Camping Prediction More Probable Than Those of Most Evangelicals

Harold Camping's prediction of a May 21 judgment day is more likely to come true than the predictions of most evangelical pastors. If Camping is right, then he made a lucky guess and consequently optimistic Amillenialism is based upon faulty exegesis, an unlikely scenario. On the other hand, all dispensational pastors are definitely wrong on their general description of the end times. Even if we allow dispensationalists to pick every date from now until the end of the age as their prediction for a pre-tribulation rapture, they’d still be wrong. No one will be left behind.

The ramifications are striking. Dispensationalists are wrong about a doctrine that is often more thoroughly explicated in their respective church covenants than the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, or the Holy Trinity for that matter. At the very least, I hope that all Reformed Christians believe it is more probable that (i) Jesus will return on May 21, 2011 than (ii) he will return in stages and unbelievers will occupy pilotless air craft. The former is highly unlikely whereas the latter is an absurd impossibility.

Obviously Camping is a heretic - given his ecclesiology if nothing else, but let's not lose perspective, shall we? Most of evangelicalism is confused on this matter of Jesus’ return, yet are sensible enough not to make date-predictions. Notwithstanding, their general predictions of how things will unfold are more disturbing than Camping’s predictions, at least for me. Camping has excommunicated himself from the Christian church, so his exegesis (or in this case his numerology) is of little or no concern to me. I am exceedingly more concerned about evangelicals like John MacArthur, for instance, who refuse to renounce such silly rapture teachings that bring reproach upon Christ’s church from the inside. Indeed, Camping is an embarrassment but not to the church, for Camping is not a member of the body of Christ. He's a fringe-fanatic and nothing more.