Save the date. On May 21, 2011, my brother is getting married. Or Christ will return to the earth to pronounce final judgment. It depends on whom you ask. According to my brother and his lovely bride-to-be, it will be the former, according to radio evangelist Harold Camping, the latter. On May 21, Camping predicts, God will take up his elect into heaven and the dead will be raised, with those saved being resurrected and those damned, scattered about the face of earth. Then, on October 21, the world will end.
Camping’s very existence is itself a witness to the myriad of disappointed “date setters” who have preceded him. Among them, William Miller, who was disappointed not once, but twice.
“I am fully convinced that sometime between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of computation of time, Christ will come, and bring all His saints with Him; and that then He will reward every man as his work shall be.” So wrote William Miller in January 1843. When March 21, 1844 came and went without incident, Miller was not deterred; admitting that he must have made some error in his calculations, he still believed the “day of the Lord is near, even at the door.”
The Millerites now set their eyes on October 22, “the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish sacred year, as the day of the Lord’s advent.” As the day approached Millerites adopted simple diets in imitation of Adam in Paradise, some did not plow their fields anticipating the world would end before another winter, others closed their shop in honor of the King of Kings return and to dedicate more time to prayer and preparation. October 22 became known as the “Great Disappointment.”
Miller’s predictions were based on his reading of Daniel 8:14: “And he said unto me, ‘Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.’” If by days, we understand years and by sanctuary, the church, than cleansed, Miller thought, “we may reasonably suppose means that complete redemption from sin, both soul and body, after the resurrection when Christ comes the second time ‘without sin unto salvation.’” Again, if we suppose that the time of prophecy began about 457 B.C., Christ should come for the second time about 1843.
It’s a theory full of many “ifs” and “supposes,” based on literal interpretation of Scripture—“except in those instances where the writer used figurative language.” Miller marshaled an impressive array of biblical citations to support his claim and could apparently argue his point persuasively.
As one of his followers explained, he came to hear Millers lecture with a “determination to not believe, and to expose him and his folly to the people who should be present,” but he left “convicted, confounded and converted.” But Miller’s interpretation—and its appeal to others—might best be understood in light of his own description of his study of Scripture: “I found everything revealed that my heart could desire.”
Hoping for the end of the world is not such a strange desire of the heart and it’s by no means an exclusively religious one. Paul Erlich’s predictions of mass starvation by the 1970s in The Population Bomb were certainly apocalyptic. There was a twinge of the apocalyptic to the Y2Kers who seemed almost gleeful as they stockpiled food and water in preparation for the impending worldwide computer glitch that would return us to pre-computer life. Today, the dire forecasts of some global warming proponents sound almost biblical: pestilence and mourning and famine.
It’s pretty clear why we’d like to know when and how the world will end. Knowledge is power; it empowers us to act. The imminent eschaton provided a tremendous clarity for the Millerites. It informed entirely practical concerns as for example, the decision to take out only a one year insurance policy on a Millerite tabernacle constructed in 1843.
It set straight priorities: After hearing of Miller’s prediction in 1840, a young man went quickly to find his friends at a rum shop. “Friends,” he said “there is a man in the city preaching at the Casco Street church that the Lord is coming in 1843. I think you better leave your gambling and go and hear him.’ They at once stopped their gambling, gathered up their cards and money, and accompanied the young man to the meeting. The result was that the entire company was converted.” Churches that accepted the “advent near” teaching uniformly experienced a revival of religion.
When Christ did not come on October 22, 1844, many were disappointed not simply because Christ did not come, but because they could no longer live in heightened anticipation of his coming. As one believer explained, “To turn again to the cares, perplexities, and dangers of life, in full view of jeering and reviling unbelievers who scoffed as never before, was a terrible trial of faith and patience. When Elder Himes visited . . . and stated that the brethren should prepare for another cold winter, my feelings were almost uncontrollable. I left the place of meeting and wept like a child.”
The cares and dangers of life were no longer minimized by the second coming looming large on the horizon and the perplexities that had been simplified by their clear and immediate end came crowding back in. The frustrations of existing in time drifted in with the appalling snow.
At the last judgment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, Christ “will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvelous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end.”
Without this knowledge now, however, we can feel powerless to act or to act as freely as we would like. How can I fully exercise my freedom to choose the good for myself without this information, without knowing all future circumstances and possible consequences of my choice? How could anyone, for example, choose the indissoluble bond of life long fidelity to one person when he has no assurances about the future? Or vow to joyfully accept children when he cannot know with certainty the effects of global warming his children and grandchildren will have to endure?
