Back when many Americans were worried about the effects of changing from nineteen to twenty in the dates of computers’ operating systems I took some pleasure in observing how such care could turn into hysteria. I do not say this to my credit since it is unbecoming to take delight in the discomfort of others. But if Y2K was supposed to be as cataclysmic as the hawkers of bottled water, batteries, and dried beans said, then I figured there was not much hope for the Harts. Either we would die of starvation or gunshot wounds (after approaching a neighbor’s house in search of hospitality). But I knew we couldn’t stock enough food and water or fire wood to subsist longer than it would take to patch back together the world’s highly centralized network of computers, information, and commodities.
So to make light of the situation, I found a soup recipe for dried navy beans and prepared an article for the Nicotine Theological Journal in which I advised those Y2K preparers who had acquired too many bags of beans and too many cases of bottled water how to use the recipe to begin to reduce the piles of subsistence provisions stacked in their basements. I still regard this piece as one of the more funny in the history of the NTJ, but at the time I confess that I wrote with a sense of nervous amusement. I had heard enough predictions about the problem of changing digits within operating systems to be relatively certain that Y2K was a hoax. I sure hoped it was, and I sure thought it would be funny – all that stockpiling for end-of-civilization living – if it turned out to be. But I was sufficiently chary to be denied genuine hilarity until the morning of January 1, 2000 when I woke up to find that the coffee maker worked, the computer booted up, and the car started.
Judgment Day 2011 has invited lots of people, Christian and not, to engage in the kind of ridicule I experienced at the time of Y2K. Predictions about May 21, 2011 even caught the attention of sports-talk-radio hosts who framed questions running the gamut of audience demographics from which woman listeners would most want to sleep with before the end of the world – more the spirit of Fat Tuesday than that of preparation for meeting one’s maker – or which injured member of the Phillies should start the last game before the rapture. As risible as the prediction of the last chance for saving faith before divine retribution was, I was also wary and less than confident that Harold Camping was wrong. I was especially wide awake around 5:52 pm last Saturday as I drove east on I 80 in Pennsylvania and listened to a story on NPR about the pet care service offered to those believers who would leave their cats and dogs to be with the Lord. Not only did I experience a measure of disgust at the thought of people profiting from this prediction as well as the gullibility of rapture believers. But I also worried what road conditions would be like should Camping turn out to be right and I was left behind.
The problems with Judgment Day 2011, as compared to Y2K, are more numerous and go beyond feelings of apprehension, gullibility, charity, or disgust. I was convinced that Camping was wrong to pick a date. I still find it hard to believe that people would listen to his apocalyptic siren call after he got it wrong seventeen years ago, though I’m sure Camping had and still has a numerological explanation. I was also pretty certain that Camping was mistaken about the mechanics of Christ’s greeting his saints. I had grown up in a dispensationalist church and was familiar with the idea of a rapture, and I spent too many long nights without sleep after watching the movie “Thief In the Night.” But since I am a bit of an agnostic about the specifics of how human history will end, I couldn’t be certain that a rapture was completely out of order.
But what would happen if judgment day didn’t, especially to the devoted who had prepared for the end of the world in a very different way from Y2K? I do grieve for those believers who went to bed Saturday night seriously disappointed and wonder if they still trusted God after such a let down. I hoped that they would find genuine rest and comfort and take some hope from attending the means of grace on the following Lord’s Day. Maybe these sad saints would go back to the churches they had left behind when Camping condemned the institutional churches as apostate.
And what about Family Radio stations? Did they have programming planned and loaded into computers to keep going after the rapture? Or would the stations be silent? Would the Family Radio website still be up? And did the executives of Family Radio contract with some broadcasting version of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets to insure that some unbelieving radio engineers and website administrators would be available to keep their broadcasts and Internet sites going?
But I was most curious about my own reaction (all about me, right?). When I was an eleven-year old and the Israeli’s were beating the dickens out of the Arabs during the Six-Day War, my congregation heard lots about the end of the world. After all, “signs of the times” were indicating that the Lord’s return was any day. As a budding adolescent I was deeply disappointed by the news. I still had yet to experience dating, driving, high school, and marriage and sex were at least a decade away. I wasn’t sufficiently sanctified to consider that a day with the Lord might even be better than a night of conjugal bliss.
