Harold Camping Seminar, 2002

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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All of you here today, I am going to be taking the time today to play some sections from Harold Camping so you can hear, though I'm sure most of you have heard what

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Mr. Camping has to say, but I want the documentation to come directly from him.

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So I hope that we're all seated in a spot where we'll be able to hear the speakers well. Some of the clips are of higher quality than the others depending on where they were derived from.

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Now I want you to know right off the bat that I am here this morning first and foremost because I love

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Christ Church. That is a confession we don't hear a whole lot today.

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I think in some ways those of us who look back upon history and recognize ourselves as being a part of that great work of God that was accomplished in the 16th century of the

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Reformation tend to overreact in a negative way to an overemphasis upon a perversion of the

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Church in Roman Catholicism. As a result, we don't confess our love for the

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Church because we hear people talking about the Church, the Church, the Church in a negative fashion.

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But when we look at what the New Testament teaches concerning the Church of Jesus Christ, some of the most exalted language that can be found anywhere is found in the inspired words of the

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Apostle Paul, for example, concerning the body of Christ, the Church. I believe that we need to really start there in recognizing that the whole reason for us to get together really doesn't have a whole lot to do, in fact, it really has nothing to do with Harold Camping as an individual.

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It has to do with the fact that if, in reality, the truth about the Church was well known, if there was a situation in our land where the

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Church was in a good state of health, then no one would be listening to an elderly man on the radio using allegorical interpretation telling them they shouldn't go to the

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Church anymore. But the simple fact of the matter is, all movements like this get started because the person utilizes the current situation, the failures of established churches, to get the foothold, and then you bring in the false teaching, then you bring in the other things around the back, but you get the person's attention, you get the person's willingness to listen and maybe give you enough credibility by touching upon those areas where, well, we have to admit that there are issues, there are problems.

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Mr. Camping likes to focus upon the fact that there are many churches today, many denominations today that have quite simply abandoned the faith, and he's right about that.

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I think we're all talking about that today. We all recognize the fact that in much of what is called liberalism today, where you no longer have a belief in the miraculous or the ability of God to inspire scripture or the resurrection of Christ or things like this, that we have something that is only on its surface called

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Christianity, it is at its core a completely different religious system. We recognize that, but then when we look at evangelicalism, there are certainly a lot of problems there as well.

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And Mr. Camping touches upon these things, he touches upon disunity, he touches upon all sorts of different interpretations that are offered by people today as evidence that the church has been, in essence, abandoned by God, and those of you who have listened to him know he talks about the high places.

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These are doctrines that he identifies as coming solely from the mind of man, not from the mind of God, and that while God allowed the high places to exist in Israel while blessing the kings, who did not get rid of all the high places, in the same way, over the course of the 1900 years of church history, which he identifies as the church age,

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God has blessed the church despite the presence of these high places.

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But now that's all over with. The judgment for the high places has come, and therefore the church has been destroyed.

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And on a number of the things that he lists, again, we'd have to say, well, yes, there's biblical basis for recognizing that in this issue or in that issue there are various sundry churches that have gone beyond Scripture or have contradicted

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Scripture. And the problem is, so many people have this kind of mindset, and you have to deal with this in your churches all the time.

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Well, I heard you preach against this particular viewpoint once, and Harold Camping has been saying the same thing, so why don't you believe him over here?

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The idea is, well, if he's right on this issue, and it might be an issue that's not very popular for you to speak on.

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It might be an issue that's somewhat unpopular and uncomfortable, but you've taken a stand on it, and well,

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Harold Camping says the same thing, so why don't you believe him over here? This transfer of credibility is a vital thing to understand when we try to start understanding the mindset of those within our congregations who are, for some reason, attracted to a kind of teaching that most of us sit there and listen to it and go, why does anyone listen to this?

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I mean, this man is engaging in the most egregious errors of interpretation with a straight face

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Why would anyone listen to this? Well, we need to understand the motivations, the mindset, because what

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I really want to try to do this morning is not so much deal a whole lot with Harold Camping, though we have to listen to what he's saying,

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I want to try to focus upon how it is that we, as shepherds within the church, those who've been given that position of elder, those with the responsibility for the care of souls, what can you do when someone comes to you and all of a sudden reveals to you that they've been listening to this, someone's been giving them tapes, they've listened to it on a shortwave, they've listened to it on the radio, on the internet, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden, you're on the hot seat.

