Camping on Dangerous Ground

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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As many of you know, and we've talked about this quite a bit.

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Part of my responsibility as minister is to engage in a subject which is commonly called apologetics.

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Apologetics is the practice of giving a defense of the Christian faith against false claims and teachings which happen all throughout the world.

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It's not enough sometimes just to proclaim the truth, but we also must demonstrate the error that is being proclaimed in the name of truth.

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The Bible says that we are to always be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

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1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15, that word give a defense is the Greek word apologia, and the word apologia means to make a defense.

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It doesn't mean to say you're sorry.

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Oftentimes we think of the word apologize and you think it means to say I'm sorry.

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Apology does not mean to say you're sorry.

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It means to state your case, make a defense for why you did what you did.

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And I feel as my duty as a pastor.

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In fact, I feel tremendously that this is the ministry God has called me to in a lot of ways.

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Some ministers feel God has called them specifically to the area of evangelism, some specifically to the area of hospital caring ministries, things like that.

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And I do all those things.

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But the thing that I feel God has laid on my heart most profoundly, most distinctly is my desire to stand for truth and to stand against those who would preach error.

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And as such, though it is not my normal practice this morning, I am going to preach a topical message.

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My normal practice of preaching, for those of you who are not with us always or you're new with us, my normal practice of preaching is to preach verse by verse through books of the Bible.

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Right now I'm preaching through Hebrews on Sunday morning and Romans on Wednesday evening.

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But every once in a while I will discuss with the elders the need to address something that is going on in the world, some specific topic.

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And I will address it from the pulpit because it needs to be addressed.

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And I believe this is in keeping with the practice of the apostles and even Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ spent a lot of his ministry proclaiming the errors of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes.

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He went and he said, this is what they are saying, but this is the truth.

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This you've heard it said, in fact, the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus said, you've heard it said this.

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But I say unto you this.

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And actually what Jesus was doing was practicing apologetics.

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He was making a defense for the truth.

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That's what we're called to do.

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Now, I must confess that it was not until recently that I felt compelled to speak on the issue which I'm going to address this morning.

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I was well aware of this teacher and his claims and the things that he was saying, but I was unaware that his following was so pervasive and so vast.

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However, about a month ago, well, it's been, I guess, about two months ago now, I began to see billboards cropping up all around our fair city.

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And the billboards said that we need to be prepared because Jesus Christ is going to return on May 21st, 2011.

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And furthermore, there are some in our congregation whose very families have been affected by this person's ministry.

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And knowing that and knowing that he is seeking to pull a blind across the eyes of many people, I felt compelled to take the pulpit and address him specifically.

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The teacher we will be addressing this morning is a man by the name of Harold Camping, a man who boasts many thousands of listeners to his radio program on what is called Family Radio, also known as his program is called Open Forum.

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So before we begin, I want to read a passage of scripture, and it is our custom in this church to stand when the reading of the scripture is done.

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So I encourage those who can and who are able to stand with us.

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We're going to read the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, verse 32 through 37.

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Mark 13.

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But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the father.

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Be on guard, keep awake, for you do not know when the time will come.

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It is like a man going on a journey when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake.

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Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.

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And what I say to you, I say to all stay awake.

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Father, we thank you for your word.

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We thank you for this opportunity to to be able to present truth in light of error.

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And I pray, oh, God, that you would keep me from error, because I am a fallible man and I am capable of preaching incorrect teaching and doctrine.

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I pray, oh, God, that you would put a hedge of protection around me as I teach.

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And God also had your protection around the hearts of the people as they listen and open their hearts, oh, Lord, to the truth.

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This we pray in Jesus name.

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Amen.

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Please be seated.

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I want to begin by saying I had to do a lot of research for this lesson, and I wanted to thank Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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They provided a lot of information that I'm going to be using.

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Dr.

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White, most of you familiar with Dr.

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White, one of my faith heroes, one of the guys that I have spent time studying with, learning from.

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And he's just a tremendous man.

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And he's provided information on the subject.

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And I just wanted to begin by saying that some of the information that I got, I received through their ministry.

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So I'd like to do that.

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I also want to say that though I'm going to be speaking about Harold Camping, I do not have any personal interest in attacking him as an individual.

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I want to make sure that that is very clear that when we're talking today about the teachings that are going out into the world, this is not a time simply to bash him as an individual or as a person.

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This is simply to bring up what he has taught and show the dangers of it so that we are not, number one, that we are not led astray by his errors, but that we might be able to help those who have been, that we are given the tools to be able to speak with those who have been and help them.

