I write these articles on the fly most of the time, but this time it is really, really on the fly. . .as in I will be flying away in several hours. At least that is what Harold Camping has informed us. The world is coming to an end on May 21, and I don't have that much time left before I must don my rapture robe woven out of silk from Jerusalem.
I overheard some comments today while I was out there working in the secular world (now why was I working in the first place, when I should be eating and drinking because the day after tomorrow I will fly?). These employees were joking about the atheists who have formed a business to take care of the pets of all departed Christians come May 21. That is the American entrepreneur spirit at work--making money at the expense of end time silliness. Many Christians have been doing that for years (just walk through your local Christian bookstore), so why can't atheists join in the parade and reap the same financial bonanza?
My first car was a 1963 two-door white Chevy Impala. I had on it a bumper sticker that read, Warning: In Case of Rapture, This Car will be Unmanned. It was the "in" bumper sticker among Christians at that time in the late 60s and early 70s. I soon discovered that "rapture" was secret (no pun intended) code language known only to the inner circle of dispensationalist Christians. The world by and large had no idea what that bumper sticker was saying. But it made us all Christians feel good, I guess. Or maybe just plain superior to all those worldly folks.
Of course, rapture is not found in any biblical concordance. That in of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, because the word Trinity is not found in the Bible either. The word "rapture" comes from the Latin word "rapio", and it means to be caught up. It is not the word that bothers me so much, but how the word has been co-opted by a cult-like following among a huge portion of evangelical Christianity, which has done nothing but make Christians look and sound stupid in the eyes of the world.
For the first eighteen centuries of Christianity, the idea that Christians would be secretly raptured out of this world to be followed by a seven-year tribulation time and then the Second (or would it be Third?) Coming of Christ was totally foreign to the thinking of all Christians. The trio of Edward Irving, J.N. Darby and Margaret McDonald in their English cult group changed all that. Pretty soon, Darby exported this sensationalism to America, and a divorced lawyer who had spent time in jail, a C.I. Scofield, picked up on this novel theory, and as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, now you know the rest of the story.
Harold Camping may be an extreme example, but he is an eschatological blood brother, whether certain people want to admit it or not, to all the other end time prophecy "experts" who have drunk liberally from the well of dispensationalism. Harold is bold enough to pick a date; others only flirt with dates. (Of course, if Harold lived back in the Old Testament times, when the penalty for being a false prophet was death by stoning, Harold would have been a goner a long time ago.)
What is the difference really between Harold and all those preachers who were so eager to preach after the devastating earthquake in Japan that we were witnessing a sure sign that we are living in the last days, or how the turmoil in Egypt was a sure sign that the rapture is very, very near?
While growing up as a young person, I heard this remark made many times over: "There have been more earthquakes in the 20th century than all the earthquakes in the previous centuries combined. This just proves we are living in the last days just like Jesus said in Matthew 24:7." Well, guess what? No one ever called anybody on the carpet about that statistic; we just took it at face value (and we love to say we are Berean Christians like in Acts 17:11?), because it sounded so good coming from the pulpit or when we read it in print.
The truth is in earlier centuries they did not have the modern know-how in seismology to measure earthquakes. The statement was and is blatantly false, but don't let that minor detail stop many preachers and authors from using it over and over again still today. The apparent rise in earthquakes over the last several decades is due to nothing more than the use of technological advanced seismographs. How many were killed in the Japan earthquake? Compare that to the one in China in 1850, where an estimated 400,000 died, or how about the one in Calcutta in 1737 where 300,000 died, or how about Egypt in 1138 where 230,000 died, or to top them all, again in China in 1556 where there were over 800,000 casaulties?
So Harold is camping on the fact that May 21 is when it will all end. I can only hope and pray that all this inexlpicable fascination with a cultish modern invader called dispensationalism will come to an end someday.
I told my wife I was going to take her to Hawaii on our 33rd wedding anniversary come May 27. You could not imagine how happy I made her feel. But alas, I also told her I found out that the world will come to an end six days before then, so I had to scrap all my original plans.
Another fallout of dispensationalism--it does not promote harmony in the home. Thanks, Harold.
Looking for the blessed hope,
Chris