But Judgment Day 2011 had a very different effect, possibly the signs of middle-age or maybe an indication of spiritual growth. I personally wanted Camping to be right. Of course, I still have projects going and plans for time with family and friends that I would regret to see unfulfilled. But since I do pray often the Lord’s prayer, and since the second petition calls for us to pray for the hastening of the kingdom of glory, I don’t think that believers should necessarily find unbelievable the idea that Christ is coming on a specific day. The specification itself is wrong, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Camping could turn out to be right even if his method and tactics were wrong. Wouldn’t it be one of the great ironies – and redemptive history is filled with such reversals of human expectations – if the end of the world did in fact happen in an amillenial way rather than in a dispensationalist manner on May 21? After all, no one knows the time or the hour, which means that Camping still could have been wrong and that Christ could have come on May 21 without a rapture. Plus, Christians are supposed to hope for the Lord’s return, so could I really root against Camping? And what of those who jeered Noah, John the Baptist, or even Christ himself during his first advent? I didn’t want to be guilty of human expectations that put Christ into a box that would prove Camping and his followers to be a charlatan and boobs.
So here we are on May 23, Family Radio is still broadcasting (though I haven’t heard any explanations yet), and the website is still up though the numbers counting down the days until the end of the world are gone and the entire website has received a facelift. Sports-talk-radio hosts are still commenting on what they did or did not do on Saturday evening – one suggested to friends at 5:55 pm drinking up since a rapture would mean not having to pay the bar tab (a patently illogical piece of wisdom since if the drinkers kept drinking they would not have been raptured and would face the judgment of settling their bar tab). Some people are breathing a sigh of relief, others are still scratching their heads over the gullibility of Christians and their strange ways of interpreting the Bible. And some, if they are like me, are disappointed that the day for which believers are supposed to long, and the joy that will take place at the marriage supper of the Lamb, did not happen. Instead, it is back to work, plans, friends, family, vacations, paying bills, changing litter boxes, mowing grass, and sipping overpriced coffee. We live in a good world, but oh how much better the world to come will be.
Old Life 
Well-said. I myself (actually, it’s all about me,) have been guilty more often of mockery with respect to the two-time false prophet Camping; it’s too easy, I guess. Thank you for reminding us to make our business to long for Christ’s return. And here’s to hoping we’ll see some Campingites in church next Sunday!
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Great post, Darryl! I have many of the same feelings you express here. I pray often, with my family and in church, that the Lord would ‘hasten the day’ of his return. Of course, the latest news is Camping has changed his theology a bit to make the end actually look like the amillennial kind…on October 21st. No more rapture – just the end of the world as we know it.
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Well, the evening news featured Camping last night and now he’s saying that he miscalculated and the new date is Oct. 21, 2011. Whoever winds up playing in the World’s Series this year could find themselves in a draw.
By the way, whatever happened to all of those generators that lots of people ran out and paid artificially jacked up prices for back at the turn of the century? By now you’d think eBay would be flooded with ’em.
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I heard one of Camping’s writings about May 21 last year on Family Radio and decided right then and there in my car on the way to church that Camping is a false teacher, heretic, quasi-Gnostic and that I would not listen to Family Radio again until he was gone. Having said that, I agree with Daryl. Jesus can come at any time and we are always to be ready for his coming.
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Well said, Darryl. I posted similarly in
my Facebook status but in fewer words. I was disappointed in the number of believers who participated in the scorning and who were glad that the Lord didn’t come. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
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These are all good points that supplement well in between nastier pot shots (and go along with good natured ribbing). I found myself sounding at once dismissive and yet quite sympathetic while quelling my young daughter’s fears on Friday night. I also wondered about all the self-assured diagnoses amongst the orthodox that Camping was wrong. Isn’t that sort of the flipside of a confidence that he was right? After all, if nobody, not even the Son, knows the hour then…
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Dr. Hart,
I appreciated your post very much. I agree that ridiculing is not the correct response as it is not the correct response from a Christian to anyone. I have been guilty of this to some extent over the weekend and obviously need to refrain from doing so and repent.