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So, in 1958, a Christian reformed church member, yes, Christian reformed church member, interestingly enough, and construction company owner named Harold Camping invested in a series of radio stations, eventually becoming the president of what is now known as Family Radio.

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And for many years, Family Radio did present a distinctly reformed message to the world.

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Up until 2002, they still had R.C.

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Scroll on Family Radio.

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Most people don't know that.

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But in 1988, Harold Camping and his family left the Christian reformed church and they joined the local fellowship in Alameda.

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And in 1992, Camping was teaching that Jesus would return likely, and he did add the likely and probably, he says, Jesus will probably, likely return in 1994.

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And it went on to become a book which was entitled 1994 with a question mark at the end.

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And the question mark was there in parentheses.

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It was as if to say, Jesus will probably come, but just in case he doesn't, we'll add the question mark.

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And like many of the groups that came before him, which set a date for Jesus's return when Camping's date passed without Christ's visible return, Camping, who is now 88 years old, decided that 1994 was an important date in history.

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Jesus had not returned, but that the latter reign of the Holy Spirit's power had begun in 1994.

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So he reinterpreted the event to say that's what happened.

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Now, the modern teaching that Camping has come up with says that Jesus not probably will return on May 21st, but is guaranteed to return May 21st, 2011.

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And again, I don't know how many of you have seen the billboards, but it's striking when you're driving down the road, because I think it's dangerous to put something so striking when you're driving.

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But you're driving down the road and there's a billboard that says May 21st, 2011, the rapture will happen.

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The Bible guarantees it.

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That's a very powerful claim to say that the Bible guarantees something.

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However, this is not the only dangerous thing that has proceeded from the teachings of Mr.

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Camping that has been very popular among people.

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An equally dangerous teaching is Camping's doctrine of the church.

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Camping teaches that the church age lasted for 2000 years, but is now over.

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He says we are no longer in the church age, but rather we are now in the tribulation period.

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And he says that the age of the church has come to an end and it is no longer a functional entity in the world.

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As a result, anyone who now is in a church is actually outside of God's will.

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You are actually sinning by being in church.

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Interesting turn of theological outlook.

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And this is the doctrine that comes from such teaching.

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He says, number one, the gospel is no longer applied within the church and the Holy Spirit is no longer active in the church.

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So anyone who's saying someone came to church, heard the gospel and got saved, he said, that's not true.

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Because the Holy Spirit is not in the church anymore, so no one's getting saved in the church anymore.

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So it's just not happening.

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The second thing that he teaches is that there are no more elders, pastors or deacons and that there is no more divine authority within the church.

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This helps a lot because when people begin to listen to what Harold Camping has to say and begin telling other people in the church, they often open themselves up to church discipline because it's false teaching that they're trying to spread within the church.

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How does he get around that? Well, they don't have any authority anyway.

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The church doesn't have any authority because the church is no longer a Bible entity.

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Somewhat of an interesting.

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Teaching one kind of one hand washes the other there.

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The third thing he says is that the ordinances of both the Lord's Supper and baptism are no longer valid and should not be participated in.

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He says they're just he says there is no church to administer them.

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So they have gone the way of the Feast of Israel, we can read about them, we can look at them and study them, but we can't participate in them because they're no longer viable again.

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If so many people were not listening to this and buying into this, it would be absurd to even consider such nonsensical arguments.

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But there are so many people who are.

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Sadly, and I say sadly, I weep for these people, they are sadly falling prey to what is being taught and as such, they are.

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Not being led away by a shepherd, but by a wolf.

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Now, somebody says, well, what do they do then if they don't have a church to go to? This is the most interesting part, I think, of the whole the whole idea is that camping says you don't need to go to church.

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What you need to do is meet with fellowship groups, sing hymns.

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And listen to family radio, you know what, if I were if I were not telling the truth, but I mean, that that seems like it's absurd.

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But I'm telling you the truth, that is his statement, that we are to to lead the church, meet in fellowship groups, sing hymns and listen to family radio and people are doing it whole churches are given over to these things.

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In fact, churches have dismissed their pastors, elders, deacons and taken the word church off the sign and have become fellowship centers.

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This is not two or three guys in a warehouse in California.

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This is a movement that's going on.

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I don't know if you know how much billboards cost, but we've talked about, you know, in the church.

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What can we do to advertise and let people know that we're here in the community and we're sharing the gospel? What about a billboard? It is thousands of dollars.

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Whoever is doing this really believes.

