We have billboards all over town by Family Radio and it’s members stating Judgment Day is coming with the date May 21, 2011, this year. On the website, they give their reasons for the exact date and how they arrived at it. Harold Camping is president of Family Stations, Inc., a California-based religious broadcasting network, including more than 150 outlets in the United States, as well as a Web site. Camping host the Open Forum program on Family Radio stations and is the driving force behind the date setting of Judgment day and the return of Jesus to the earth. You might remember him from his book named 1994 in which he proclaimed that Christ’s return might be on September 6, 1994. In that publication, he also mentioned that 2011 could be the end. He did put a disclaimer in his book that “the possibility does exist that I could be wrong.”
This date setting by Camping is highly controversial and not accepted by most of institutionalized church and scholars of the bible. In 1970, Camping published The Biblical Calendar of History (later greatly expanded in Adam When?) in which he dated the Creation of the world to the year 11,013 BC and the Flood to 4990 BC. This was in contrast to Bishop James Ussher’s famous chronology, which placed creation at 4004 BC and the Flood at 2348 BC. While Bishop Ussher’s dates are up to debate at least the Bishop used time factors in the Bible plainly shown in Genesis. While camping had to say that the word begat in the bible did not speak about a strict birth of a son to a father but skipped a few generations adding to the length in the timeline in the bible.
Well if you are confused I don’t blame you, it is confusing to me why people would believe this man has a possible chance to predict the Day of Judgment or the second coming of Christ. He recently declared the end of the Church Age and Camping teaches that all churches have become apostate and thus must be abandoned. In the place of the church, he encourages personal Bible study and listening to his Family Radio broadcasts. And I am sure that the donations to Family Radio have increased and will grow as the date May 21, 2011 approaches. I think my cynicism is well founded in words of Jesus “The Hour and the Day no man knows but the Father in Heaven.” This was talking about the end of the age and the coming of Jesus.
Jesus spoke to us about the season that this these will come to pass but never encouraged date setting. It is dangerous ground Harold Camping is going down and he will be judged himself by the disappointment and confusion he is causing. I will think of this on May 22, 2011, when nothing Camping predicts comes to pass. And I will pray again that the Lord God will come in His own time. Since the time of Jesus’ coming is unknown, we must watch and be ready (Matthew 24:36). The best thing we can do is have a wonderful relationship with Jesus as the Lord of our life walking with Him every day. It is the Hope of the Church to see the Lord in His coming to be gathered unto Him for eternity a date set by God and Him alone. As the early church said come quickly, Lord Jesus. 🙂 Walt
yes you have stated some facts from the bible calender and some scriptures from the bible but if you have read the book of mathews. jesus said he will come back soon, he never said the date or that someone is going to figure out when, but he said he does not know the time nor the day and no one knows eccept for GOD almighty. and just for the record i love reading the bible ,but i never saw a verse that says GOD said that the first repture will be on the ecxact time that the world ended with flood at time of noah……. TO GOD BE THE GLORY