by Chris Alexion, Copyright April 01, 2002, all rights reserved. 1674 views
In a recently published booklet entitled Has the Era of the Church Age Come to an End? 1, Harold Camping (president of Family Radio and host of the "Open Forum" program) presents a shocking view of the church. Redundant titles aside, the upshot of Mr. Camping's position is that "a time will come when God will no longer use the churches and congregations to bring the Gospel to the world. They instead will come under the wrath of God. … [T]here will be a time when there will not be left one stone upon another. That is, the temple will be totally destroyed. It will no longer exist."
Mr Camping believes that time is now.
Because the church era has come to an end the churches have become dead as the church of Sardis long ago became dead. (Rev 3:1). The churches of today have had their candlestick removed even as the church of Ephesus of Rev. 2 was warned that God would remove their candlestick if they did not return to their first love. The church has ceased to be an institution or divine organism to serve God as His appointed representative on earth.
Thus, believers should separate from the corporate body of the church:
Jerusalem or Judea represent all of the New Testament churches and denominations. When we see … Satan's massive attack on churches all over the world we are to depart out. … This command is given because God is finished with the era of churches being used of God to evangelize. … We are to flee to the mountains even as Lot was told to flee to the mountain when God was ready to bring judgment on Sodom (Gen. 19:17).
While Mr. Camping makes several valid observations-such as the distinction between the church corporate and invisible, and the typification of the church in Israel-his reasoning as a whole is deeply flawed.
The first problem that surfaces in his exegesis is a persistent misapplication of Old Testament narratives and prophesies. Mr. Camping has an idea that each and every Old Testament detail must symbolize something in the New Testament. He says that we "must carefully examine Old Testament Israel. They, without any question, typify the New Testament church, which the Bible speaks of as the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16)." When Mr. Camping says later that what happened to Israel "has everything to do" with the church, he implies that what happens to Israel must necessarily happen to the church. Yet he offers no argument for this novel interpretation of the Old Testament. Unless this foundation is first proven (I Thess. 5:21), most of his arguments crumble.
He must bear the burden to demonstrate that the captivity of Judah in 586 BC is a symbol of the church. It is fallacious to simply conclude that each part of something has the same properties as the whole. 2 Though Israel as a whole is typical of the church (I Cor. 10:1-12; Gal. 6:16), we need New Testament authorization (like I Cor. 10) to apply specific details. 3
The second problem with Mr. Camping's argument is its lack of cogent argumentation. We have to prove our doctrines with what the Westminster Confession calls "good and necessary consequence," but Mr. Camping seems to have his own method of proof. For example, he quotes the phrase "when your obedience is fulfilled" (II Cor. 10:6) as evidence that the churches will no longer be used by God-assuming rather than proving that "your" must refer to the collective, corporate church and that the time spoken of is the Great Tribulation. He also cites the death of the two witnesses in Revelation 11:7, and, by means of some quick hermeneutical tap-dancing, equates them with the churches. By the same routine he "proves" from II Thessalonians 2:7 that the Holy Spirit has been taken out of the "midst" of the church.
Basically, Mr. Camping tends to assume that a text does mean something simply because it could. Take this part of his "proof" that we're in the Great Tribulation:
This miracle [of being "slain in the spirit"] was foretold in Revelation 13. The whole chapter is describing the great tribulation period. In verse 13 we read: "And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men." Satan, of course, cannot literally call down fire from heaven. … But God gave Satan a demonstration that showed that causing someone to fall backward was equivalent to calling down fire from heaven. …
When Jesus came out of the Garden of Gethsemene … [He], following the example of Elijah or of God in Revelation 20:10, should have called for fire to come down and destroy these wicked men. But Jesus had to be bound and taken to be crucified. … However, to show that He had the power to call down fire from heaven and destroy them, when He answered them Jesus caused all of these wicked men to fall backward to the ground.
Satan, therefore, was an eyewitness to the fact that causing people to fall backward to the ground is equivalent to calling down fire from heaven. Thus, this miracle of people falling backward to the ground which is occurring all over the world is clear evidence that we are now in the great tribulation period of Revelation 13 and Matthew 24.
Here the argument is: (1) Satan cannot literally call down fire from heaven. (2) Thus the description must be symbolic. (3) Therefore, he must do something "equivalent" to calling down fire from heaven. (4) Jesus should have called down fire from heaven in John 18 just like Elijah did. (5) Christ's causing them to fall backward is a demonstration that falling down is a symbol of fire from heaven. (6) Therefore we should translate Revelation 13:13 as "Maketh men to fall backward." (7) Conclusion: we know we are in the Tribulation because we see people in charismatic churches falling down backward.
Let's grant the first couple of premises as true. If we follow the reasoning carefully, we still have to admit that something is wrong. Statement (3) is a mere assumption and does not follow from (2). And number (4) is pure speculation-how does he know what Jesus "ought" to have done? That's pretty dangerous ground. And since no proof is offered for (4), we need not believe (5), (6), and (7). 4
In all the texts I've mentioned, Mr. Camping has failed to support his hermeneutic and fully deal with alternate interpretations of the texts he cites. Instead he has stooped to making assumptions and putting such assumptions together in sloppy chains. A close look at this kind of speculative reasoning will force you to echo the words of Robert Haldane: "This is making, not explaining, Scripture."
In sum, while Harold Camping has failed to demonstrate the truth of his claims, he has succeeded in demonstrating something else: the need for critical, logical, thinking. We don't want-and can't afford-to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and that's why we must "prove all things" (I Thess. 5:21). This requires that we ask people like Mr. Camping to "prove all things" to us. We shouldn't be afraid of good, hard logic, even though people today tend to look down on it and deride it as "mere human logic" (as if that's all it is!). You almost get the idea that holiness is proportional with sloppy logic; some go so far as to say that the Bible is illogical and contradictory on purpose.
But we have to get one thing straight: there is nothing profane about the law of noncontradiction. God uses it Himself! He is the One who "cannot lie" (Tit. 1:2). This law, in fact, is built into every sentence in the Scriptures, for when we read them we assume that black cannot also mean white, that holy cannot also mean wicked, and that faith cannot also mean works. Without the law of noncontradiction, we couldn't even read the Bible. What's more, we cannot declare the law of noncontradiction "false" without assuming its truth. It's much the same with the other rules of deductive logic. 5
So it does no good, as Mr. Camping has done on the Open Forum, to complain that our opponents are "trying to use logic" or "arguing with God" or "reasoning out" instead of believing. Logic is not opposed to Scripture; we certainly use Scripture as our foundation (premises). But how we build on that foundation depends on our standards of reasoning. 6 And fallacious reasoning is fallacious reasoning-no matter how many Christians use it.
Of course we should never hesitate to believe truth merely because it looks strange. Instead, we should search the Scriptures with an open mind, "to see if these things [are] so" (Act. 17:11). But Scripture demands that Scripture be interpreted by necessary consequence, not speculative inference-and that's why we should reject Harold Camping's position. Let's not flee to the mountains. Let's flee to the Scriptures.
1 • Mike • May 14, 2008 • 6:59 PM
Is Harold Camping still broadcasting?