I listened to some of Harold Camping's radio show tonight, following his failed prophecy of the Rapture on May 21, 2011. Of course, Christians were going to be lifted into heaven and the working out of the endtimes would be unambiguous, present for all to see.
I tuned in tonight hoping to hear him eat a little crow, say he repented, say he has decided to move on from apocalyptic predictions and be a credit to society and the church. But that wasn't what we heard. Instead, we heard the old deceiver now claim, without giving any evidence, in the time I was listening, that the Rapture, or whatever it was that happened on May 21, was spiritual and invisible. He pointedly said that Jesus Christ had in fact returned on that day and that the world was now under judgment, meaning some judgment that it previously wasn't under. I saw someone on Twitter say that Camping said no one now could be "saved," but I didn't hear that myself.
The other big difference from what he was just saying a few days ago was this, that the world won't notice very many different phenomena between now and Oct. 21, 2011, but that it will still be destroyed on that date. All along he was saying it'd be destroyed on Oct. 21. The difference is, it'll be sudden, apparently out of the blue. While I was listening, he didn't offer any evidence for this. And he was admitting that he had certain things wrong, but that in the last couple days he'd had a chance to read and study from the Bible and that he had discovered these differences were there all the while.
The show on the radio was a press conference, but no one asked him what specifically he had seen different in the Bible to justify the changes in his teaching.
Among the questions he was asked, someone wanted to know if he would give away all his property, Family Radio, etc., on Oct. 20 or 21. He acted befuddled by the question, even though of course he had to know the meaning behind it; he's not that dumb. Why, he wondered, would I give it all away? What good would it do anyone since the world was ending? It's obvious that he's hedging his bets, since of course the value in giving away everything would be to show he's "all in" and without doubts, and that he's willing to pay the full price if he's wrong.
It's very telling that he evaded the question in a few different ways. Because on the one hand, he admitted he's not infallible, that he's always learning, that the Bible is very difficult to understand, etc. And yet he still wouldn't verbally hedge his bets on Oct. 21, he wasn't leaving the door open that he could be wrong. Isn't that a weird way to think? I was wrong two days ago, but I can't be wrong now.
He sounds like such a nice person, such a faithful Bible student/teacher, and even intelligent to a certain extent. And no doubt that's part of the reason so many of his followers were deceived. But he is a deceiver if he can't come completely clean on being wrong (1994 and now 2011) and what that means for the value of his remaining prediction. It ought to be obvious to anyone that if he's a two-time loser, he's bound to be a three-time loser. Third time's the charm!
Guess what. The world isn't going to be destroyed on Oct. 21. Five months from now, Harold Camping will once again be exposed as a fraud and deceiver. It is simply inconceivable that the man can hope to add and multiply a bunch of arbitrary numbers, numbers scattered throughout the Bible and numbers with supposed spiritual meanings, and hope to arrive at definite dates like the end of the world, Christ's coming, etc. It was plain from the git-go that his May 21 prediction was a fraud, and Oct. 21 won't work out for him either.
So what will his response be on Oct. 22? That it was a spiritual and invisible destruction of the world, and that none of us are actually here? LOL. Or will he find some other teaching in the Bible that indicates the true date is now March 2012, always leapfrogging ahead five more months?
The man of course will eventually have to give it up. For false prophets, the calendar is always their greatest enemy.
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