The World Did Not End Today
In the past week, I’ve learned of Mister Harold Camping, president of the Protestant Family Radio, and his prediction that the Rapture will occur on May 21st of this year.
That’s today. Didn’t happen.
There are two pretty compelling reasons why it didn’t happen. The first is this: the theologicalculus Camping uses is just plain silly. Jimmy Akin does a great job of taking apart the “argument” piece by piece.
For my part, I will simply note the words of Jesus Christ:
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
(Gospel According to Saint Mattew, Chapter 24 verses 35-36)
You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
(Gospel According to Saint Luke, Chapter 12 verse 40)
Dürer's "Die vier apokalyptischen Reiter"
Scofield taught the idea in the footnotes of his immensely popular Scofield Reference Bible. Many Protestants to this day who read Scofield’s Bible uncritically accept his popularization of the “Rapture theory”, even though no Christian had ever heard of it in the previous 1,800 years of Church history.
In short, it’s a heresy, and a modern one at that.
The world ends every day for every single person who dies, and they will face their judgement. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand—for at any moment any one of us may face God in his Mercy.
Will the world ever end entirely? Sure. Christ will come in His Glory at the End of Days.
When? Let’s ask the Prince of the Apostles and first Pope:
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought (you) to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire.
But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.
And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you, speaking of these things as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures.
(Second Epistle of Saint Peter, chapter 3 verses 8–16)
Pray for the Mercy of God upon Harold Camping and all false prophets, and pray for the souls of those they’ve snookered.
Had to be said.
Sorry, people, it may not be 6pm yet where you live, but it has been somewhere & the rapture is cancelled w/out notice. 12-21-2012 next!
Harold Camping, amusingly enough, actually cites the very passage you do, and calculates that since one day equals exactly 1,000 years, you can calculate to the year when it will happen. His “error” in 1994 (when he last predicted “The Rapture”) appears to have been in miscalculating the Jewish calendar or something.
Please, don’t bother pointing out that the clear intent of the words are that a day is “like” a thousand years, or that “a thousand years” in this context is metaphorical. These people will have none of it, alas.
So I took a nap and, according to Harold Camping, I should’ve been raptured up…but I’m still here. Oh well. I wonder what he’s doing now?
My mother, a recent Catholic convert from being a Presbyterian, had never heard of the Rapture before this week.
We laughed about the whole thing this week and it brought us to some very good theological discussion and growth over the topic. In that sense, I’m honestly glad that Camping’s message became national news. It was good to sit down and discuss it all and educate ourselves.
False prophets like Camping lead people astray. But only those who, in the metaphor of the parable of the sower, had those ‘weak roots’. The people who follow such prophets are led around because they do not have the firm foundation in faith in Jesus that they profess to have, but instead have a firm foundation of faith in a particular person who can build up a cult of personality.