Q&A: Can you give us your thoughts on Harold Camping’s prophecies concerning May 21?

Anonymous asks: Can you give us your thoughts and reflection upon Harold Camping’s prophecies regarding the nearing rapture on May 21? Is there anything I need to do in preparation? Do we assume that anyone who is still around after Sunday isn’t a Christian?

Anonymous asks: Further to my earlier anonymous question: http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/judgment/judgment.html

To which I would add this from googling around: http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/

The whole thing is about a supposed understanding of the Bible that indicates that Judgement Day occur on May 21, 2011 (two days away!) and that the world will end five months later on October 21, 2011.

As a twitter friend of mine wrote, “Was Matthew 24:36 removed from the bible or something?”  Matthew 24:36 reads “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  Proponents get around it by saying that new understanding has rendered this text superfluous.  It’s a ridiculous argument really.  The simple fact that there is a prediction is evidence enough that the whole thing is wrong.

There is further irony in that, having ignored Matthew 24:36, it seems that the whole prediction rests upon a misapplication of the very next verse: Matthew 24:37 – “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”  Which leads to a less-than-tenuous hermeneutic which applies details of the accounts of Noah in Genesis, improbably located in history, via some questionable numerological manipulations, to the span of history itself.  The reason why May 21, 2011 is important, apparently, is because it’s 7000 years after the beginning of the flood.

I’ll end with a quote which I think is from Mark Driscoll: “On May 20th I’m planting a tree, on May 22nd I’m laughing at this false prophet.”

Q&A: Can you give us your thoughts on Harold Camping’s prophecies concerning May 21? by Will Briggs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.