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All of a sudden, you are no longer truly an elder from this person's perspective, because there are no elders anymore, doesn't the

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Bible say this, doesn't the Bible say that, haven't you erred in the past doing this or that? And all of a sudden, if there's no thinking ahead, if there's no preparation, that can be somewhat of a shocking situation to all of a sudden encounter, especially when many of these folks simply don't give us a whole lot of indication before all of a sudden we discover this fascination with what

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Harold Camping has been saying. There may have been a little hint here, a little hint there, and the more we know about Harold Camping's teaching, the more we can discern those things, but many people, especially now that he's doing this warning about the church, see what's happening is he started this warning, flee the churches, flee the churches, and his audience may not be all that big, but there's lots of folks who will find any excuse whatsoever to get out from underneath the authority that God has placed in the church, and those folks are not nearly as quiet as other people might be, and so once they find an excuse to get out of the church, they're going to be telling everybody and their uncle, and so all of a sudden tapes are being distributed, and you might not even think that within your particular fellowship that this is really an issue because,

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I mean, you work so hard to present your sermons in a way that's honoring to God, and you work so hard to be fair and accurate and rightly handle the word of God, and you would think that after so many years of giving a living example of how we're to approach the scriptures and how we're to read the scriptures, certainly everyone's got it, right?

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Not necessarily. I wish that were the case, but in reality, what we're seeing over and over again is you can have people who've been in church for many years, they've heard the word of God preached, they've heard the word of God handled rightly, and yet, for some reason, there is this willingness for some strange reason to hear what this man is saying, and for some reason, his allegorical methodology of interpretation doesn't immediately set off red alarm bells and codes and everything else in people's minds.

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Of course, I don't think most of us have done too many sermons on how to do interpretation in a warning people against allegorical methodology, though that may be something that we do indeed have to do in the future, in teaching our people how to do meaningful

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Bible study and how to avoid those who are not presenting meaningful biblical interpretation.

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There are many issues that the Harold Camping situation raises. I'd like to start off, however, with a sound clip from Mr.

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Camping that I find tremendously troubling. In fact, there's two of them.

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I'm going to reverse the order in which I was going to play these. One of the reasons why

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I feel that we who are in positions of leadership have a responsibility both to be here this morning and then not to forget this, to press forward the truth concerning the real means of understanding

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Scripture and the truth about the Church, so on and so forth. I have, over my years in ministry, dealt primarily in an apologetic area, and I have often had to study, for example, the

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Mormon Church out where I live in Phoenix, Arizona. Mormonism is there what

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Jehovah's Witnesses are to you. It's almost a complete inverse in that situation. There are Mormons everywhere and fewer

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Jehovah's Witnesses, and of course back here you have the opposite of that. And in studying the origins of Mormonism, I have often wondered exactly what the ministers of that day were up to while Joseph Smith was growing and evolving and changing in his theology.

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There were only a few who raised a voice of warning. There were only a few who could see that something was going on here that went beyond just simply the boundaries of that small area in upstate

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New York and then out into the Midwest, so on and so forth. We don't want to be numbered amongst those who history looks back upon as having just focused upon other things or closed our eyes or ignored what was going on around us while Harold Camping was developing his type of teaching.

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I want you to listen. I'm going to play a couple of these clips this evening as well, but I want you to listen especially closely to what

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Mr. Camping is saying. And in these two clips, what is really concerning here is what he's talking about in the idea of new evidence coming out supportive of his position.

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How could new evidence come out when he claims to believe in the Bible and the

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Bible alone? Well, there seems to be this enlightenment that is going on, this ability to see things that no one has ever seen before.

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That should cause all of us to go, hmm, I see, really. Listen to what he has to say.

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This is from Open Forum or from his, straight off of the Family Radio website.

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Now, incidentally, you noted that as time is going,

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I become more and more firm in this conviction that we're at that time.

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And that is true. It's based on more and more evidence piling up from the scriptures.

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This is not something that is talked about in an incidental manner. As a matter of fact,

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I'm getting calls, I'm getting letters, I'm getting information from all kinds of people who are ahead of me.

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They're saying, and what about this? And they're seeing things that I haven't even seen. Corroborating the fact that indeed that is what the

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Bible is teaching. We're at that time in history. And that the church now is under the judgment of God.

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And it's the beginning of the end. It's the hour of judgment that the Bible talks about that's going on right now.

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And it's the judgment on the churches and congregations because they have not removed their high places and because their work has been finished.

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God's work is not frustrated. He used the churches for over 1900 years and their work now has been finished.

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And God has used the churches very successfully for over 1900 years.

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Now there you have his assertion. Yes, God used the church for over 1900 years, but now the church has come under judgment.

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God's judgment is there. But notice what he says. He emphasizes that there are some people that are ahead of me.

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They are writing to me and seeing new things. Well, how do you see new things?

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Either there is some sort of spiritual enlightenment that is being given by God in some special way that allows new insights into scripture or in reality what we have going on here is that once you adopt

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Harold Camping's methodology of interpretation, the allegorical methodology, that which he has presented in his own writings in a booklet that Family Radio makes available on Fundamentals of Bible Study.

