At first, to be honest, I had forgotten all this nonsense about the rapture coming on Saturday since the billboards went up several months ago. But then a friend reminded me of it, and we talked about how it’s difficult not to just be snide about this “ridiculous” notion that seven thousand years to the day after the flood is going to be tomorrow and, hence, the rapture. And given how foolish this makes Christianity look to outsiders, it’s understandable to be angry at Camping and his followers for making the task that much harder for the rest of us. But then a friend sent me a link to a wonderful (though somewhat snide) blog post on how Harold Camping glorifies God. It’s worth reading on its own, but the basic idea is that everyone and everything glorifies God somehow, so nuttiness like this can’t NOT glorify God. But in particular, this helps highlight many aspects of Biblical wisdom that, if heeded, would avoid such nonsense. For instance, the Bible warns against pride and self-certainty. It warns against people who argue about dubious and divisive things. It warns us to heed rebuke from fellow Christians. It warns us to have robust church government composed of sober men who can teach with honor and humility. It also warns those of us who presume to become teachers of the Bible to do so very carefully and humbly because the condemnation for doing so wrongly is great. And, among several other things I’m not listing (but you can reed in the post), it warns us of the dangers of focusing on anything other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, the return of Christ and the Judgment certainly are part of that Gospel, but since the Bible is so overwhelmingly clear that we can’t know the precise time of that event, we are to be constantly working as if it may come tomorrow and yet also as if it may not come for another two thousand years.
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