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Perhaps you have heard that Harold Camping, General Manager and President of Family Radio, says he has calculated the exact date of the Rapture, based on a complicated formula that stretches 7000 years from Noah’s flood. The proposed date is May 21 at 6 p.m. As we reported in Prophecy Central, his listeners have supported the theory, buying billboards and driving scores of Family Radio vehicles in many parts of the country warning people to be ready.
Camping has been wrong before. He predicted the second coming on Sept. 6, 1994, and hundreds of his listeners gathered at an auditorium to wait for the event.
In our ‘Warnings and Cautions’, we stress that no one knows the exact date of Christ’s return. Here is Jesus’ own instruction about this from Matthew 24:32-44.
“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
So, by publicizing a supposed exact date for the Rapture, Camping has made it almost certain that Jesus will not return on that date. However, millions of Bible-believing Christians do think that He is coming soon, so it is a good idea to be ready all the time!
Our new book, Connecting the Dots: A Handbook of Bible Prophecy, has detailed information about the Rapture of the Church and the later Glorious Return of Jesus Christ.
