9/11 Reflections from Jack Hayford

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on America is only four days away. It's hard to believe it's now been a decade since we were horrified by the live TV images of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City collapse right before our eyes. It has rightfully been called the Pearl Harbor of our generation.

Today I read a thoughtful commentary by Jack Hayford, former senior pastor of Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California and past president of the Foursquare church denomination. Although he is a charismatic Christian and as such believes in "the gifts of the Holy Spirit" such as speaking in tongues and words of knowledge, he is also very rational, gracious and thoughtful in his theology and writings.

On September 11, 2001 Hayford was teaching at a pastors' conference in Williamsburg, VA, about 125 miles south of the Pentagon, when he was told what was happening in Washington and New York. His reaction to the day's horrific events and reflections afterward are posted in an article on his website titled "To Halt a Holocaust and Ignite a Holy Firestorm". Don't let that Pentecostal-sounding title scare you off. In his article, Hayford stresses that 9/11 was not God's judgment on America, nor was He judging the Christians in America. Instead, he calls on the church to pray and live God-pleasing lives so that a "holy firestorm" can be ignited through the testimony of our lips and our lives and the "holocaust" of evil around us can be fought down as the hearts of unbelievers--our future brothers and sisters in Christ, as Pastor Okubo likes to say--are softened and turned to faith in Christ.

Hayford's article is a good and timely read as we approach the 9/11 anniversary this Sunday. Read it by clicking here.

The Rapture that Never Happened

The attached billboard says it all. After being plastered on thousands of other billboards around the world eerily proclaiming Judgment Day on May 21, 2011, the doomsday prophecy of Harold Camping, the president and general manager of Oakland-based Family Radio, failed to come true.

Camping claimed that based on information gleaned directly from the Bible, on May 21 there would be cataclysmic earthquakes, dead bodies coming alive from graves flung open, and 200 million people disappearing skyward into heaven to escape five more months of catastrophe culminating in the end of the world on October 21, 2011.

After spending an estimated $100 million to warn the world of its pending doom, its failure, indeed, was awkward.

The day after, Camping appeared at the front door of his residence and told reporters "It has been a really tough weekend." Ya think?

"I'm looking for answers," he added, referring to frequent prayer and consultations with friends, "but now I have nothing else to say. I'll be back to work Monday and will say more then."

But people hoping that Camping would admit that he was wrong and ask forgiveness were sorely disappointed when during a press conference at Family Radio headquarters Monday night, he claimed that May 21 was a "spiritual" Judgment Day rather than a literal one, and he was initially "flabbergasted" that nothing was destroyed because he was focused on a literal judgment. Instead, God has now judged the world "spiritually" and will bring about the end of the world on October 21:

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning. The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

God completed his judgment and salvation plan on Saturday, so there is no point in warning people about it anymore. Thus, Family Radio will instead play Christian music and programming until the real end on October 21.

As he continued to explain himself before an army of reporters and cameras, his bizarre theology came out of the closet with these rambling remarks:

• God's judgment really began back on May 21, 1988, when He left the church and let Satan take them over. Churches don't really believe the Bible is the literal Word of God because in teaching from it pastors always say "Paul says", "Moses says" or "Peter says" instead of "God says."
• There is no such thing as conscious eternal damnation for the lost, and thus no hell. In His grace and mercy, God spared the world five months of destruction and judgment because that would have brought eternal damnation on the earth. (Camping believes in the unbiblical doctrine of annihilation--that the lost will cease to exist rather than suffer eternally in hell.)
• God's period of judgment was from May 21, 1988 to the same date in 2011.
• September 7, 1994, the last time Camping predicted the end of the world, was actually the beginning of salvation for those who left the church and cried out to God for mercy.
• He declined to offer hope or assistance for the thousands of followers who blew away their life savings buying billboards and going on RV caravans to spread the May 21 message. He said that we're in a recession, and lots of people lost their homes "but they survived. People cope, people cope." Also, the great losses from the recent economic crash was much less than what "the average Family Radio listener" experienced.

With all due respect, these are the confusing and contradicting words of a unrepentant, rambling idiot.

Meanwhile, lawsuits against Family Radio may be coming. An attorney in Media, Pennsylvania is actively offering his services to devastated Camping followers who want to sue the pants off him for losses and damages incurred from his misleading information.

So what happens now? Camping has again been proven to be a false prophet and bona-fide cult leader, but the damage has been done to Christianity in general.

Well, I've made the following observations.

