. Concerning the 153 fish, Camping points out that the number 153 equals 3 times 3 times 17: “The number three signifies the purpose of God whereas the number seventeen sig­nifies heaven. Thus we can learn that [the] purpose of God is to bring all believers that are caught’ by the Gospel into heaven” (p. 504). Would it not be hermeneutically better to go to Matthew 24 where Jesus clearly teaches about the end of the age instead of trying to mystically find hidden secrets behind clear narrative prose?

Camping was wrong in 1994 and is most likely wrong about May 21, 2011.  I sure hope so.  My daughter celebrates her one-year wedding anniversary on May 22nd, and we’re looking forward to our second grandchild to be born in August.  We’ll blog more on this topic in the coming days — including 88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1988!

Discussion Questions:  Why is date-setting such a seriously misguided venture?  How should the worldwide Body of Christ respond to people like Camping?