I suppose it really isn't necessary to say it, but this guy Harold Camping is dangerously insane. His lunatic prediction that second coming of Christ and the end of the world would occur on May 21, 2011 didn't come true, as every reasonable, intelligent, sane person knew it wouldn't. His lunacy in predicting that it would has caused immense grief among people so ignorant and so desperate as to believe him. Yet he won't stop. He has now moved the date of his delusion to October 21, 2011. This isn't funny any more. It's dangerous, It's irresponsible. I don't know how this guy and others of his ilk can legally be stopped, but if there is a way to do it I hope that someone does it and does it soon.
Of course people have been predicting the second coming of Christ and the end of the world on specific dates for a long time now, especially for some reason here in the United States. The Millerite movement of the 1840s, a movement caught up in such a prediction that of course didn't come true and the failure of which came to be known as The Great Disappointment, should have been the end of this nonsense; but sadly it wasn't. The Millerite movement morphed into Seventh Day Adventism, and the nutty predictions of the end of the world on specific dates continues. Have these people never read Mark 13:32? Speaking of a coming apocalypse Jesus there says "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." If these literalists who make the predictions would take that verse literally a lot of grief could be avoided.
Yet there is something important that we can learn from the repeated failure of these predictions. They are all grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of scripture. They all assume that the Bible reports historical, scientific fact. These predictions of a specific date for the end of the world take the few biblical references to a coming end of the world literally, as factual predictions. They take the creation myths of the Bible as historical fact. They then turn to the various biblical genealogies as historical fact. Using them they count backwards to get a date for the creation of the earth. Then they somehow count forward to arrive at a specific date for the occurrence of what they take to be factual predictions. And they are always wrong.
What we can learn from these incidents is something that we really shouldn't need the nonsense of end time predictions to teach us but of which these failed end time predictions are good evidence. The Bible is not primarily factual. It doesn't, for the most part, report historical fact. The Bible is a collection of myths, of stories that particular ancient people told to make sense of their world and to express their experience of God. As such the Bible contains much spiritual truth; but it contains very little factual truth, especially in its accounts of events of which its authors had and could have no factual, scientific knowledge. The reason predictions of dates for the end times fail isn't that the people who make the predictions have misread biblical details. The reason they fail is that the people who make these predictions are using the Bible for an entirely illegitimate purpose and fail fundamentally to understand what the Bible actually is. If we can learn from the failure of the end time predictions and not merely make fun of them, perhaps more people will come to realize the fundamental fallacy of biblical literalism, of biblical factualism. If the destructive nonsense that Camping spreads can wean some people away from biblical literalism it will have had, quite contrary to Camping's intent, at least some positive effect.
Of course people have been predicting the second coming of Christ and the end of the world on specific dates for a long time now, especially for some reason here in the United States. The Millerite movement of the 1840s, a movement caught up in such a prediction that of course didn't come true and the failure of which came to be known as The Great Disappointment, should have been the end of this nonsense; but sadly it wasn't. The Millerite movement morphed into Seventh Day Adventism, and the nutty predictions of the end of the world on specific dates continues. Have these people never read Mark 13:32? Speaking of a coming apocalypse Jesus there says "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." If these literalists who make the predictions would take that verse literally a lot of grief could be avoided.
Yet there is something important that we can learn from the repeated failure of these predictions. They are all grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of scripture. They all assume that the Bible reports historical, scientific fact. These predictions of a specific date for the end of the world take the few biblical references to a coming end of the world literally, as factual predictions. They take the creation myths of the Bible as historical fact. They then turn to the various biblical genealogies as historical fact. Using them they count backwards to get a date for the creation of the earth. Then they somehow count forward to arrive at a specific date for the occurrence of what they take to be factual predictions. And they are always wrong.
What we can learn from these incidents is something that we really shouldn't need the nonsense of end time predictions to teach us but of which these failed end time predictions are good evidence. The Bible is not primarily factual. It doesn't, for the most part, report historical fact. The Bible is a collection of myths, of stories that particular ancient people told to make sense of their world and to express their experience of God. As such the Bible contains much spiritual truth; but it contains very little factual truth, especially in its accounts of events of which its authors had and could have no factual, scientific knowledge. The reason predictions of dates for the end times fail isn't that the people who make the predictions have misread biblical details. The reason they fail is that the people who make these predictions are using the Bible for an entirely illegitimate purpose and fail fundamentally to understand what the Bible actually is. If we can learn from the failure of the end time predictions and not merely make fun of them, perhaps more people will come to realize the fundamental fallacy of biblical literalism, of biblical factualism. If the destructive nonsense that Camping spreads can wean some people away from biblical literalism it will have had, quite contrary to Camping's intent, at least some positive effect.
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