It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10.31NET)
The cyberequivalent of much ink has been spilled over Mr Harold Camping. And there are very good articles addressing the situation. You may want to read:
The Rapture Aside...
The End of the World According to Harold Camping (by Robert Godfrey)
and others I must have closed the browser tab for.
I was rather shocked at the media furor over the event. From my youth, I remember the Weekly World News in the checkout stand of the grocery store predicting the end of the world at least twice a year. It seems these predictions are nothing novel nor exciting. The difference may be in the amount Harold Camping spent advertising his date, having spent quite a bit of money on billboards and convincing his followers to give up money for the cause.
And herein lies the first point of this blog post: the Holiness of God.
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18.20-22 ESV)
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 13.1-5 ESV)
While the command to kill the false prophet no longer applies, (WCF 19.4 'To [the nation of Israel] also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.’) the general principle is that God alone speaks authoritatively. A proper understanding of the holiness (and otherness) of God will keep us from excessive speculation and inordinate curiosity. If we have an acute sense of God’s holiness, we will not speak presumptively, on his behalf, where he has not spoken. We will, however, declare what he has made known. A knowledge of the Holy will cause humility, and we’ll seek to learn from the body of Christ, the church. (Harold Camping rejected the church and the office of the pastor when he came under discipline in his Reformed church [CRC]. I especially recommend the above link by Bob Godfrey to get a sense of the history of Harold Camping.)
But as I pondered the holiness of God, he renewed my amazement at his patience. God, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, does not instantly blot out evil men. He suffers long although men mock his name. In this case, Harold Camping, mocked God by finding revelation God didn’t reveal, and unfortunately when media picked up the story, atheists and others mocked God and Christianity. As an aside, Christianity is offensive enough on it’s own; Christians should not increase the offence by their own inventions to it. But back to the point, not only is God patient with the wicked, for those whom Christ did not redeem, he suffers them for the elect, so that all Christ died for may come to faith. God, when offended by Adam, prepared a way to save humanity. The second person of the Trinity, the Son, left the glory of heaven and forever united himself to humanity. What other religion teaches this, that God abased himself to save wicked men, who without his intervention would continually rebel against him‽
