CAMPING OUT WITH BROTHER HAROLD

I confess that while I have many strengths, thorough knowledge of scripture is not one of them. While I have certainly made strides in this area of my life, there are still many passages of scripture that have eluded me. However even I can spot a flimflam artist a mile away. You know the old joke, "How can you tell when a salesman is lying? His lips are moving!"

Harold Camping is that kind of salesman: self-serving and full of himself. The president of Oakland-based Family Radio has made a career pronouncing that the age of the church is over, and that we are in the "great tribulation." Twice he has predicted the end of the world: once in 1994 "somewhere between September 5th and 27th;" and now, in a new book titled appropriately enough, Time Has An End, 2011. The main reason for Camping coming up with 2011 as the year Jesus returns is brilliant in its design. 1. It is 7000 years from the great flood, which he claims to have occurred in 4990 B.C.; 2. It is 23 years from the beginning of the great tribulation (Camping's great tribulation I might add) and 23 is the magic number of judgment. According to Camping, churches are not only irrelevant but "altogether apostate" because they soft-pedal the gospel. God has instead turned to radio - more to the point Family Radio - to preach the good news. You see, brilliant!

Camping isn't the first bible thumper to throw his hat in the ring and predict the end of the world. But what makes his brand of theology so fascinating and, at the same time, dangerous, is that millions of people tune into his family radio network every day. In one way or another most of the people I know have listened to a program or two on 94.7 on their FM dial. Most of the programs are not without some merit, and some actually do some good. That is the danger. Camping isn't some Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell copycat. He hides behind a pulpit that brings at least a semblance of hope to a good many people. While learned men and women in the Word are hip to Camping's charade, the ignorant remain helpless victims.

I have said it before, I will say it again, the Church's refusal to step out and call its false prophets on the carpet, like Paul did in his letters, is the biggest problem besetting Christianity today. Where is the public outcry from the responsible clergy when Pat Robertson openly condoned the assassination of Hugo Chavez? Where is the righteous anger that Christ had when he overturned the tables of the money changers and drove them from His father's temple when self-serving, false prophets attack the Church?

We have a habit of blaming Satan, referring to this world as a fallen world, and the people in it imperfect, as though that somehow gets us off the hook. Bull. Paul, in Romans chapter six, knew exactly where the blame was to be put. ^15"What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."

The gullible need a light at the end of the tunnel to steer them toward the truth. How can we hold Islamic leaders responsible for their unwillingness to condemn terrorist attacks when our own leaders stand by and permit blasphemy within our own ranks. Remember the words of Jesus, "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." Matthew 7:5.