January 6, 2011
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A Time of No Truth?
Apparently there’s a guy out there who is claiming that the end times are going to begin May 21st. He’s putting up billboards all across the country, warning people that the Tribulation is coming. You may have heard of this. If you haven’t, here’s an article to that tune:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-01/bay-area/17466332_1_east-bay-bay-area-first-time-camping
Harold Camping …88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he’d found: The world will end May 21, 2011.This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day. On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping’s believers gathered inside Alameda’s Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. Followers dressed children in their Sunday best and held Bibles open-faced toward heaven. But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. He spent the next decade running new calculations, as well as overseeing a media company that has grown significantly in size and reach.
Apparently now he’s saying he wasn’t wrong, you just have to add 7 years to it. (!!) What I find interesting is that May 21st has NO significance Scripturally whatsoever. It’s not Pesach/Passover, it’s not Shavout/Pentecost… it’s not even a New Moon. It’s just some weird random date. So I can guarantee you what day the Lord will NOT return for Harold Camping.
But that’s not where I really wanted to go with this… I was looking at a site debunking him (I wanted to know what other crap he’s dished out)… and it said that Harold Camping taught that NO ONE was saved between 1988 through 1994. And I thought, “You have GOT to be kidding. What a nutcase.”
Then this morning I was reading a Jewish site, and read this:
And the Lord said, “I’ll place you all in… a generation that will have much confusion, tests, suffering, and hardships, a generation where the truth will be absent, a generation where one will be easily trapped by the evil inclination. There will be many opportunities to get trapped into terrible sins; everything will be available to you in split seconds. It will be a generation that will feel exhausted from trying to do Teshuva, the evil inclination will be very powerful and adultery, lust, temptations, promiscuity, stealing, heresy, secularism, etc. will be everywhere. BUT, despite all these hardships, all neshamot that will succeed to pass these difficult tests and continue to have Emunah, will be tremendeously rewarded and will merit to live in the Geula.”I got to thinking about it this morning… having been raised a christian for thirty years, and then realizing that everything I’d been taught was WRONG… the truth was absent from my life. In fact, Messianic Judaism (or the belief in a Hebrew Messiah, rather than one stripped of his Judasim) wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eyes from the time of Constantine thru to the 1860′s.
It’s just… well, if you have a world without a Torah-Observant Messiah, and without Torah-Observant Believers… you have no Truth, do you? I’m just thinking out loud… not that I believe Camping’s period has ANY bearing in reality at all… but I’m wondering… is it possible there HAS BEEN a period in which no person was saved? Let’s face it, Messiah said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” At the time He said that, there was on New Testament… so keeping the commandments HAD to equate to keeping Torah.
Further, Paul writes that ‘faith without works is dead’. Works being the keeping of the commandments that acts out the Love we have for Messiah. If the false ‘faith’ of the Catholic/Protestant churches is without the obedience of Torah… then that faith is dead; in essence, those people were/are lost. You can’t have a coin with only one side, after all. So does that mean there was, indeed, a period in which no one was saved, that there was no Truth? I’m just wondering…
Comments (4)
Wait – I gotta think about this (so you get to “listen”
). The Jewish site said “a *generation*”….which is usually figured as 40 years. 1988 – 1994 is only 6 years. So, Camping’s wrong – again. :p
OK…..I can get onboard with a lack of Truth……but not from Constantine to 1860. The Truth was still out there (to quote “X-files”…and I can’t believe I just did that!), but most people probably didn’t look for it. Or….wait – I read something yesterday that you *don’t* look for God – He’s There – but you wait for Him to come to you (and I don’t know where I read that – I think on an Orthodox site. I’ve been chasing a LOT of rabbits lately!). I think that means that you have the 2 pills – which do you choose?
I can also get on board with thinking that THIS generation – people born in the last 40 years – do NOT have the Truth. Just LOOK at the world – everybody’s doing their own thing, doing what seems right *to them*, NOT following Biblical commandments (seriously….take a look at *most* of the 30 and under crowd.)……Truth is still there, but they’re not getting it. (Again, not all – your kids, for example, HAVE Truth. But then, it’s because of *You*. The kids in the dance class? I’ll bet you they *don’t*. Oh, I’m sure they go to church and are model chrischuns…but that ain’t Truth!) The church has become the new social club….and it’s not teaching Truth, but is claiming it is.
Huh – I just re-read your quote. It can be interpreted 2 ways – that there will be 1 genration before The End that lacks Truth…but it can ALSO be interpreted that there will be a…a group during *each* generation that lacks Truth. “I’ll place you *all* in…..a generation…” Which actually makes more sense to *me*…..because even in Noah’s time there were some that had Truth – just Noah and his 3 sons, but *still* (OK, and their wives…:lol: )
I…..don’t know. I need to go off and think about this some more.
Amos 8:11-12 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord; and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even unto the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.
Always go to the source.
I remembered the bit about there being a famine in the last days of the Word of the Lord from the sermons I listen to. I assume we’re all in total agreement that we live in the days of apostasy?
You and I disagree on Torah being necessary to salvation – but we’ve covered that. :p
FerShure though… it’s HARD to be a true follower of Christ now. You have to climb uphill against all the relativistic manure, you have to sift through the hypocritical and poorly informed traditional nonsense from the church, and you have to *care* to even start walking at all.
Now, are people being saved? Yes. Yes they are. You know it, I know it. Are we close to the end? Likewise, yes. Date setting? Bad idea. Math is only accurate when you have all the data. SOMEDAY I’m sure God will show us His calculations for the day of the Rapture – but we’ll be in Heaven by then.
The truth has always existed, it is only gone in those that dare to not seek it. To be bold, to be brave, to challenge, to question, to even face fear. We did not need the New Testament to be written down to enable us to seek out that truth, but in our own ignorance it became a method to either instill a spark or to be led into confusion. The famine of the soul, or the famine of hearing the truth is because there has been a period of time where people stopped searching and began following others who “come in His name” and accepted it without question.
This doesn’t mean that the truth has been removed somehow: certain kinds of truth has been corrupted by men. But the truth that Yahweh gives us. He said “if you hold to MY teachings” and follow Him that the “truth will set you free”. He’s given everyone the answers, it’s up to us to look for them. Matthew 7:13-14 tells us only few will find it. It tells us of the difficulty in the task; humanity takes the easy way out and followed the Church – not Him.
Being “saved” is such a chunk of church-ish-ness.
The phrase actually upsets me.
Because many people present it as a one time event, like you were about to fall off a cliff – but then you were saved! Hoo-ray! People have this notion that once they get saved from falling off a cliff they can go walk off the edge at anytime – because ya know salvation is permanent. Instead of realizing that they were saved from a real danger that they need to work to avoid from here on out. Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins..
The truth *is* out there, but people are being taught that lies are truth - shame on those who call evil good and good evil. And sadly I fear that a huge chunk of people born in the past 50 years are literally too dumbed down to see it. There are plenty of day that I feel too dumbed down to understand it.
hate. that.