It's 1844 all over again

Harold Camping is the William Miller of the early twenty first century.

Miller had a couple of flubs before hitting on October 22 1844. The faithful were "ready to rise" on April 18, and there had been a previous expectation a year before that.

Recalculations were made, and the date was adjusted. It didn't make any difference of course.

Miller seems to have been a sincere man. Can we say the same of Camping? Is it even faintly defensible for anyone today to build a doomsday doctrine based on the symbolic numbers in ancient texts, Hebrew, Greek or Mayan for that matter? Miller thought so, but he had few of the advantages available to those of us living today. Even a moron in a hurry now knows the Bible can't be read aside from some basic critical qualifications, just ask Al Mohler.

And Camping had the clear example of Miller's failure, along with a host of similar predictions since.

Now he's adopted the Miller strategy: He made a bit of a mistake by failing to factor in x. But no worries, it's still all good. And land-sakes, he's even come up with an October date! The 21st!

Unlike 1844, when it took time to spread "the good word" of the End, today news is communicated as it happens. Miller's final prediction is the one we all remember. But Camping has fired his cannon early, and the whole world heard it. His supporters have already spent their savings on billboards for the wrong date.

Miller was merely self-deluded; Camping is a fool.

Ignoring Camping

Those who do not learn from history...

Several bloggers have sniffed disdainfully at the attention Harold Camping and his rapture prediction have received. Bad enough "the media" have been caught up (if you'll forgive a rather weak pun) in it all; we, the enlightened, are being sidelined by circuses!

Nope. The media attention and the howls of delight from the cheap seats are much needed.

It isn't as though this hasn't happened before and, here's the issue, will happen again.

And each time decent, sincere, largely naive people get sucked in. Lives are affected. Later I want to share some observations on the demographic Camping preyed on, but let's be clear: Most of those folk with their placards are victims. They don't need to have their noses rubbed in their mistakes.

Camping, on the other hand, should serve as an abiding lesson for any who might follow in his wake.

Deane Galbraith makes a very pertinent point: "But can we write off Harold Camping as occupying the fringe regions of Christianity when some 55% of Americans believe in The Rapture, a concept which was only popularized as late as the nineteenth century by dispensationalist, John Darby?"

No, Camping shares the same loon rating as Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and the entire faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary.

These people may represent a majority (isn't 55% a majority) viewpoint!

A disdainful sniff is hardly the response that's needed.

PS. Just in case you were still wondering, the other side of zero is... nothing!

Counter conundrum

The question of the hour. What will Family Radio do with its website counter. What happens on the other side of zero? After all, "the Bible guarantees it", so what's a Bible guarantee worth? Can people get a refund?

The Lord is late

Here I am, perched atop a cowshed roof in Rongotea, dressed in my white ascension robes and ready to go. It's 6.45. The Lord is late. Not as much as a tremor from passing cattle trucks.

Could it be a 1 Kings 18:27 moment? The prophets of Baal have been beseeching the deity to come down, but it's a no-show. Elijah, showing a singular lack of ecumenical compassion, begins to "take the Mickey."

At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, "Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." (NRSV)

A note in my New Oxford Annotated Bible reveals that "he has wandered away" is a euphemism for Baal having been, um, "caught short." Harold Camping's god seems likewise indisposed. Nasty!

The prophets of Baal, of course, met a sticky end in the Wadi Kishon. Camping's fate will be less gruesome, no doubt. A mere byword for fanaticism and self delusion. Less pleasant will be the consequences for those folk who were sucked in by Camping. There'll be a lot of impoverished people with ruined lives and reputations after tonight, and they - unlike Camping - can probably do without the additional burden of ridicule.

What will be done with all those posters and billboards? What will Harold tell the faithful? Probably not "I've been a jerk and will gladly reimburse you all for the losses I've caused you."

Oh well, I'll give it another half-hour before climbing back down. Too chilly to stay up much longer...