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They are committed to what is being said, and as I said, normally such foolishness would hardly even be worth a rebuttal.

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But the people are so far and wide.

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He has influence on.

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Thousands now, somebody asked me, how does Harold Camping arrive at his unorthodox teachings? How does he arrive at these teachings? And this is what I felt like was the most teachable moment.

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Of the morning, I felt like this would give an opportunity for the most teachable moment and perhaps the most beneficial thing that that I could give to you in light of such a situation, because many of you are in my Sunday school class, but obviously not all of you.

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And most of you have have have not heard me teach on how to study the Bible.

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In fact, I'm not going to ask a show of hands, but I can always tell by your eyes how many of you know what the grammatical historical method of interpretation is.

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If you're my Sunday school class, you should you should be.

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Yeah, you should know as you've been talking about it.

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But most people don't.

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Unless you explain it to them, the grammatical historical method of interpretation simply means that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other document.

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You interpret it by way of first the grammar of a sentence is constructed in a certain way as to convey an idea.

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And the historical context in which that sentence was made or said tells us what that meaning is.

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This is how we arrive at a meaning of a sentence or a meaning of a phrase or a meaning of a paragraph.

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That's how you do interpretation, grammar and historical context together arrives at a proper interpretation.

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However, there is another method for interpreting the Bible, and it's the method that Harold Camping uses, and it's used by many, many people who lead people astray.

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And that is called the allegorical method of scripture interpretation.

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The allegorical method basically says this, that when we read something in the Bible, that what it's saying is not what it really means, but that there is a deeper, more mystical, more spiritual meaning that underlies the text.

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For instance, in John 21, the Bible says that Peter and the other apostles were in a boat and they were 200 cubits offshore.

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And Harold Camping says that that particular phrase in scripture is profoundly significant because the word 200, the number 200 cubits actually represents 2000 years of history.

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Peter represents genuine believers and the boat represents the church.

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So at the end of 2000 years of church history, believers are to leave the church because Peter jumped out of the boat and swam to Jesus.

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Now, everybody, you're looking at me going, say what? And that's how, but you see, beloved, that is how people can turn.

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Martin Luther said this.

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He said the Bible can be treated like a wax nose.

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You know, the nose, your nose is the most part of the most distinctive part of your face.

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You ever seen somebody get a nose job? Looks like a totally different person.

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Right.

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And what Martin Luther said is he says he said they treat the Bible like a wax nose.

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It can be shifted and shaped and formed anyway.

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And that's what happens when the with the allegorical method of interpretation.

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Another thing that he says, he says that in the book of Revelation, chapter 11, when the two witnesses die and then three days later are raised and brought to heaven, that those two witnesses represent the church.

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And God kills the church at the end of the church age.

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And that's where we are now.

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The church is dead.

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You see, he's able to make these claims because he believes.

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That he has been given wisdom from God.

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And that this wisdom allows him to see things that no one has seen for 2000 years, no one has understood these things for 2000 years.

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So he is able to understand things far and above what the average person is able to understand.

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I want to read to you a quote from Dr.

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James White on the subject of allegorical interpretation.

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Listen closely.

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Allegorical interpretation ignores the grammar and original context of the scriptures, which is why it must be rejected as a valid method of interpretation.

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It is simply unverifiable.

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In other words, no person using the allegorical method can honestly and logically affirm that his or her conclusions are actually based upon the text that is being interpreted because the actual meaning of the text is ignored.

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The allegorical meaning can have no more weight than one invests in the allegorical interpreter.

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Since each allegorical interpreter may see or feel something different in the text, allegorical interpretations can never be verified by others working with the same text, unlike real biblical exegesis, where the work of generations of scholars verifies and re-verifies the conclusions already reached.

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That's the difference.

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That's the difference between grammatical historical interpretation and allegorical interpretation, because grammatical historical interpretation can be checked by other scholars.

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Is he really using the grammar of the text? Is he really using the historical context of this text to come to his meaning? But when it's allegorized and when it means simply what the interpreter says it means, then there's no way to find whether or not this is actually true because it's up to the interpreter.

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Now, that is simply a brief examination of who Camping is and how he teaches and how he arrives at the things that he teaches.

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Now, I want us to respond.

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I want to actually respond from Scripture to his two most dangerous, I would call them dangerous, we'll just go on and say the two most popular things that he claims and people listen to.

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That's what we're going to do now.

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I'm going to give you a biblical response to his two claims.

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If you're taking notes, claim number one is that we are to not be in the church.

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We are to flee the church.