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If you've looked at this, we should have seen this coming because it's nothing new.

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I mean, this is the same methodology. This is the, and this is what amazes most of us who are familiar with what's going on here.

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This is the same methodology that he used to derive 1994.

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Nothing's changed. You go to the book 1994, he attacks the church in there.

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He talks about the church age coming to an end, and he uses the exact same kind of allegorical methodology that basically says, look, the surface level meaning, the historical meaning, the meaning that Reformation churches have focused upon, that is the grammatical historical meaning, what the author intended in his context, etc.,

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etc. That really doesn't mean anything. And in fact, since everything in the

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Bible is supposed to have one purpose, that meaning frequently doesn't have anything to say to us at all. Instead, we need to find the spiritual meaning.

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And whenever you hear Harold Camping say, let's look at this spiritually, you just need to understand what he's saying is, now let's forget about what the text says and let's go on a hunt for something new to find.

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Because once, give you an example, I wish I could play all of this, but it's way, way too long.

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John 21 has become Harold Camping's favorite place in his attack on the church.

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If you want to be ready with any particular scripture to really sit down and challenge someone who comes to you with this teaching, know

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John 21 well. Be familiar with the text, be familiar with what it's talking about because this seems to be the framework that he's been utilizing, especially in the 13 -hour presentation that he made over the summer at the

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West Coast Conference and finished up over at Tuscarora, which is somewhat ironic. That's where he presented the rest of this material.

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He keeps coming back to John 21 and back to John 21. When you start looking at John 21 and understanding what

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Harold Camping is saying, it is absolutely, positively amazing. In John 21, we have the apostles who go fishing.

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Of course, there are seven apostles, and of course, that's significant. The apostles represent the church.

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In the church age, the church is to be fishing for men. This is what they're supposed to be doing.

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They're supposed to be fishing. However, it's night. That's very significant too. In fact, everything is significant.

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I remember they get into boats. Boats are significant. There are two boats.

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Two boats are significant over in the other story about boats. Remember, as long as the term boat appears in a text, for Harold Camping, they're all the same text.

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He can go over the story earlier in the Gospels where there were two boats and where Jesus told them to cast the net on a certain side.

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They couldn't bring in the number of fish, and the boats began to sink. Well, if there were two boats over there, and that's about the church, and of course, the number two is significant to the church.

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He'll make that statement, then move on. I'll never tell you why he made that statement, but he'll then refer back to it later on and says, the

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Word of God says, happens all the time, happens all the time.

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Because his style is so rambling, by the time he gets around to making application of what he said before, you forgot why in the world he said that in the first place.

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And so he can just simply say, we've already seen that the Word of God says, and it's like, okay,

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I don't remember when we saw that, but let's move on from there. That's what happens. Any of you who have endured listening to hours of Harold Camping know exactly what

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I'm talking about. And so he says, well, you see over here you had two boats, and the boats began to sink.

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And that proves that the church can be destroyed, because boats can sink. Now the fact that the boats didn't sink doesn't seem to sink in.

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But since they're boats and they can sink, then the church can be destroyed. Even though it's in a different story than John 21.

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You just, it's like theological Plato. You just simply get a piece over here and get a piece over here and form whatever you want.

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There are no rules, there's no canons, there's no way you can disprove this kind of interpretation.

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Of course, you can also prove anything that you possibly could ever want from this kind of interpretation.

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But back to John 21. So they go out in the boats and it's night. And they don't catch anything. And that's a bad thing.

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That's a bad, bad thing. You don't catch anything that has something to do with the tribulation period, see. And everyone can see that, right?

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And so when in the morning lights starting to break and they see Jesus on the shore, they don't know it's

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Jesus. And that proves that we're still at a point in the narrative that is, that is at the first part of the tribulation because Jesus is invisible.

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And since Jesus hasn't returned yet, then he's up in heaven. He can't be seen because the apostles didn't recognize him.

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Oh, by the way, the Sea of Tiberius is also important because John calls the Sea of Tiberius, which he says is an anomaly.

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That's a Roman name. And therefore this is representing the whole world. And that's why John 21 has nothing to do but with our generation.

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No one in the history of the church has ever understood John 21 until Harold Camping. No one. I don't know what they, you know,

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I thought scripture was given for the edification of the church. But for some reason, this passage of scripture and almost any other passage of scripture that he happens to stumble into has never said anything to anyone else but to Harold Camping in this generation.

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And so all this comes together. And so you've got the apostles out in the boat and they recognize it's

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Jesus. Remember John 21 7? Peter is in the boat and the

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King James says he's naked. The New American Standard says that he was in his work clothes or stripped down to his work clothes or something like that.

