The Time of the End
As we have seen in the previous instalment, Harold Camping’s prediction that God’s Day of Judgement would happen on May 21, 2011 has proven to be incorrect. Not only did the catastophic earthquakes that he predicted would devastate the world not occur, but Jesus also failed to claim the souls of the righteous in the event widely known as the “Rapture”.
Undeterred by this failure, Camping was quick to counter his critics and issue a revised date. Speaking on his open forum radio show from California Camping announced: “The timing, the structures, the proofs, none of that has changed at all.” He added: “We don’t always hit the nail on the head the first time. All I am is a humble teacher. I search the Bible.”
As he went on to explain: “Actually there are four days that are very crucial at this point in time. We have talked about all four of these days in the past and we are not making any changes in these four days except for the emphasis … The first part of the end of the world began on May 21, 1988.” The new date for the end of the world he now assured his followers, would be on October 21, 2011.
But even his most ardent followers must now have serious cause for doubt, especially as he had initially predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994. After all, Camping was not the first person to set a date for the apocalyptic events described in the Bible. Nor unfortunately, is he likely to be the last.
In the 16th Century, a German Anabaptist prophet by the name of Melchior Hoffman announced to his followers that the Lord would return to the earth in 1533, and that the French town of Strasbourg would be the location of the New Jerusalem.
Then, some three centuries later, an American Baptist preacher called William Miller wrote: “My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844.” When March 21, 1844 came and went without the appearance of the Christ, Miller (like Camping) decided that his calculations had been incorrect.
After further discussion and study, he adopted a new date based on the “Karaite” version of the Jewish calendar, in place of the “Rabbinic” version he had used before. This new date, Miller announced, would be April 18, 1844. When this new date again passed without Christ’s return, he responded publicly, writing: “I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door.”
The failures of men like Miller, and now Camping, are unlikely to deter those Christian followers who look for a precise understanding of apocalyptic events. But predicting the dates of future events is fraught with difficulty, and even so revered a prophet as Nostradamus had his own hits and misses. In a letter addressed to “Henry, Second King of France”, Nostradamus wrote:
“These predictions made with the aid of astronomy and other methods, and even by the Holy Scriptures, cannot not happen. Had I wished I could have put a calculation of time into each quatrain; but that would not have pleased everyone, and my interpretations still less, unless your Majesty grants me enough protection to do this, so as not to give slanderers pretext for attacking me.”
Yet in spite of these cautionary words, Nostradamus did publish seven quatrains that contained actual dates of reference. They were Century 1 verse 49, Century 2 verse 51, Century 3 verse 77, Century 6 verse 2, Century 8 verse 71, Century 10 verse 72, and Century 10 verse 91. Since all of these dates have now come to pass, it is possible to verify these predictions.
As we will see from the following instalment, some of the events which Nostradamus predicted did occur on the dates given, while others did not. That did not necessarily mean that his prophecies were incorrect, but rather that the methods he used to date his predictions were fallible.
And this should be the lesson that all those (like Harold Camping) who dare to predict “the day and the hour” should take to heart. And those gullible souls who choose to follow blindly the calculated guesses of these savants, do so at their peril.