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That's his first claim, that the church is over.

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When Harold Camping teaches that we should flee the church, he is speaking the language that many people want to hear.

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Do you believe that? A lot of people want to hear that you don't need to go to church and that you need to abandon the church and you need to get out of the church.

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I tell you what, if I was marketing something, I would probably do, you know, follow that same pattern of thinking.

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Because, you know, if I was trying to be deceitful and market something, market it towards something somebody wants.

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And so many people don't want to be a part of the church anymore.

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So many people don't want to be in God's house with God's people, listening to God's man, give exposition of God's word.

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People don't want that.

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So when somebody comes on the radio and says, hey, the church age is over, you don't need to go anymore.

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Hallelujah.

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In fact, I believe that is an initial attraction to many people because so many people have been burned by the church.

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So many people have been hurt by the church.

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So many people have had negative experiences in the church.

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I bet if I went to each one of you right now and I walked up to you and I had an opportunity to share an hour's worth of conversation with you, every one of you who spent any longer than maybe a few months in church has had some time somewhere where someone in church offended you, hurt your feelings, cut you to the heart or maybe even made it where you didn't want to come back.

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Potentially.

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Most likely.

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So when he begins by saying you need to leave the church, well, like I said, that scratches most people right where their itch.

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However, I want to remind you of the words that we read at the very beginning.

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Remember, in the opening of the service, we opened with the word of scripture.

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And we read from Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, the great confession where Jesus says, who do the people say that I am? And they responded, well, some say John the Baptist and some say Elijah the prophet.

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But whom do you say that I am? And Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

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And Jesus says, Simon Barjona, flesh and blood is not given these things to you.

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But my father in heaven has revealed them to you.

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You are Peter.

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And upon this rock, we're not going to get into that because there's a whole lot of troublesome difficulties with the rock and it being Peter, whether it wasn't Peter, whether it was a pope and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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I want to get all that right now for teaching on Catholicism.

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I would, but I'm not.

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But I want to focus on the latter half of that sentence where Jesus says upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell.

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Shall not prevail against it.

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Here is the distinct promise of Jesus Christ that he will build his church and that the very gates of hell would not be able to defeat it.

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This is a promise of God from Christ in regard to his sovereign watch care and providential preservation of his body in the world.

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I will build my church and nothing will stand in its way.

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Now, is Camping ignorant of this passage? No, but he deals with it in his allegorical way.

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He says, well, the church Jesus is talking about here is actually the invisible church in heaven.

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It's not talking about the local church.

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It's not talking about the body of Christ that meets together for worship and fellowship.

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It's talking about the invisible church.

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So, yes, that church will never go away, but the physical public meaning of the church will one day go away.

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See, he can interpret it however he wants.

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But I want to show you another passage.

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I want you to go to first Peter, chapter three.

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I want to show you something.

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I want to see what the church is for.

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Why does the church exist? Obviously, we exist to glorify God.

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Obviously, we exist to exalt Jesus Christ.

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We exist as people who have been filled by the Holy Spirit of God to move in the world and to do the things that God has called us to do.

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But the church has a purpose, beloved.

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And it is in first Peter, chapter excuse me, first Timothy, chapter three, verse 14.

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What is first Timothy three? Who knows what is the first part of first Timothy three? Paul gives the elder and deacon qualifications.

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First Timothy, chapter three.

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So what is the context? Grammatical historical method.

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What is the context of first Timothy, chapter three? The local church.

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He's talking about how elders and deacons are to be chosen and how they are to behave in the local church.

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And then in verse 14, he says these words.

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I hope to come to you soon.

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I hear Bible pages turning, so I'll give you a second.

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But in verse 14, first Peter, first Timothy, keep saying Peter, first Timothy, chapter three, verse 14.

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I hope to come to you soon.

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But I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress.

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Of the truth.

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Now, what is a pillar and a buttress? A pillar is something that holds something else up and a buttress is something that supports something else.

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So literally what Paul is saying is that the church has a twofold ministry in the world.

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We are to hold up the truth and we are to support the truth.

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We're not always right.

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But the word of God is always right.

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I can err, but the word of God is inerrant.

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Thus, what I do, that's why, did you know that's why the pulpit goes in the middle and that's why it's high up? It's because the word of God sits right here.

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It's a visual representation of what the word of God is.

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It is the truth and we lift it up, we exalt it, we hold it up and we proclaim it to the world.

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That is our task.

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To be the pillar and buttress of the truth.

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And you're telling me that at some point God just going to do away with that now, furthermore.