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But whatever it was, Peter's naked. And so he wraps his outer cloak and casts himself into the sea.

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And the sea, of course, represents hell. And because that's where we're pulling souls, somehow pulling souls out of hell when we fish for men or something along those lines.

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And so Peter at first is one of the seven apostles and that represents the church. But now, now we're told that Peter represents

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Jesus. Peter becomes a picture of Jesus who was naked on the cross.

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And then, and I'm not, I'm not making any of this up, folks. This is all directly from his own mouth.

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And then girding the outer cloak around him is related to Psalm 18, which is a messianic psalm.

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And in Psalm 18, it says that the Messiah is girded with strength. And this is supposed to be just anyone who reads this passage can understand these things.

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So Peter, at first he's an apostle and then he is a picture of Jesus. And the boat is the church.

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And since they can't bring the fish into the boat, that's why he keeps saying, see the fish are outside the boat.

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They're outside the boat. And that's where salvation is taking place now. Salvation cannot take place in a church any longer.

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The Holy Spirit is no longer in the church according to Harold Campion. And he gets that from the wild allegorical interpretation of passages like John 21.

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But when he talks about it piling up, piling up, this is what he's talking about is that his followers, now that they have this, this wonderful theological weapon in their hand called allegorical interpretation are ransacking the entire text of scripture, the entire canon.

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And, oh, look, we could, we can make this a picture of this and we can make this a picture of the church and it's under judgment.

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And that means we're right. And they're sending all this stuff into Harold Campion. The beginning of this clip was due to the fact that some, some unnamed individual happens to have the phone number for the open forum call -in, who is sitting on the front pew, and there's only one person sitting on the front pew, and has twice now called in to ask questions.

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And one of the questions that was asked was, you know, you weren't quite as certain of yourself a few months ago as you are now.

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And that was part of the response that was given to that particular one. But this one

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I find more troubling. And this one's almost three minutes in length. This actually is from the, the conferences that they had.

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And notice some of the most interesting things come about when we're saying something sort of offhand, sort of a, a side point.

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Here he's gonna start talking about ships again. He thinks the destruction of the ships of Tarshish has a lot to do with, with the destruction of the church and all the rest of this stuff.

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But listen carefully to this little sort of offhanded comment that he makes. It lasts for about three minutes, so it's not overly offhanded, but about the, the, the study that they are undertaking and how no one has ever understood the things that they are now teaching about.

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Now when we look at, let me first of all talk a little bit about, about ships.

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Remember when we were looking, maybe some of you heard this study on, on Sandman Radio about Tyre and Seidon.

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And let me just review one or two points if you, in case you didn't hear it or if you did hear it. This is all such new material.

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In fact, I go over it again and again and again, and each time I have something more to learn, because this, this is material that has never been, been taught at any time in history.

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We're living in a day, you know, where we're right near the end. Now, you see, this dramatic event of the change of the end of the church age and the beginning of the latter reign has been written about very extensively.

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We've looked at it in detail. We've looked at it in Isaiah. We're looking at it in John 21. We've seen it extensively in Acts 27 and so on, and it's found in many, many passages in the

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Bible. But heretofore, it has not been known to anybody. It was not known to me.

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It was not known to any theologian you can read about. You can search all the commentaries of the past, and nobody had any real insight into this, because it was not

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God's timetable for this, any more than in the days of Paul, or in the days of Jesus, God had written extensively throughout the

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Old Testament era that the day would come when he would send the gospel out into all the world.

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Abraham, for example, was spoken of as the father of a multitude of nations, yet nobody understood it.

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Nobody understood it. Finally, Paul comes along, and in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the book of Ephesians, he says, a secret, a mystery has been revealed to me.

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And he talks about the fact that the gospel is to go to the Gentiles. There was a timing for revelation.

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Now, we're living in a day right near the end where all things written must be fulfilled.

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So we can expect that in our day, we can understand passage after passage after passage that heretofore has been, we've been unable to understand.

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Whatever God is going to reveal to the human race through his word, it's all written here. There's no new information being placed in the

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Bible. But just because it's in the Bible, it doesn't mean that we can be blessed by it until God, the

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Holy Spirit, opens our spiritual eyes to it. And we're living in that day when we can expect that these things come open to us.

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And that's one of the cudgels or one of the disciplines or one of the encouragements that causes me, for example,

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I'm sure it causes many of you to keep reading and reading and reading. What else is there? What else can we understand?

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And here we have come to a point where we are beginning to understand a lot of things that have never been understood before.

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Well, I hope that for everyone that causes a shiver up your spine.

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We're learning, we're understanding things that no one has ever understood before.

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Don't underestimate the attraction that that has for many people.

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You as pastors know who I'm talking about. And I've talked about these folks before. In fact, I remember the first time

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I ever used this illustration was at Bill Shishko's Church. So that was like the second time, about 1997.

