I have found two interesting links related to Bible Prophecy. Both are about Harold Camping, who for the second time is predicting the return of Jesus and the rapture. His previous failure in the 1990’s has not discouraged him.
Liberty Magazine comments:
Jesus knew about this. He told his followers that no man knows the day or the hour of his Return, but that people would always be running around predicting it (Mark 13:32, Luke 21:8–9). The failed predictions, which seemed so snazzy before they failed, wouldn’t really be perceived as failures, because the failures wouldn’t be remembered, or considered interesting enough to be remembered. Watch out for predictions, he said.
Naturally as a Libertarian magazine they approach this from other failed predictions, especially economic predictions. Stephen Cox makes an interesting point about why people keep getting fooled by this kind of error. The reason is that there are always fresh people to be deceived, or as P.T. Barnum famously DIDN’T say “There is a sucker born every minute.” I was fooled by this kind of thing in the 70’s so I am not likely to repeat.
My friend and fellow blogger Pam Dewey commented on Camping in one of her blogs:
Essentially, Camping has convinced his supporters to see a large number of factors moving inexorably toward a target of the date of May 21 for the rapture, much as a “perfect storm” moves inexorably toward a tragic landfall. (perfect storm: …an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically… also used to describe a hypothetical hurricane that happens to hit at a region’s most vulnerable area, resulting in the worst possible damage by a hurricane of its magnitude.) According to Camping, there’s no denying it is coming precisely when he has predicted, and no holding it back. Once it has come and gone … and all True Christians (according to Camping’s standards) are gone… all that is left for those Left Behind to do, is to wait for the final Perfect Storm to destroy the world on October 21.
I am always amazed by the fact that so many Christians do not believe what Jesus said on a number of topics. Cox mentioned that so many ignored what Jesus said about his return in his article. Here is Matthew’s version of it:
24:36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
The arrogance of someone thinking they know something that Jesus did not know is breath-taking. Whether he comes on May 21, or not, in truth it does not really matter, for our response should be the same. We should be ready. We should be in the world, yet not of the world. We need to be leaving Babylon the great, step by step.
Watch this space! As an internal note I do plan a podcast soon. This is, after all, the Prophecy Podcast!
I also wish to thank Pam Dewey for her help with this blog. Without her help and support this blog would not exist. Thanks Pam.