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Ephesians chapter three, if you want to go there, I'm going to ask you to go quickly because we're I got a lot more to say and less time to say it every second as it goes by.

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Ephesians chapter three, verse 20.

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Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.

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Amen.

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To be to him be glory where in the church.

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The congregation of the faithful, that is our job to glorify God for how long? Forever, when camping tells his people to flee the church, what he is actually telling them to do is flee the very congregation of the body of Christ, which comes together to preach the word, to participate in the ordinances and to fellowship in the spirit of God.

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That is a dangerous command, which is why I say it's camping on dangerous ground.

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The church has purpose in the world, the congregation of the faithful coming together, hearing the word of God, submitting ourselves one to another and to the discipline of the church, if necessary, so that we be holy.

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That's the purpose of the church.

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And that purpose has not been alleviated.

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The second thing he teaches is that Jesus is going to return on May 21st, 2011.

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I want to address this one a little.

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This one won't take as long to address, because honestly, in March 13, which is what we started with this morning, March 13, 32, Jesus uses and you've all heard me talk about the universal negative, right? Universal negative that no one can or no one does know.

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You know, how do you break the universal negative cycle? If I and so many you've heard this, but hey, we get new folks all the time.

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If you don't know the universal negative is if I said no one can ride a unicycle and then I see somebody riding a unicycle, I am wrong.

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Because I made a statement of universal negativity.

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And as soon as that universally negative thing is shown to be incorrect or shown that some one person can do it, then it's false.

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I've often said it's very it's very difficult to prove a negative.

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If I said there's gold in China, that would be easy.

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I could go to China and I could find one piece of gold.

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That's proof.

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But to say there's no gold in China, that's difficult to prove because you would have to be able to see inside every rock, every tree, every tooth.

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You have to know that no one has ever placed a piece of gold anywhere in China.

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That's difficult to say.

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So a universe, a negative is hard to prove.

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And when you give a universal negative, you know, you've got something.

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And when Jesus says that day or that hour, no one knows.

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And honestly, because of lack of time, I cannot address the issue of Christ being divine and yet at the same time human.

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And in his humanity, him foregoing the knowledge of this at this time when he's speaking, he's touching the human nature.

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There's a lot that goes into Christology because everybody asks the question, well, wait a minute, if Jesus is divine, shouldn't he know? And doesn't he say here that he doesn't know? And that's an important question and one that literally would take the entire time to be able to discuss because we understand Christ is not only 100 percent human, but he is also fully divine.

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But to understand those two takes more time than I have.

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But the point of the text, he says, no one knows.

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But what we have is we have a person who's saying, I know.

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So we either have a Bible that is incorrect or we have someone who is teaching something.

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That is incorrect because the Bible can't say no one knows.

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And Harold Camping say, I know.

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And they both be correct.

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It cannot be.

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Somebody asked me, how does he arrive at May 21st, 2011? Seems sort of an arbitrary date.

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It is a Saturday, at least.

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I don't know why that matters, but it is a Saturday.

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How did he arrive at May 21st, 2011? It's very interesting.

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He he teaches that Noah went on the ark four thousand nine ninety B.C.

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He says, because archaeologists have studied this, he doesn't feel the necessity of giving any kind of qualifications of who's done these studies.

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He just says it's been it's been shown that Noah went on the ark four thousand nine ninety B.C.

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And seven days before Noah went on the ark, God said in Genesis chapter six to Noah, yet in seven days I will destroy the world.

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So he says seven days.

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And we all know that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.

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So that means it's exactly a thousand years.

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So because a day is a thousand years and seven days would equal seven thousand years and that seven thousand years of history.

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So on the day Noah went into the ark, that began the seven thousand days of history.

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And if you add four thousand nine ninety to two thousand eleven and you minus one, because there was never a year zero, you end up with two thousand eleven.

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And then.

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Because the date is expressly taught, even though it's in a totally different calendar and totally different dating system, because the day is mentioned in the book of Genesis, he can say it was exactly May 21st.

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So May 21st to the day seven thousand years later, Jesus is going to return in the rapture.

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Y'all asked, how did he get there? I had many people.

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How does he get to that date? That's how you see camping.

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He sees the numbers.

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He was an engineer, so he sees these numbers as being the end all be all to biblical interpretation.

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Now, any rational person who looks at that would find a lot of logical inconsistencies.

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They would say, first, how do you know for certain four ninety four thousand nine ninety BC was the exact date of of Noah's entering into the ark? Secondly, how do you know a day is exactly a thousand years? The Bible never says a day is exactly a thousand years.