For Christians, the answer is clear if not entirely satisfying: “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.” We want to know what God has planned, we may think it will improve our judgments. But Christ was firm: It’s not for us to ask after the time or seasons the Father has fixed, because that is not the behavior of children who place complete trust in their Father.
“A sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future,” the Catechism says. In marriage you go one step further, placing not only yourself, but your spouse, your children, and all future generations of your family in the hands of Providence.
So for very different reasons both Mr. Camping and I will look forward to May 21, 2011, with joyful anticipation that the bridegroom is coming.
Meghan Duke is an assistant editor at First Things .
Comments:
When do they expect to exercise these rights and against whom?
You can rest easy on global warming, though. It's the secular version of Harold Camping's wild-haired cross-breeding of numbers and is just as profoundly in error, but in addition carries with it all the additional baggage of late-stage scientific and academic corruption.
Harold Camping must be held to account in some way, as must the false apostles of global warming. Camping has conveniently left himself an out with weaselly "high probability" language in some (but not all) of his public statements. Similarly, to my knowledge, neither Camping nor the warmists have put their money where their mouth is, by doing things like signing over their property with an effective date just beyond their end of the world. Like the unethical manipulations of the warmists, that suggests to me the element of cynicism and manipulation, and makes a public accounting all the more needful. These prophecies are works of darkness that need to be exposed to the light.
Yet in the final analysis, it's that cold, hard, physical reality that I will content myself with. My life is not so meaningless that I need the fear of a "Rapture" and the "End Times" to make sense of it all ... nor do I need Heaven or Hell to bribe me into behaving decently, thank you very much.
Mystery_year = birth_year + (current_year - birth_year) = current_year = 2011
More importantly, we know salvation comes from the east. Therefore, please note that the time your comment posted was 11:11 in Central Greenland! The easternmost point of Greenland is Nordøstrundingen, which is 11° W longitude. Some observers are suggesting that Greenland be considered part of the North American continent, casting down Newfoundland from its place as the easternmost tip of North America. And, as everyone knows, the journey by sea from St. John's to Greenland lasts 11 days. Furthermore, Greenland's glacier is the second largest in the world and 110,000 years old, the ice sheet is 2,400 kilometres long and 1,100 kilometres wide [1]. As if this were not enough, we also find in Wikipedia the following entry on Greenland's 110,000-year old, 1,100 km wide ice sheet [2]:
"Some scientists have cautioned that these rates of melting are overly optimistic as they assume a linear, rather than erratic, progression. James E. Hansen has argued that multiple positive feedbacks could lead to nonlinear ice sheet disintegration much faster than claimed by the IPCC. According to a 2007 paper, 'we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in paleoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway.'"
The name Harold Camping has 13 letters, but since Jesus said that the last shall be first, we count only the 11 small letters. James Hansen's name's small letters' length is 11, including the apostrophe + s. This is, in Harold Camping's own words, another "infallible proof" that his predictions have, and should be accorded, the same weight as those of James Hansen.
QED.
[1] http://www.abmonline.ca/cover/ice-covered-greenland-is-hot-hot-hot/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
P.S. Kids, data cherry picking and circular logic are lots of fun, but don't try this at home!
As suggested by pentamom, alphanumerology's sole virtue may lie in serving as the world's greatest display case for pure bull.
I like your comments very much - delightful combination of well expressed common sense, playful logic, and humour. Allow me to "direct" this tangent to a new area: let's cast a glance in a serious, academic, fruitful, and anti-bunk direction, and drop a name worth knowing: Alfred Tarski.
In case that name doesn't ring any bells, may I suggest the title of one of his books : "Introduction to Logic".
True, and admittedly, the title is a little dry, but the man and his work were anything but. Here is a little something to pique your curiosity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox
Of course not, because greed is the creed and if it affects my bottom line, I'll be against it even if it risks the planet. Melting of polar ice will cause extreme flooding on the coasts.
If God exists, God should destroy the world before we do it ourselves.
People in the shipyard where I work constantly ask me about various histerias, global warming--2012--nuclear reactors melting down--etc. I always try to point out that the modern world's increase in sin causes people to fear and the fear sometimes rolls through in waves of hysteria--over almost nothing.
wrong. FAIL.
