Christians have been engaging sporadically in eschatological speculation for most of the last two millennia, but a lot of people these days seem to be focussing on 21 May 2011 as the predicted Day of Judgement. Could this be part of an effort to preempt the Mayan calendar?
Thursday, November 5, 2009, 2:46 PM
November 5th, 2009 | 3:43 pm | #1
Is the end near?
Yes, ever since AD 33 (or thereabouts).
November 5th, 2009 | 4:03 pm | #2
I happen to be in the broadcast area of KEAR 610 AM, the flagship station of Family Radio (Family Stations, Inc.) and I hear this frequently from it’s chief proponent, Harold Camping.
With great sincerity he claims that 1988, the 40th anniversary of the rebirth of Isreal, marked the end of the Church Age and the start of the Great Tribulation. Precisely 23 years after that (I don’t know why) will be the end of the world . . . Well, not really. He then claims there is a period of time of Judgement before the return of Christ – or some such nonsense.
His message is that “God has commanded each and every believer to leave his local church and continue to serve God as His ambassador outside of the churches and congregations. This is the action required by God for any and all who tremble before the Word of God.”
I listen to the station for laughs, but is he actually having an affect on more than a handful of Christians?
November 5th, 2009 | 4:04 pm | #3
Are “a lot of people these days” really predicting this? Not to criticise you, David, but I haven’t heard anything about this, and being in ministry, I thought at least I would have heard some rumors.
Then again, it may say more about me and the circles (far less speculative regarding Biblical numerology) I run in. I do encounter some people prone to such speculation, but admittedly it’s rare nowadays.
And they’re at least partially correct, since every day that passes brings us one day closer to the End of Things.
November 5th, 2009 | 4:51 pm | #4
Actually I only heard of it today while looking at Family Radio’s website. I plugged the date into google and quite a number of sites came up that are saying the same thing or something similar. Whether Family Radio started all of this or has simply borrowed it from one of these other sites I cannot say. I am personally averse to such speculation, and I don’t think very many other Christians take it seriously either. Then again, the ones who do are likely to be disproportionately represented on the internet.
November 5th, 2009 | 7:42 pm | #5
Well, we know when the world won’t end.
November 5th, 2009 | 8:28 pm | #6
I suppose it’s naive of me, but I find it hard to fathom what purpose those who come up with these dates think they’re serving. We ought to be calling people to repentance with the same energy whether we’re expecting His return ten thousand years from now or in the next twenty minutes. (Of course, who can claim to meet the mark in this regard?) Is it unfair to identify these people as charlatans, as opposed to simply misguided?
November 5th, 2009 | 9:02 pm | #7
I used to hear Family Radio occasionally as I was flipping through the shortwave frequencies, but I never listened to it long enough to get a sense of its general confessional orientation. I was actually shocked to find this on their website today. To make such a claim seemed such a brazen thing to do. Yes, this is a fringe group, but I imagine that their network of radio stations gives them more of a following than might otherwise be the case.
Still this is the first I’ve heard of it.
November 6th, 2009 | 9:32 am | #8
Worse than that, David, is their homepage: http://www.familyradio.com/. They have their Judgement Day date on their just below the map of the world, like they’re counting down until Christmas or something.
Having a particular page on their site about this is bad, but putting it front and center on their homepage really shows this group to be an oddity.
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