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It says to the Lord, a day is as a thousand years as if to say the Lord is timeless, because that's what Peter was trying to say when he said that.

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Third, we would ask the question, how do you know May 21st is the exact date since we're in the Gregorian calendar and there's a totally different calendar dating system back then? Fourth, how do we know that the seven days mentioned to Noah speak of seven literal thousand years and not actually the seven days that it took for the flood to actually come? Finally, how do we know that those 200 cubits that Peter was offshore represented two thousand years of history? The answer is this.

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Carol Camping says Ecclesiastes eight five says that whosoever keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing.

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And a wise man heart discernance, both time and judgment.

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And he says, and I'm the wise man.

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He's the man who discerns time and judgment.

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And you know what? There's no arguing when someone has gone there.

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But beloved, when you look at Mark chapter 13, I want I want to stress and I want to get to the text and really just stress something really quick here before we come to a conclusion, because time has come and gone.

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I want to stress something.

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There's a phrase here that happens over and over between Mark 13, 32 and Mark 13, 37.

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The phrase is stay awake.

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Why is that phrase there? The phrase is there because Jesus's whole point for people not knowing the day and the hour is so that they would always be prepared for the time of his return.

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You are to always be spiritually ready for Jesus's return.

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You are to stay awake, not allow yourself to be lulled to spiritual sleep by the waves of the world, which toss you to and fro.

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But stay firm in the faith and be prepared that if Jesus were to at this very moment split the eastern sky and the trumpet of God would sound, that you would be prepared and ready to meet him in the clouds.

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You know, if you were given a day, if you if you knew that it was May 21st, you know, there'd be a lot of people in church on May 20th.

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Well, not apparel camping in his way.

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But if you knew you'd want to go pray.

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You'd want to go get ready.

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I remember when I was a kid, my dad and he's not here this morning, but he'd probably get a kick out of this.

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My dad had a work schedule every day at 630.

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He got home every day.

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He never got home at 635.

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He never got home at 625.

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I don't know how he was, but he was amazing every day at 630 was home.

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So every day at 620, I had to clean up and get everything out that I had done that was wrong.

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I was not supposed to eat in daddy's chair.

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I ate in daddy's chair, but he never knew because.

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But you know what? If his work schedule would have had him getting off at three o'clock one day, four o'clock the next day, six o'clock the next day, I would have not been able to do that.

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But because I knew that time in the hour, that exact day, I could I could prepare myself.

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And, you know, Jesus says that's not the way we're supposed to behave.

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We're not supposed to just wait to the end and at the very last moment have some type of redeeming experience.

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But we're supposed to live our lives as if Christ could come any moment.

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And see, that's what's most dangerous about Harold Camping's teachings to me.

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It's because he's telling people they need to get prepared.

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I'm telling you, you should have already been because beloved, if there is something in your life that you would change, if you knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow, today, then beloved, you need to change it whether he comes back tomorrow or not.

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It doesn't matter if he comes back tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now or 100 years from now.

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If there's something in your life that needs to change, it needs to change.

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Now, you don't need a date setter because Jesus said no one knows the day of the hour, but you need to always be awake.

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You need to always be ready because I tell you what, somebody asked me, what do you think Jesus could come back on May 21st? I said, I don't know, but neither does Harold Camping.

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Nobody knows.

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He could just as easily come back today.

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And I'm not one that stands up here and begs and pleads you, but I will proclaim the gospel to you if you're not ready.

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My proclamation to you is repent and believe in Jesus, because it is only through him that you'll be ready when he does return.

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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity.

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be.

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And I pray, O Lord, that this message will be used by you to proclaim truth and be used by you to keep people from error.

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And I pray that you have kept me from error as I've taught.

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I pray that you've kept me in line with your truth.

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And I pray, Lord, that if there's anything in our lives that is here that we need to repent of, anything that we need to make right, anything that we need to change.

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I pray, O God, that we would do as this text tells us and stay awake, stay vigilant and not be lulled to sleep by the waves of the world.

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Pray, O God, for those people who have been sucked into this false teaching.

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I pray that they would see the word of God and seek to understand it as it is written, not as it's being allegorized.

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I pray, Lord, now that as we come together for our time of prayer and our time of introspection, that you would be glorified.

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And that if there is anyone here who does not know Christ, Lord, if this is the hour and the time that you have to call them, we pray that you use it for your glory in Jesus' name.

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Amen.

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Beloved.