Judgment Day? Not Yet
Why the Rapture Won’t Happen on May 21, 2011
Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, Ph.D.
Published by Mark Koltko-Rivera at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Mark Koltko-Rivera
Discover other titles by Mark Koltko-Rivera at his Smashwords Author Page
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The cover photo of a Family Radio bus was taken on March 8, 2011, in New Orleans, by Bart Everson. It appears here under the provisions of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judgment_Bus_New_Orleans_2011.jpg
Table of Contents
Judgment Day, Rapture, and World’s End in 2011
Is Harold Camping Claiming to Be a Prophet?
How Do Harold Camping’s Predictions Hold Up?
Richard Luman
late chair of the
Department of Religion
Haverford College
Requiescat in Pacem, Magister et Amice
In the spring of 2011, television and the Internet were abuzz with news about predictions concerning the imminent Day of Judgment. For quite some time, a man named Harold Camping has been teaching through radio shows produced by Family Radio of Oakland, California that the Rapture of the righteous into heaven would occur on May 21, and that the end of the Earth and the universe itself would occur on October 21, of 2011.
On the opposite side of North America from Oakland, I had noticed some minor publicity about these predictions throughout the spring in New York City: pamphlets in a Greenwich Village delicatessen; a poster on the Lexington Avenue subway line; a van or two with signs proclaiming the end; a man wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with this news on a bench in Central Park. I had seen some articles in the press and on the Internet about Mr. Camping’s predictions earlier (for example, Tenety, 2011; Winston, 2011), but by the second week of May, 2011, publicity about the predictions had reached noticeable proportions.
On May 12, Yahoo! News reported that its search engine had seen a 200% increase that week on the term “May 21” (“Trending Now,” 2011). On Friday, May 13, several large buses, one with a large trailer that blocked traffic, were painted over with signs proclaiming “Judgment Day, May 21” as they barreled through Columbus Circle in Manhattan; articles on Camping’s predictions appeared in the New York Daily News (Graves & Alpert, 2011) and the New York Post (Campbell & Sanderson, 2011). On Saturday, May 14, I saw that a number of pamphleteers with the same message had converged on the towers of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle; The New York Times noted Mr. Campbell’s prediction in the early editions of its Sunday edition with a snarkily titled item (“Weekend Plans? World to End,” 2011).
Family Radio has sponsored Project Caravan, where believers in Mr. Camping’s predications travel from city to city to warn of the coming Judgment Day; I believe that I saw some of these people at the Time Warner Center on May 14, and they had earlier been sighted in Washington, DC (Rosenwald, 2001).
I can only anticipate that there will be increasing interest in Mr. Camping’s predictions over the next week, the final week before May 21. This is all the more unfortunate, because these predictions are simply wrong.
As I show in this brief book, Harold Camping’s predictions about the dates of the Rapture and the end of the world are based on a series of grave errors. First among these errors is a deeply flawed, even bizarre set of teachings regarding the historical timeline of the Bible. Secondly, Mr. Camping’s teachings about Biblical symbolism are shot through with logical and theological holes. But perhaps the worst problem with Mr. Camping’s teachings is that they are based on a very shaky understanding of Biblical teaching regarding both the interpretation of the Bible, and the nature of prophecy. I demonstrate all of this from the text of the Bible itself, which I consider to be the most powerful refutation of Mr. Camping’s ideas.
But, one might ask, why should I care? Why not just leave Mr. Camping and his followers in their delusions? After all, when Judgment Day does not occur on their schedule, and the world does not end on their timetable, no harm will be done, right? Wrong.
There are several ways in which Mr. Camping’s false predictions might cause harm:
People who expect the end of the world have been known to take lethal actions. For example, in 1994 and 1997, members of the Order of the Solar Temple committed mass murder and mass suicide involving both adult members and their children, apparently believing that the world was soon to face a catastrophic environmental disaster; it is often overlooked that the Solar Temple considered itself to be a Christian group, which had as one of its purposes the preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (“Order of the Solar Temple,” 2011). It is well-known that the Aum Shinrikyo group (now known as Aleph) in Japan carried out attacks with deadly sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995; however, it is not as widely known that these attacks occurred only two years before a global nuclear Armageddon was predicted to occur, according to a prognostication by the group’s leader (“Aum Shinrikyo,” 2011).
People who expect the end of the world have been known to take other drastic and ill-considered actions. For example, in 1988, the late Edgar C. Whisenant, a former NASA engineer, predicted that the Rapture would occur during the Jewish New Year in mid-September of 1988. In Florida at the time, it was reported that some people who believed this prediction amassed huge credit card debts, expecting that they would have no need to repay once the Rapture had occurred. One can only imagine their surprise (and the size of their credit card statements) when the predicted Rapture did not happen. Although it can be argued that these individuals only brought their subsequent misery upon themselves, we should also consider the collateral damage inflicted upon their innocent family members, and the merchants who accepted these credit card charges in good faith, as all these parties were burdened with the fallout of the subsequent bankruptcies. At this writing, one of Mr. Camping’s radio listeners in New York City has sunk his life savings, at least $140,000, into subway, bus, and shelter advertisements advertising May 21 as Judgment Day (Campbell & Sanderson, 2011; Graves & Alpert, 2011). One can only hope that this well-intentioned 60-year-old gentleman has a backup retirement plan.
