Eschatological Insanity

[ApologiaPhoenix]

And now another look:

The link can be found here.

The text is as follows:

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve decided I’m going to write again on the recent rapture talk with a look at what it is that the atheistic community is saying as well as looking at what Camping himself has said about his predictions and see what it is that can be learned.

Consider this one first from Atlanta. What does the writer tell us?

The argument from my reading is that the idea of Christ returning is just patently absurd and that we all want to go to a Disneyland with no sex, booze, or anything fun.

Yes indeed. We all want to sign up for that one. It’s bad enough that the author thinks he’s made a real representation of the story, but then he says that the problem is falsifiability. Yes readers. You read that right. Christians are afraid to test their belief. Therefore, all that needs to be done is set a date for the rapture. If it does not happen on X date, then it is false and will never happen.

Let us hope that the author never takes bets on professional sports.

The problem is not that Camping has an eschatology. Everyone does. The problem with setting dates is the idea from Matthew 24:36 that only the Father would know the date. As is the case of course, this is only a little detail that is overlooked. Such an attitude of setting a date and not seeing it happen could lead to a number of odd conclusions.

We will have flying cars by September 30, 2015. If we do not have them then, we will never have them.

We will be invaded by aliens on July 6, 2034. If we are not invaded then, we will never be invaded.

Israel and Palestine will put an end to the land war on April 22, 2029. If they do not do so then, they will never do so.

Science is a great tool, but one cannot deal with the past and the future using just the scientific idea of falsifiability. All that we have had falsified is that the rapture did not happen on the date Camping predicted. We do not have a falsification of the belief that Christ will ever return.

Next we have P.Z. Myers here.

Ah yes. This is what religion fosters. Just have examples of people believing crazy things and you can see what it does.

Fair enough….

Could it be anything like saying without evidence that Jared Loughner was a Republican who listened to talk radio despite even all the evidence coming in to the contrary and jumping on a screen shot without even investigating it to prove to the rest of the world that you were right only to find out that that shot was not accurate?

All something Myers did by the way.

No. The problem is not religion. The problem is just that a lot of people don’t know how to think and they add religion into the mix. The same can happen with any belief. Now I agree with what Myers wants in the end to happen to Camping. However, Myers is taking the sensational and making it the typical, instead of realizing that 99.9% of Christians around the world condemn this nonsense.

Far be it for Myers to actually deal with a sane position on eschatology….

Finally, we come to Mr. Camping himself. What does he have to say? Let’s take a look.

And here we have just a humble Bible teacher who says he makes no apology. Never mind that he’s made a laughingstock of the church leading those of us who condemned what he said into embarrassment as we are inevitably seen as thinking the world was going to come to an end that day simply because we’re Christians.

There is nothing humble about Camping. It is only arrogance to think that you can know something that Christ Himself said He did not know. Now Camping has gone to a spiritual understanding saying that Judgment Day did come and that the world will be destroyed on October 21st and it will not be spiritual, but he himself is not selling his possessions before then.

How convenient….

Family Radio is paid for by donations. No one at this point should donate a penny to such a cause. The church has been mocked as a result of what Camping has done. There are far better ministries out there that can be supported and many of them are from Christians who really do think about the issues and can help defend the faith against adversaries today.

It is a shame that eschatological insanity rests on all sides. That someone like Camping even has a platform shows how much the American church has fallen.

[Sparko]

amen Nick.