{"id":2071,"date":"2011-05-18T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=2071"},"modified":"2015-03-19T14:37:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T21:37:55","slug":"then-end-is-nigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2011\/05\/18\/then-end-is-nigh\/","title":{"rendered":"Then End Is Nigh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now less than a week until Judgement Day. Well, it is if you believe a chap called Harold Camping. Camping is the president and founder\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.familyradio.com\/\">Christian Family Radio<\/a> and asserts that\u00a0Judgement Day is going to be <em>this Saturday<\/em>, May 21st. You may have seen the billboards or commercials around:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qmRoQ3JZzII?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">I hadn&#8217;t come across this group until \u0399 first visited San Diego when one of their leaflets was given to me Downtown\u00a0by a street evangelist. Later that day, over an ice tea, I read the leaflet from cover-to-cover (I always try to read the stuff that guys like that give me). It didn&#8217;t contain anything about the end of the world, but did give me an introduction to the group&#8217;s rather &#8220;unique&#8221; way of interpreting Scriptural prophecy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">I remember that, through interpretation of some of the writings of the prophets, the leaflet asserted that the &#8220;Church Age&#8221; had now ended and that <em>true<\/em> believers should now leave their local congregations, study the Bible on their own and, as you might expect, listen to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.familyradio.com\/\">their radio station<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>End Time Math(s)<\/h2>\n<p>Anyway, despite the Bible&#8217;s repeated assertions that only the Father knows the Day Of Judgement (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew%2024:36-51&amp;version=NIV\">Matthew 24:36-51<\/a>, &#8230;), Camping believes that he has worked out when it&#8217;s going to be. Unfortunately, this appears to be the <em>second time <\/em>he&#8217;s been convinced that he&#8217;s worked it out. It must be a little\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0that in 1992 he said that the world was going to end in two years (it didn&#8217;t, by the way).<\/p>\n<p>He appears to have several ways of arriving at the date May 21st. You\u00a0can read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.familyradio.com\/graphical\/literature\/proof\/proof.html\">a complete explanation<\/a>, but here it is in a nutshell:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">He asserts that the crucifixion happened on\u00a0<strong><span style=\"color: #000000\">1st April, 33 AD<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600\">1st April, 2011 AD<\/span><\/strong> is therefore <strong><span style=\"color: #008000\">1,978 years<\/span><\/strong> after the crucifixion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong><span style=\"color: #008000\">1,978<\/span><\/strong> is then multiplied by the number of days in a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">solar<\/span> year (<span style=\"color: #000080\"><strong>365.2422<\/strong><\/span>) and this\u00a0rounds down to\u00a0<strong><span style=\"color: #ff00ff\">72,2449<span style=\"color: #000000\">.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Now, there are <span style=\"color: #800080\"><strong>51 days<\/strong><\/span> between <strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600\">1st April<\/span><\/strong> and <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">21st May<\/span><\/strong>. If this is added to the previous value, we arrive at <span style=\"color: #993300\"><strong>722,500<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">He then asserts that every number carries a spiritual significance e.g.\u00a05 = \u201catonement\u201d, 10 = \u201ccompleteness\u201d, 17 = \u201cheaven\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Therefore (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven)\u00b2\u00a0therefore becomes\u00a0(5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = <span style=\"color: #993300\"><strong>722,500<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">According to Camping: <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Five times ten times seventeen is telling you a story &#8211; it\u2019s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you\u2019re completely saved&#8221;<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 334px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/end-nigh.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/end-nigh.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"324\" height=\"396\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scary Maths<\/p><\/div>\n<p>If you can follow that, I&#8217;m impressed&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>En-&#8220;raptured&#8221; with making predictions..<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">In the past, many people have claimed to know when Judgement Day is going to be.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">One example from history is known as <em>&#8220;The Great Disappointment&#8221;<\/em>. In North America in the mid-Nineteenth Century, William Miller and over a million of his followers were convinced that the world was going to end and they managed to whip up\u00a0people into quite a frenzy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The &#8220;Millerites&#8221; sold their property and prepared for the End. Apparently, one man even threw himself off his barn at midnight, convinced that the world would end before he hit the ground. The end did indeed come, but unfortunately, only for that particular gentleman&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">After <em>&#8220;The Great Disappointment&#8221;<\/em> Miller&#8217;s followers fragmented into new groups such as the <em>&#8220;Seventh Day Adventists&#8221;<\/em> and the <em>&#8220;Jehovah Witnesses&#8221;. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">When the predictions of such groups fail to come true and Jesus inconveniently decides <em>not<\/em> to turn up, excuses are usually given e.g. <em>&#8220;Jesus <strong>did<\/strong> return, but did so invisibly!&#8221;<\/em>. \u00a0I&#8217;m guessing that probably the same thing will happen with Christian\u00a0Family Radio on May 22nd. However, I am a little afraid of exactly what the fallout from this particular prediction will be.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What can we take away from this?<\/h2>\n<p>As tempting as it may be to simply dismiss such groups, I nevertheless believe that there is something mainstream Christians can learn from people like this with such a focus on the immediacy of Christ&#8217;s return.<\/p>\n<p>What <strong><em>if<\/em><\/strong> this group actually <em><strong>is<\/strong><\/em> right and they just happened to pick the right day? Would I be ready for the Second Coming?<\/p>\n<p>Jesus may <em>not<\/em> return on May 21st, but I&#8217;m certain that a good number of people across the globe <em>will <\/em>shuffle off their respective mortal coils and go to meet their Maker, one way or another. Will they be ready?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Therefore <strong>keep watch<\/strong>, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have <strong>kept watch<\/strong> and would not have let his house be broken into. \u00a0So you also must be <strong>ready<\/strong>, because the Son of Man will come at an hour <strong>when you do not expect him.<\/strong>&#8221; &#8211; Matthew 24:42-44<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If the Lord came tonight, would He find us sleeping? Do we procrastinate in following his commands? Do we put off going to Confession until <em>next<\/em> week?\u00a0Do we delay in reconciling with one another under the misguided belief that we&#8217;ll\u00a0<em>&#8220;have time to do that later&#8221;<\/em>?\u00a0This is the lesson I think we can learn from such fringe groups:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Don&#8217;t think that you have all the time in the world &#8211; you don&#8217;t.\u00a0Jesus is coming soon&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">20-May-2011 UPDATED: I wanted to add a little bit of footage of Camping himself:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jQAVJAaSHAk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s now less than a week until Judgement Day. Well, it is if you believe a chap called Harold Camping. Camping is the president and founder\u00a0Christian Family Radio and asserts that\u00a0Judgement Day is going to be this Saturday, May 21st. You may have seen the billboards or commercials around: I hadn&#8217;t come across this group until \u0399 first visited San<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[179,180,2969],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-armageddon","tag-end-of-the-world","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56320,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/56320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}