• The Rapture is a legitimate secondary doctrinal issue we can disagree on, but which Camping has twisted and brought into disrepute.The Rapture is an endtimes doctrine held by many evangelical and conservative churches in which believers will be literally caught up from the earth to meet the Lord in heaven before a seven-year-event called the Great Tribulation, followed by Christ's second coming to the earth to set up a literal 1,000-year reign of righteousness from Jerusalem. There are variations to this doctrine, such as "pre-trib", "mid-trib" and "post-trib" Raptures, but no exact or approximate date is ever given or assumed for when the Rapture will happen. While I no longer hold such endtime beliefs as a Lutheran, I still have fellowship and partner with fellow believers who sincerely believe this secondary doctrine and it boils my blood when nutcases like Harold Camping butcher and distort it so that it makes all evangelicals look bad.
• Camping's followers need compassion and mercy in their seeking recovery from his influence. On the message boards at Crosswalk.com a pastor met about 25-30 Family Radio listeners who fell for Camping's rubbish because they grew up in strict fundamentalist churches with authoritarian leadership that told them what to believe and why. These poor folks were never taught how to read the Bible for themselves and check what was being taught. Psychologically they have been conditioned to accept anything Camping says because of his assumed authority, just like how cult members are conditioned and brainwashed. And like anyone else coming out of a cult knowing they were duped, a judgmental "See, I told you so!" approach will not work. A gentle, compassionate and genuinely caring approach has proven to be far more effective. When I left an authoritarian, legalistic independent church in 2000, the unconditional love showed to me by the Immanuel First congregation helped me heal from that influence.
• We ourselves need to be on guard against false teachings, lest we end up just like the Family Radio followers. It's very easy for us who sit under solid biblical teaching to make fun of and dismiss the Family Radio masses as a bunch of brainwashed nutcases who blindly believe what they are taught. But have we ever been persuaded that a certain preacher or Bible teacher is trustworthy because they are bold hellraisers who condemn hot-button issues like gay marriage, abortion, moral relativism and the liberal agenda? John Hagee is such a hellraiser who has gained a large following because of his bellicose and blunt personality, but he is also a Word of Faith preacher who believes the Jews already are saved under a separate covenant with God, that positive confession can heal all diseases, and that persecution of the Jews throughout history (including the Holocaust) was because of their disobedience to God. Like with Harold Camping, we must never let the charisma of a pastor cloud our spirit of discernment. After all, God gave us brains to use.

So much more can be said of what we can learn from this whole debacle, but this will suffice.

In closing, I am humbled that at least two frightened listeners of Family Radio were convinced to switch it off completely and instead tune in to better Christian alternatives and return to the church through my corresponding with them on Crosswalk.com. Never did I ever think that I would help set a lover of God free from a dangerous cult, but I have always been passionate about apologetics, which is part of evangelism and the Great Commission. In addition to the 25-30 others now being counseled by the aforementioned pastor, I hope that this evangelism to former Camping followers is replicated nationwide and worldwide. If even one person comes out of the darkness back into the light, it will be worth it all.

Is the Rapture Really Happening on May 21?

(Update, May 19, 2011): With Harold Camping's so called Judgment Day of May 21 less than 24 hours away in parts of the world as I write this, he is apparently taking back some of his comments. In an interview for CNN, he is no longer insisting that the Rapture will be a so-called "rolling judgment" hitting each time zone at exactly 6:00pm or 1800 local time, but it could happen anywhere at any hour:

"We cannot say emphatically that it’s 6 pm. There’s a lot of information that looks at the probability of 6 pm in any city in the world–when that great earthquake will occur. It could be that it might be just one great earthquake, but there is enough evidence in the Bible that says it will begin at one point in the world, and it could be at 6 pm—that’s a great possibility. Then as it gets to be May 21 in any other country—there will be a great earthquake there."

Read the entire interview of Camping with CNN's Jay Kernis at the following link, "Harold Camping Prepares for Judgment Day":

http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/17/harold-camping-prepares-for-judgment-day-may-21-2011/?hpt=C2

I will have a postscript on the aftermath of this whole controversy after May 22 in a whole new post separate from this one.

(Original post follows)

If you listen to Christian radio here on the internet, cable, satellite, or good old-fashioned shortwave and AM/FM, in the past few months you may have heard a lot of noise from people claiming that the Rapture, or the Day of Judgment, is happening on May 21, 2011 and the end of the world five months later on October 21.