False predictions of Judgment Day, the Rapture, or the end of the world bring ridicule upon the reputation of the Bible, biblical prophecies, and believers in the Bible. Every time someone falsely predicts the end of the world on the supposed basis of some aspect of the Bible, people come to ridicule, not just the false prediction, but the Bible itself. As the Rev. Lynn Eynon, pastor of Woodstock Christian Church put it, “It makes Christianity look silly” (quoted in Poole, 2011, par. 11). In the current instance, for example, the American Atheists organization plans on holding parties in several states on the theme, “Another Rapture That Wasn’t” (Poole, 2011, par. 16). Each such occasion desensitizes people to the importance of Biblical prophecy, which is itself a serious problem. In addition, each false prediction of the Rapture or Judgment Day makes it that much more difficult to spread the Christian message with credibility. Speaking as a former missionary myself, having preached Christianity for years in Eastern Asia, I know that it can be challenging enough to share the Gospel; it is all the more difficult when some ill-conceived prediction of doom brings ridicule upon Christianity.
Focus on false predictions diverts attention from the real Christian message. It is a poor, stunted form of Christianity that tries to bring people to repentance through fear of the Judgment Day. The New Testament consistently teaches us that we are to preach a message of hope, not apocalyptic terror. Yes, there are prophecies of very hard times ahead of us. However, these prophecies are given to prepare and comfort the believer in trial. Christianity is about the Good News concerning Jesus Christ, our Exemplar and Savior. We lose focus on these things when we put too much emphasis on fear of a supposedly impending Judgment Day and the end of the world. It may have been to prevent this kind of lopsided emphasis that the Lord consistently taught that we would not know the day or hour of his Second Coming (Matthew 24: 36, 42; Acts 1:6-7)—a point to which we shall return later in this book.
Focus on false predictions distracts us from the very real problems that our world faces. This point was brought home when a Washington Post reader complained that Family Radio’s Project Caravan received much more press coverage, while local efforts to counteract global warming were largely ignored (Heald, 2011).
Given all these issues, I felt it worthwhile to prepare this brief guide. In the first section of this book, “The Claim,” I summarize Mr. Camping’s predictions and the rationale behind them. In the second section, “Why the Claim is Wrong,” I describe the errors that Mr. Camping makes regarding biblical timelines and the interpretation of biblical symbolism. I also address the important question of whether Mr. Camping is claiming to be a prophet. In the concluding section, I summarize the case against Mr. Camping’s predictions, I explain why predictions that claim to pinpoint the Judgment Day are popular, and I describe what it is that the Christian should do to gain accurate knowledge and avoid misinformation about that Judgment and the end times. (I also include full reference information for the citations to other literature that I make throughout this book, and I give a brief personal description of myself as the author.)
I should mention that there are many aspects of Mr. Camping’s thought and teachings which I shall not address. These include Mr. Camping’s teachings about the end to the so-called “church age” (that is, Mr. Camping’s claim that God no longer works through the Christian churches); Mr. Camping’s ideas about the age of the Earth and the time of its creation; and most of Mr. Camping’s interpretations regarding the biblical book of Revelation.
Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations in English are from the King James Version (KJV), the 400th anniversary of whose publication we celebrate in 2011.
Judgment Day, Rapture, and World’s End in 2011
Harold Camping has made many statements about biblical symbolism, chronology, and prophecy in various books and pamphlets published by Family Radio (for example, Camping, 1995+, 2010; “The End of the World,” 2010; “Facts About May 21, 2011,” n.d.; “God Gives Another,” 2010; “No Man Knows,” 2009). All of these statements boil down to a few crucial predictions. I give these predictions below, with each prediction followed by evidence that Mr. Camping asserts is in the Bible. In sum, these predictions and the evidence used to support them constitute what I call here “The Claim”:
God will destroy the world in the year 2011 a.d.
God destroyed the world by water in Noah’s Flood, which occurred in 4990 b.c. (Camping, 2010, p. 30).
Seven days before the Flood began, God gave Noah precise notice about when the Flood would commence (Genesis 7:1-4).
These 7 days of forewarning signify a period of 7,000 years, because one day signifies one thousand years (Camping, 2010, pp. 56, 57; see Genesis 7:1-4, and 2 Peter 3:8).
7000 years from 4,990 b.c. (the Flood) is 2011 a.d. (Camping, 2010, p. 58).
As further proof, the year 2011 a.d. is precisely 13,000 years after the beginning of human history in 11,013 b.c. (Camping, 2010, p. 52). The number 13 is symbolic of the end of the world (Camping, 2010, pp. 25, 51).
The Rapture—the taking of righteous believers right up into heaven—shall occur on May 21, 2011.
“The Rapture of all the true believers” will occur “on the first day of the Day of Judgment” (Camping, 2010, p. 58).
The “great tribulation” foretold in the book of Revelation comes to an end on May 21, 2011 (Camping, 2010, p. 48, point 7). Hence, the Rapture occurs at this time (Camping, 2010, p. 63).