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And they have a similar building laid out like this. And I sort of used an illustration.

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You know the folks who you just can't get away from the windows? I'm talking about the members of our congregation who just don't seem satisfied with the proclamation of the gospel, the study of the scriptures, the application of God's truth to our lives.

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They always seem to be standing at the window looking outside, looking for something new, looking for something to entertain them, looking for something that's just not found within the walls of the church.

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And I was using that illustration in regards to the sufficiency of scripture. That is, people who want to look for more.

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They're not satisfied with what is here. They could never pray the 119th

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Psalm and understand what the psalmist was saying. That my soul is satisfied with your word.

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They're always looking for something new. Well those types of folks, first of all you know they're eventually going to find something.

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They're eventually going to find something. But those are the types of folks who are going to hear Harold Campion go, oh my goodness, what an interesting possibility we have here.

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Because this guy is offering me new things. Things never understood before.

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And if we thought the Gnostics were dead, they're not. Gnosticism is alive and well.

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And it's alive and well within evangelical congregations. People wanting to feel like, you know,

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I've got an insight that no one else really has. Just me and a few others.

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In fact I once talked to Brother Campion and I showed him something that the

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Lord had shown me and I heard it on family radio later on. Don't underestimate people.

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There are people like that and they may not have seemed that way when they first came through the door.

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They may not have seemed that way when they taught that Sunday school class for us. They may not have seemed that way, but they are.

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And that's why we need to be aware of what Mr. Campion is saying in his claim that no one's ever understood these things.

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I would assert to you that that is a direct contradiction of the teaching of Scripture.

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Paul tells us in Romans chapter 15 that these things were written for our edification.

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And that's not just this generation. Mr. Campion doesn't seem to have any concept of the fact that Christ has been building his church, that there is a connection with church history, and the only generation that really seems to matter is this one.

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In fact we're going to hear later on a clip where he, in essence, makes that statement. Now I just want to play this really quickly.

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I think we have every right to be here this morning and to use Mr. Campion's own words as testimony against his false teaching.

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I think he has actually invited us, in essence, to do that. And so I want to establish this before we actually give a general summary of what he's saying.

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Here's some of his words. This is, again, from the summer conferences, summer family radio

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Bible conferences. So that anyone, anyone who really is stirred in their soul and they say, they think, this can't be.

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What about this verse? Or what about that verse? Those questions can be raised and we can talk about it together.

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You know, anything that I learn in the Bible, and I do try to search the Bible very diligently, has to be true if I'm going to declare.

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And I value comments and questions and interrogations and so on from anyone.

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Because I never, never want to be in a position where I say, well, this is what I said.

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Now, whether you like it or not, that's where it is. No, no, no. There's no personal ego about this.

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None whatsoever. If I say, this is what I read in the Bible, and if you, and if you have a serious question about that, now, wait a minute, aren't you misunderstanding that?

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Please let me know. Let me know. Because maybe you can learn, teach me something. I, I tell you,

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I learn from people. I learn, but I learn from the Bible. Well, if that's what

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Mr. Camping says, then great, wonderful. If he says, I want to hear about these things, well, a lot of us have, you know, we've twice tried to get

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Mr. Camping to engage in debate and dialogue on these subjects, and he's, has not been interested in doing so.

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We, obviously, he himself testifies that he has received letter after letter after letter after letter regarding these issues from pastors, and he simply will not accept what they have to say, and so I find somewhat of a contradiction between those two statements, but he certainly has invited the examination of his own position.

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Now, I am going to assume that most of us have an idea of what

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Harold Camping is up to teaching these days, but I want to make sure we're all on the same page, and so I have a summary statement.

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This really presents, I call it the general summary of his position, and it's a little bit lengthy, but I think it's important that we hear him sort of lay out his own position in regards to the church.

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This is from a little bit earlier on. He's not quite as strident at this point as he has become now, but it does give us at least the argumentation that he initially utilized because, realize, even if, even if we want to take the worst case perspective and assume that Harold Camping quite some time ago had a, had a plan that he was going to lay out and, and in essence drive all of the decent ministries off of family radio by forbidding people from mentioning that they're a pastor from mentioning the church, from mentioning church meeting times and all the rest of this stuff, even if we take the worst case scenario, still it would have to be introduced somewhat slowly.

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It would have to be introduced with some element of grace to it. You don't just all of a sudden one day you have all sorts of churches on your radio network and the very next day you kick them all off and say the church is dead.

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Generally people accept it if you, if you present a little bit more slowly and at first you're not quite so strident about it, but then, you know, you can start saying, well, but we've already seen, we've already seen the word of God says this, we've already seen the word of God says that.