Those wild predictions are from Harold Camping, co-founder and president of Family Radio, a ministry based in Oakland, California that once preached and defended orthodox and biblical Christian doctrine but in the past 15 years has cut itself off from the rest of Christianity and has made false, heretical claims such as God is no longer working in the churches but Satan is instead, that hell does not exist, that Jesus didn't really die for our sins on the cross, and that the only way to salvation is to cry out to God "Have mercy on me, a sinner!" and hope that maybe God will save you when the Rapture comes. Camping also taught that the Second Coming of Christ was back on September 6, 1994 and that believers could no longer be saved after 1988.

While most Christians recognize all of this as bunch of nonsense, there are thousands of followers of Family Radio who are betting their lives on Camping's May 21 end date and billboards have been placed all around the world to scare people into listening to the ministry. But Jesus Christ clearly said that:

"no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows." (Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32)

and He warned His disciples against false teachers:

"Then if anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah,’ or ‘There he is,’ don’t believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones. Watch out! I have warned you about this ahead of time!" (Mark 23:21-23)

Because his previous date-setting prophecies have failed miserably and he failed to repent of those sins, that alone should be a good reason to not pay any attention to Harold Camping.

Despite those clear and plain admonitions from our Lord Himself, Camping has for whatever reason to go his own way, using an esoteric and mystical way of interpreting the Bible through numerology, mathematics (he uses the old term "arithmetic"), adding so called "deeper spiritual meaning" to verses by taking them out of their original context and creating a new context with a totally unrelated verse, and claiming that "new revelation" can always be gleaned from the Bible and the job is never done. Through these twisted methods of studying scripture he has made the following proclamations:

• The Holy Spirit has been removed from all the churches and Satan is ruling them instead.
• The "Church Age" (whatever that is) has ended, and God is no longer working through the church.
• If you're still in the church, you won't be raptured on May 21 and your soul is in grave danger.
• Hell is not real; it's a man-made doctrine used by the church that is not supported in the Bible.
• Nonbelievers will be "annihilated"--cease to exist--as "the second death" instead of consciously being separated from God forever in Hell as taught in Revelation 20:10-15 (the final judgment) and Luke 16:19-31(the parable of the rich man and Lazarus).
• Jesus didn't really die for our sins on the cross at Calvary; instead He "spiritually died" before the world was created and the crucifixion was merely a "symbol" of what was already done in eternity past.
• Worst of all, Camping doesn't teach that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Instead, he says we should cry out to God "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!" (a twisted and false interpretation of Luke 18:13) and hope that maybe God will save you when the Rapture happens on May 21.

Harold Camping turns 90 years old this year, and critics have suggested that old age and senility are the reason for his horrible teachings. But that doesn't hold water. Billy Graham is 92 years old and still has a sharp mind for biblical truth and evangelism despite his frail condition and struggle with Parkinson's disease, and Chuck Smith of the Calvary Chapel churches is still behind the pulpit and teaching the Bible even at the age of 84 and after a recent back surgery. Even if the flesh is weak, the spirit is willing and able in these men. Camping made a conscious decision a long time ago to reject the church and go his own way, claiming that he alone has true teaching and everyone else is wrong. Cult leaders like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Sung Myun Moon (founder of the Unification Church) and Charles Taze Russell (founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses) all made the same claim before him.

Many evangelical churches who hold to the doctrine of the Rapture, in which believers will be "caught up to meet with the Lord in the air" and be taken out of this world before the Antichrist is revealed (and popularized in the "Left Behind" books and movies), have condemned Camping for daring to set an exact date for the event and denying salvation through Christ. We Lutherans do not believe the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ are separate events as evangelicals do, instead teaching it all comes about on Judgment Day. This is a secondary issue that all Christians can debate and discuss over, as I wrote in my last post, but we need not divide or judge over. Proof of that unity in diversity is the almost unanimous and strong stand by all orthodox and conservative Christians against Camping.

Should we abandon the church because there have been some unfortunate trends like the ordaining of gay clergy, denying the deity of Christ, and other things within some liberal denominations who no longer believe the Bible is true? Absolutely not. Instead, we should continue to serve the Lord through His ordained instrument, the church, as flawed as it is because it is led by sinful people saved by the grace of God, and we must be there to welcome Camping's followers back to the church when May 22 comes and they realize they were deceived.

A brief explanation of Harold Camping's false teachings and how to easily defeat them are found at this link to Redeemer Broadcasting of Olivebridge, New York:

Family Radio Alternative (an analysis of Harold Camping's teachings)