The word “Rapture” is not in the Bible (New King James), but its teaching is. The word “Trinity” is not in the Bible but its teaching is. The word “Beatitudes” “ is not found in the Bible either but its teaching is.
The problem with an over zealous believer is that their heart is often right but their head is wrong. Christ is definitely going to Rapture, (catch away) his bride (The Church) out of this world one of these days. However, the Bible explicitly tells us not to set dates for this Rapture. We might know the season of something but that is a far cry from the day and the hour. The Church is not to be setting dates, but instead to be eagerly waiting for him. He will come for his Church’ of that we can be truly certain.
Harold Camping had warned us that world’s Day of Judgment would begin at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011. The 89-year-old founder of Family Radio has made such pronouncements before, most recently in 1994. He now says that he simply miscalculated then, but was absolutely certain that he had the right calculation now. Camping said that he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers. One thing is for sure, Camping is no Josiah Willard Gibbs.
Fortunately, few people lost sleep over his prediction(s) and rather laughed at them.
So convinced was Camping that he had his facts right the second time that he had more than more than 1,200 billboards, which his ministry put up the money for, across the nation. According to press reports, Family Radio has put up 2,000 billboards in other nations, as well.
Here is what he told the New York magazine:
“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied — there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened — but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”
That’s as confusing as forty shades of blue. Harold Camping believed that God revealed to him the exact dates of biblical events and the timeline of the judgment. He said that God revealed some “exquisite proof” that enabled him to determine a “finished product” timeline that would end on Sunday, May 21, 2011.
Well here we are and the world is till spinning on its axis, and the world is still a mixed up place. .
Yet, in a strange way, this just serves to affirm Camping is a waco.
The Christian church has seen this kind of false teaching before. William Miller and his Adventist followers (known, as Millerites) believed that Christ would return on March 21, 1844. In the 1970s, popular Christian preachers and writers predicted that Christ would return on various dates now long in the past. Edgar C. Whisenant, wrote a book on “Eighty Eight Reasons Why Jesus Will Return In 1988.”
Does all this give the true teaching of The Rapture a bad name? Not to serious Bible believers. Those who love to mock Christianity do so regardless.
First, Christ specifically admonished his disciples not to claim such knowledge. In Acts 1:7, Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” In Matthew 24:36, Christ taught similarly: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, , but the Father only.”
To state the case plainly, these two verses explicitly forbid Christians to claim the knowledge of such dates and times. Jesus clearly taught that the Father has not revealed such dates and timing, but has reserved that knowledge for himself. It is an act of incredible presumptuousness to claim that a human knows such a date, or has determined God’s timing by any means.
Second, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. The Bible has been given to us in order that we might know the truth, and the truth is clearly revealed in its pages. We are not to look for hidden patterns of words, numbers, dates, or anything else. The Bible’s message is plain and requires no mathematical computation for its understanding. The claim that one has found a hidden code or system in the Bible is an insult to the Bible as the Word of God.
Third, Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes. We are not to draw a line in history and set a date, but we are to be about the Father’s business, sharing the Gospel and living faithful Christian lives. We are not to sit on rooftops like the Millerites, waiting for Christ’s return. We are to be busy doing what Christ has commanded us to do.
In Hebrews 9:28, we are taught that Christ will come a second time ,”to those who earnestly wait for Him He will appear a second time…” That is the faithful Christian response to the New Testament teachings about Christ’s coming. We are still “looking for that blessed hope.”
Be Patient!
The Best Is Yet To Be
Pastor Bob