Happy Campers - Less than 2 hours to go

Jim West has me confused. On his excellent Zwinglian blog he declares that Camping's prediction has already failed. Jim writes: "As you can see, the deadline he set (May 21 out in the Pacific and 6:15 pm Eastern Time May 20) has come and gone."

No, no, no. At least, not if the LA Times has its facts right.

The apocalypse will strike, Camping teaches, on May 21, wherever it happens to be 6 p.m. That means it will be Friday night in America when what Camping calls "super terrible" earthquakes will hit the New Zealand region.

The earthquakes will then roll on, time zone by time zone. The saved, perhaps 2% to 3% of the world population, will be whisked to God, while the rest will be obliterated in what he calls "a super horror story."

So there! Camping could still be a true prophet. And that's the way it'll stay for another 100 minutes or so. Meanwhile, if you attempt to click over to familyradio.com to follow the action, so to speak, you'll probably find the site has crashed due to all the good folk attempting to do the same thing.

Still time to repent, Jim!

Disappointment? What disappointment?

Here in Rongotea, where I'm "camping out," it's approaching 10 AM on Judgment Day, hallelujah! News is already coming in of an early sighting of Jesus over Dunedin. (Personally, I'd avoid Dunedin like the plague today, full as it is of the damnable relics of pestiferous Presbyterianism.) New Zealand is the first major country up on the timetable of wrath, so those of you lucky beggars in the USA should have a clear 'heads up' - and an opportunity for last-minute knees-down, hands-upraised repenting as the wave of destruction begins its inexorable march across the planet.

To aid you in coming to terms with the great event, why not zip across to the Everything Dies blog. Yeah, I know the title is a bit of a downer, but let's face it, it's a good day for sobriety. There you'll learn about Harold Camping's more successful forerunner, William Miller, and what happened when his predictions kept coming up empty. To add to the motivation, the tale is told in comic strip format. Brilliant. I mean, would you have time to read an academic treatise on the subject today before you get "caught up" (or "put down".)

Last Tango in Rongotea

The bustling centre of Rongotea

Well folks, it's almost the end... or more precisely The End. Harold Camping has crunched the numbers and he has no "Plan B," so I guess that settles it. I've been digging through my old files to find an ancient Jack Chick tract - you know, the ones with the "sign on the dotted line and be instantly saved" form - but no luck so far. Just in case the Lord overlooks me on the 21st, being so busy and all, I've been looking for a safe bolt-hole to avoid the worst of the cataclysm that begins at about 6 o'clock Saturday evening. I daresay there'll be tsunamis and volcanic eruptions just as the Camping Christians are raptured upwards, so a celebratory beach barbeque is probably out. My little town is perched far too close to the fleshpots of Auckland to feel secure... it seems obvious that the fire and brimstone will be particularly heavy over the top half of the North Island and, well, I'd put good money on an extra-thorough pounding of the Laidlaw College campus, and even worse at that Baptist joint where Tim Bulkeley teaches...

So, where to go? I'm thinking of heading to Rongotea (Ron-go-tee-uh), where the maternal grandparents once lived. It's a fairly long drive, but I should be comfortably ensconsed by 6pm. Why Rongotea? Well, nothing much has happened there since about 1937, and most New Zealanders - even those who live in Palmerston North - have never heard of it, so hopefully it's low on the Wrath priority list. Plus, there are no nearby fault lines, volcanoes or vulnerable coastline. I've hired an abandoned cowshed, and have a survival kit ready (Pepsi Max cans, peanut butter, the complete DVD collection of Babylon 5, a copy of the The Message Bible, and a battered Windows XP laptop to follow the global catastrophe.)

So I don't expect you'll be hearing from me on the 22nd, what with you lot all being knocked off by the Armies of Heaven (with the possible exception of Larry and Velvet) and me being either ruptured raptured, or incommunicado in the town that time forgot.

Either way, have a nice weekend...