34:45

You can sort of build on that over time. Even in the worst case scenario, there still needs to be this period of introduction.

34:52

I don't think that's what happened. In fact, just last evening I was driving back from a gathering that we had and I just happened to turn on the radio and it was on family radio.

35:03

And guess what was on? Open Forum. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. The last thing

35:08

I'm going to listen to before I go to bed is Harold Camping on Open Forum. This should be interesting. I heard two and a half calls.

35:17

And in two of those calls, this was the subject of discussion.

35:24

Was the end of the church. At the end of the first call that I heard, he was talking with a woman and she says, well, thank you very much for clearing that up for me.

35:33

And thank you very much for the warning about the church. She said, you know, and it was fascinating to hear these words.

35:42

I was sitting right at the stoplight leaving the shopping center over there, by the way, for those of you who were there.

35:47

And the woman said something that's just fascinating to me. She said, you know, it's just natural to want to be in the church and have fellowship with other

35:58

Christians. But I just always felt there was just something wrong, something missing.

36:07

Now, Camping interrupted her and said, well, you do want to remember

36:12

Hebrews chapter 10 and gathering together with believers. And even if it's just around the radio, you want to do that on Sundays.

36:21

But her whole idea was, you know, it's just sort of natural to want to go to church.

36:27

Yeah. I wonder why. But I always felt there was just something not quite right.

36:34

And now Mr. Camping has given her a reason for accepting that there's just not something quite right.

36:42

There's a lot of folks. How many folks want to tell us after every single sermon what we should have said? Well, those folks are always feeling there's something not quite right.

36:51

And they're always looking for some sort of a reason. And then the last caller, fascinating caller, the last caller was not

36:59

Mr. Camping's friend. I don't know that he realized that, but he calls up and says, so there's no church anymore.

37:06

Well, so what are you going to do about funerals? Well, we haven't had to face that yet.

37:16

It's exactly what Harold said. It's going to happen eventually, Harold. You know, that's the way of life.

37:22

What are you going to do? Well, what about weddings? If you don't have elders and deacons anymore, how are you going to have

37:27

Christian weddings? Well, we should have, and you could tell,

37:33

I could honestly tell he's making this up as he's going along. He's never thought about this before.

37:38

Well, you could have some people stand up and talk about Christian marriage.

37:45

And then this is fascinating. And then you want to have a Christian celebration in the fellowship hall afterwards.

37:53

Excuse me, fellowship hall? Where did you get one of them if you don't have a church in the first place?

38:00

Where did that come from? And then the fascinating question,

38:06

Mr. Camping, now that there's no church, can the women speak equally with the men?

38:15

Fascinating response. Well, no, because 1 Timothy 2 says, well, excuse me, but I thought 1

38:24

Timothy was written to Timothy so he could know how to order things in what? The church of the living

38:31

God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth? Oh, but that's still binding.

38:38

Fascinating. Sort of groping along. How are we going to do this?

38:44

Doesn't know. And yet has the temerity to tell people, flee the church.

38:51

Amazing. How did we get there? Well, here's the summary. And this actually is a high quality so you'll be able to hear it really well.

39:00

This is a summary from, if I'm recalling off the top of my head, Hebrews study number 837.

39:14

837 study out of the book of Hebrews. My goodness. But this,

39:20

I think, really lays it out. And you can sort of see how he puts various things together, the two witnesses in the book of Revelation and the candlesticks and how all this comes together from Harold Camping's own lips.

39:32

Like I said, this takes a few minutes, but it's a good, a good summary statement, which is we're established.

39:40

They in turn sent out missionaries and other churches were established.

39:46

And then those other churches, they in turn also began to send out missionaries.

39:54

And that's the way God's whole plan of evangelization has been going on for the last 1900 years.

40:02

At time, that plan has faltered a little bit and denominations have gone apostate, but then

40:08

God raised up other denominations, other churches, other congregations, so that the work proceeded.

40:15

And this was God's plan. But in our day, when the population is exploding,

40:22

God has developed a new plan. And, and, uh, we're seeing more and more of that as we look at this study, as well as we studied some other things in the

40:34

Bible. Let me stop it just for a moment. He expands on that, uh, many, many other places.

40:41

And his assertion is God has not only brought judgment in the high places of the church, but this was also his plan all along because God knew that the population of the earth would grow too rapidly for the church to evangelize.

40:57

He likes to emphasize how many people are being born every day. And the only way to reach that many people is through technology.

41:05

It's through the use of shortwave and radio and the internet and who is the leader in all of that, but of course, family radio.

41:13

And the, the occasion for this change in plan is that God finally indicates that there comes a time when he will not put up with the false doctrines that, and the wrong practices that have been, uh, part of the

41:33

New Testament church all through its history. Even as in the Old Testament, we read about the kings of Judah and, uh, and each one, uh, many of them love the

41:44

Lord greatly. God blessed them greatly. And yet within their kingdom, there were high places, high places were, uh, is where they worshiped other gods.