However, It seems to me that Harold Camping needs to be called what he is, a false prophet. The date of the end prediction was the least of his faults. In addition to blasphemy (God gave the Devil rule of all churches, 2001), adding to Saving Faith (If you don’t believe May 21, 2011 is the end you are not a Christian), Heresy (Denial of Hell and the Sacraments), Camping has been falsely accusing the Church of heresy for many years and has now declared that no one else can be saved until the final judgment on October 21, 2011.
The media has concentrated solely on the date prediction. Like you and many others, I pray each day for the Lord to quickly return. The false prediction however is not what deserves the greatest condemnation, it is list of errors above. I would stop short of saying the man is not saved but Scripture, especially the last few verses of Revelation, are very strong when it comes to such heresy. It is our prayer that Harold Camping and his followers would repent, for as we know the day of Salvation is now!
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Darryl, this is the best perspective I’ve heard on Camping so far. You’re definitely more pious that me.
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Zrim, exactly. Even while we know that Camping can’t possibly know, still, he could be coincidentally right. Camping’s silliness doesn’t *prevent* the Lord’s return!
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Everett, but would the Lord really intervene when Major League Baseball is conducting its playoffs? Hard to believe.
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Ben, I agree mainly with your conclusion about Camping. But I may be sentimental about Family Radio since my parents listened regularly to it – even displaying one of the radio station’s bumper stickers on their car (“Hey Man, There’s Hope”). Plus, Family Radio has remained much saner than other religious broadcasters. And Camping himself does not appear to be in this for the money (though I hear the networks’ are considerable). For that reason, I’d vote to affirm the motion condemning Camping but I wouldn’t want to have to write the motion.
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Joseph, if you’re going to slander our friend with the accusation of piety at least take care to note that he is utterly without exuberance.
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Brad, very well. He’s a pious Stoic.
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Both Darryls post and the comments sound very, very serious. Is it so morally wrong to laugh at Camping, or those who paid to have their pets taken care of after May 21? These folks have the air of the ridiculous about them and I know personally know several Christians who regard them as a downright embarrassment to Christianity.
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Peter, mine wasn’t serious.
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Peter, only several? But I don’t think the point is to kill a good natured laugh over the immediately apparent silliness. I think it’s to lend some good temper to hysterics, including orthodox hysterics.
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This is funny:
“An example of how we can discover spiritual truth by means of a large number that can be broken down into smaller numbers is given in John 21. There the Bible records the catching of 153 fish. The net did not break. The fish were all safely brought to land, which represents heaven, without the use of a ship, which typifies the local church. Spiritually, these fish represent all the true believers, the elect, who will be saved from hell, which is typified by the sea, after the church age is finished. The number 153 is divisible, which we see by the numbers 3 x 3 x 17 = 153. Spiritually, the numbers signify that the number 153 describes God’s purpose (3) to bring to heaven
(17) all those whom God has saved from the wrath of God. Thus, the number 153 assists us in seeing the spiritual truths that are hidden in this historical event.” (HC)
But it’s not funny that a 9th grader in my daughter’s high school had to go back to school on Monday after promoting Camping’s prediction throughout the school.
FYI, here is how HC came up with his day:
…all we have to do is multiply the number of years separating two events by the number 365.2422 to know the exact number of days between them. So from April 1, 33 A.D. to April 1, 2011 there are exactly 2011 – 33 = 1,978 years, each having 365.2422 days. This equals 722,449.07 days. From April 1, 2011 to May 21, 2011 inclusively (including the first day and the last day) are 51 days. Adding these 51 days to the number 722,449.07 gives us exactly 722,500.07 days, from April 1, 33 A.D. to May 21, 2011 inclusively. The number 722,500 is made up of two sets of identical significant numbers. Each number is intimately related to God’s salvation plan: 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 = 722,500
The atonement or redemption demonstrated by Christ’s suffering and death on April 1, 33 A.D. (the number 5) is 100% completed on May 21, 2011 (the number 10) when all the true believers are raptured into Heaven (the number 17).
Remarkably this number sequence is doubled, to indicate it has been established by God and will shortly come to pass (Genesis 41:32). (HC)
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Ok, it seems I misread the mood here. If we all agree that using the bible to give a specific date for the end of the world is just plain silly, then we can all have a good-natured laugh at Camping and his followers, and play a game of bingo together:
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Peter, but if the Bible speaks to all of life. . .
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