The foolishness of dating the rapture

Where were you May 21?

As 6 p.m. came and went in every time zone with no end in sight, doubtless there were many people deeply disappointed. People who had sold much, if not all, they owned and placed their faith and trust in the prophetic utterances of Harold Camping.

If only they had been students of history. You know, learning from past mistakes isn’t such a bad idea. And while Camping was wrong about the end years ago, he certainly is not the first to have spoken out of turn. During the mid-19th century, one William Miller arose, who prophesied the end. When one date came and went, calculations were gone over, errors admitted and new dates set, only to disappoint again. Worse yet, an entire movement was started from his false prophecies.

If they had only been students of the Bible. As in Miller’s day, most who fell under the sway of his false teachings were those less educated. But the King James Bible tells us to “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

It is too bad these people did not know their Bible sufficiently to realize that Peter told us in his epistle, “but there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you … and many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”

And now, the way of truth is spoken evil of, not only because of Camping, but of his many followers.

One of the problems with Camping’s predictions is the association of the rapture with the end of the world. The truth is that there are at least 1,007 years between the rapture and when God is fully done with this earth and the universe in which it sits. The Bible teaches a period of seven years will follow the rapture in which God will pour out his wrath on a Christ-rejecting world. Following this time of tribulation, Christ will descend from heaven and, after the famed battle of Armageddon, rule this earth for 1,000 years, also known as the millennial kingdom.

Just interpreting the book of Revelation chronologically will demonstrate this. Chapter 1 was John’s day, followed by the then-prophetical forecast of Christianity’s history (which has proven true) in chapters 2 and 3. At the beginning of chapter 4, you have the rapture, and by chapter 6 you have the beginning of the tribulation period. Finally, in chapter 19 you find the battle of Armageddon, and chapter 20 gives us the millennial kingdom.

But while it is sad to find such confusion regarding the rapture and the end of the world, what is even more egregious is the wholesale disregard of the clear teaching by Christ himself that specifying the date and the hour belongs to God the Father alone. In Matthew 24:36, Jesus says, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

In direct violation of the word of God, Camping not only predicted the day, May 21, but also the very hour, 6 p.m. The truth is, while God has given man a certain amount of intellect by which man can discover the world in which he lives to a degree, God has set bounds on that intellect and reserved some things for his exclusive domain. It is arrogance for man to presume he can know everything.

While God does not ask anyone to check his or her brains at the door of salvation, the Bible does say that we are to come to him as a little child. In the gospel of Luke we read, “Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter in.”

What Jesus means here is that as little children readily accept and trust the words of the adults in their lives because they understand who is lesser and who is greater, even so are we to acknowledge God. The truth is God is infinite in his wisdom and knowledge, but we are not.

And there are some things that would just be plain counterproductive for us to know, like the day and hour of the rapture. We are told to watch, and we are told to be ready — but as to when, it doesn’t matter how many more dates Camping predicts. The Bible says, “in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”

Ron Hamman is pastor of Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla. Contact him at 357-4229 or ron.hamman@gci.net.

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