41:57

And in other words, where the mind of man prevailed over the mind of God and God countenanced that God allowed that he blessed those, uh,

42:08

Kings very greatly, even though they never, never did quite clean up their act and, and really, uh, uh, get rid of all the high places.

42:18

We want to do it only God's way until we get to Hezekiah and Hezekiah.

42:24

Remember, we spent a long time with that. We saw that when he became King, he destroyed all of the high places.

42:33

He destroyed all of the high places. And, uh, and yet it was at a time when

42:39

Judah was almost destroyed itself, except for a remnant in Jerusalem.

42:45

Uh, the other cities of Judea were, were, uh, conquered by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, who was a picture of Satan, who has been loosed, uh, during, uh, during the, uh, uh, time when

42:58

God is finished with the church. And, uh, and, uh, that... Let me just stop that for a second.

43:05

Excuse me? Sennacherib, who is a picture of Satan, when God has judged him. And we're on from there.

43:11

Happens all the time. I mean, as long as it has been mentioned once before, all of a sudden it becomes an established fact.

43:19

That is how, uh, Mr. Camping can string these things together and say, well, we've already seen that the

43:25

Word of God says, well, no, what we've heard you is make assertions about the Word of God. We didn't hear you substantiate anything about it, but once it's, well, you know, this is study number 837 and we cover that in 150, you know,

43:39

I mean, how can you, how can you even begin to keep track after, after so long? But that's, that's how he established it.

43:45

It's the church age of 1900 years. Satan is loosed, and so Sennacherib was loosed, and he was on a roll, and he not only conquered the 10 tribes to the north so that they ceased to exist, but he almost completely destroyed

44:00

Judah, except for a remnant in Jerusalem. And, and, uh, when we tie that into our time, we find that God goes along to a certain point in history, and then he looses

44:17

Satan to bring judgment on the church and, and virtually silences the gospel, the true gospel within churches.

44:28

And whatever Satan doesn't conquer, uh, the, uh, God himself removes the candlestick because it's, it's, uh, it's a time when, when

44:38

God is saying, no more, no more, there can't be any more of this going on.

44:45

I have blessed the church. People have become saved, even though there have been wrong doctrines within them.

44:52

Sometimes these doctrines were quite wrong, and yet God blessed the word of God, uh, in these denominations, and so the world was evangelized.

45:02

But, uh, but at the beginning of the final tribulation, and that's the key point, at the beginning of the final tribulation, uh,

45:12

God has a quick change in his action.

45:17

At the beginning of the tribulation signified that the churches have ceased to be the means by which

45:27

God plans to evangelize the world. And, and this is why it is great tribulation.

45:34

And remember, in our last study, we talked about it's a time of weeping. It's a time when we ought to be sorrowing, sorrowing in our hearts, because we see the churches that, that should have known better.

45:48

They have not turned away from their, uh, wrong doctrines, and so finally

45:54

God has removed the candlestick. So they, they have a form of godliness, but they really deny the power of it.

46:03

Now notice what is said. Not only is Satan loose to judge the church, to destroy the church, but anything that he doesn't conquer, then

46:12

God removes, removing the candlestick. He always goes back to the letters in Revelation, and this is one of the, we'll get to this in a moment, but this is one of the primary errors that we as pastors need to be able to point out to anyone who buys into this stuff, is he, he goes back to those individual churches, and he says there's a threat to remove the candlestick, uh, and therefore if God can remove the candlestick, that means the church can be destroyed.

46:42

In other words, if one single congregation can come under the judgment of God, that means all congregations in total, all of the organized church on earth, can come under the judgment of God and be destroyed.

46:56

So he identifies a single congregation and then expands that out to mean the entirety of the visible corporate church, and so as long as one congregation can be destroyed, and history shows us that's happened many times, there have been many individual congregations.

47:12

There were individual congregations of Christians, for example, in North Africa, when

47:17

Islam spread across North Africa, that ceased to exist. We all know of individual congregations, even in our own day, that have ceased to exist, and so if that can happen, then that means that all churches everywhere can be destroyed in one fell swoop, and that this is somehow the argumentation that's being, that is being presented.

47:37

But notice, and this is a theme we'll hear many times, God is no longer evangelizing through the church.

47:46

You can stand in your pulpit and preach until you're red in the face.

47:51

The Holy Spirit isn't there. God has no intention of saving his people through the proclamation of the word within the church by those who call themselves elders.

