20 May 2011, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States…ANN staff
The biblical books of Leviticus, Matthew and Acts warn against predicting the future, but that hasn’t stopped another Christian group from predicting the end of the world — this time a rapture of God’s people on May 21, followed by total world destruction in October.
For Seventh-day Adventists, members of a Protestant denomination that formed after an incorrect prediction of the end of the world in 1844, the media attention garnered by Family Radio Worldwide founder Harold Camping and thousands of his followers is an opportunity to refocus on the assurance of the biblical promise of Christ’s Second Coming. More so, it’s also a chance to accept God’s timing, Adventist Church leaders and scholars in North America say.
“God can chose to come this Saturday if he chooses to, that’s fine with me, but for a human to predict that and not know for certain if that’s the case is foolishness,” said Stanley Patterson, associate professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
“If [Camping’s followers] understood correctly God’s word, they would already know that this man is in violation of what God says,” Patterson said.
He and others point to Matthew 24:36, which quotes Jesus saying, “But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father.”
Patterson said speculating about God’s will isn’t the job of humans, and doing so capitalizes on the fear people have about the future. Setting a date may give some people hope, he said, but the tragedy is that it’s a false hope.
“God has accepted responsibility for the day and the hour and not us,” Patterson said. “If our hope becomes so strong that we stop regarding His word, that’s a horrible irony. Ultimately, God is going to take care of the things he said he would care for.”
Alvin Kibble, a vice president of the Adventist Church’s North American Division, says he credits Camping’s “Divine invitation,” but warns that he sounds similar to what followers of preacher William Miller might have heard in the 1840s.
Miller, then a Baptist layman in New York, and his followers thought the Book of Daniel showed that Christ would return on October 22, 1844. When Christ didn’t return, one group of followers restudied the Bible, including its prophetic statements in Revelation regarding the Three Angels’ messages. That group is now the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a global denomination of nearly 17 million. Setting dates of future events are not part of the church’s teachings.
In recent months, many of Camping’s followers have quit their jobs and invested their savings in the campaign of billboards, online ads and pamphlets to promote the May 21 prediction. But this isn’t the first time he has set a date for the end — he made a similar prediction for 1994.
“As Adventists, we join them in longing to see Christ return, but given our history we also know what happens when mistaken predictions are made,” said James Nix, an Adventist Church field secretary and director of the estate of Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White Estate.”