48:03

That is what Harold Camping is teaching. Now that's an amazing thing to say, not only based upon the absolutely silly thing that he calls exegesis or interpretation, but just to consider the arrogance of someone who could stand and say that the

48:26

Holy Spirit, because in my fevered mind I've come up with these wild allegorical interpretations, the

48:34

Holy Spirit can no longer save by means the proclamation of the gospel within the church.

48:40

Instead, the Holy Spirit is saving many, many people through my ministry of family radio as we proclaim the gospel around the world.

48:48

What an incredible statement. He may say there's no ego in this for me, but please, what is, what is this all about?

48:56

To make that kind of assertion is absolutely incredible. Absolutely. He does it with a straight face.

49:04

Church age has ended. The Holy Spirit isn't there. They have a form of godliness, but they don't have power any longer.

49:11

The gospel has been stripped from the church. What an incredible statement for Mr.

49:18

Camping to make. Well, I mentioned to you that one of the key issues that we need to deal with with those who come to us within the church who are hearing this teaching is this distinction that he makes.

49:30

And again, our friendly caller was able to ask specific questions of Mr. Camping.

49:36

And one of the questions that he asked was, well, what about Ephesians chapter three that says that God will receive glory in the church throughout all ages, world without end?

49:48

What about, how can that be true if what you're teaching is true? And here's what

49:53

Mr. Camping said. Hello, Mr. Camping. I have a two -part question for you, basically.

50:00

The first part would be, when you started out some months ago telling the listeners that Christ was through with the church, you were somewhat more hesitant and not completely certain of it.

50:12

And then later you seem to now be very certain of it to the point you're telling people to leave their churches.

50:18

I wanted to also ask you on top of that, your interpretation of Ephesians 3 .21,

50:24

which says, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

50:31

If you could comment on both of those, I'd appreciate it. Well, yes, in Ephesians chapter three, you know, there's one principle that we have to keep in mind, and that is when

50:43

God talks about the church, there are two possibilities. When he talks about the church in Romans or in Revelation 2 or Revelation 3, the church in Ephesus or the church in Laodicea, he's talking about the external corporate body, the visible church, which is made up both of believers and non -believers.

51:11

And it has no guarantee. We already read in Revelation 2 and 3 where God warned the church at Ephesus, if you don't straighten up and return to your first love,

51:23

I'll remove your candlestick. And to have your candlestick removed would mean that they would become a dead church.

51:31

He already warned the church at Sardis, you are dead. You are dead. Even though you have some believers within you, you're already a dead church.

51:40

Now that's the corporate body, the external body. But God also talks about the church from and about the church that is invisible, eternal in character, and it is only made up of those who have become true believers.

51:58

And that's what Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 10 is talking about, that to the intent now unto the principalities and powers of heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.

52:13

That is the body of believers, those who have truly become saved.

52:19

Here the word church is used like God uses it in Matthew chapter 16, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

52:30

That can only be speaking about the invisible eternal church that is no longer, those people no longer are threatened by hell because their sins have all been paid for.

52:44

Now unfortunately, theologians don't distinguish between these two.

52:50

It's amazing. I received a number of letters from pastors in recent weeks and invariably they go to Matthew 16 and say you see

53:00

Christ will build his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

53:05

They have no understanding that that is not talking about the corporate body, the external body.

53:12

They aren't thinking about the fact that the churches in the seven churches in Revelation all disappeared in time because they became apostate.

53:25

They don't realize that that's talking about the invisible eternal church.

53:33

Well, there's going to be the distinction that's going to be thrown your direction. Any passage that we look at, whether it be

53:41

Ephesians chapter 3 or Matthew chapter 16 that speaks of the perpetuity of the church, the continuity of the church, well we can just say that's about the invisible church.

53:53

And so the invisible church is up in heaven and the invisible church is still around in that sense, but the individual churches can be destroyed and in fact have been destroyed because of the allegorical interpretations of herald camping.

54:13

Well, the problem with that is many fold. And before I speak on that specifically, let me just mention one of the most fundamental things that we're going to have to do as individual elders, as pastors, is deal with the simple fact that the single error that gives rise to everything else in herald camping and in fact pretty much everything else in all false religious systems is that our people need to understand that interpreting the

54:49

Bible is not a matter of opening it up and closing your eyes and flipping some pages and sticking a finger down and going, oh, there's my answer.

55:00

That interpreting the Bible is not a matter of going out in the woods and getting yourself into an altered state of consciousness and hoping you're going to have pretty colors appear before your eyes so you can understand

55:14

Romans 5. It's not that kind of thing. And the only way to meaningfully interact with someone who is coming to you bringing this teaching is to be able to talk intelligently about how it is we interpret scripture.

55:34

And you might need to get very direct with the person and say, well, let me ask you, if you were to write a letter to someone today and it were to be read by someone 2 ,000 years from now, how would you want them to interpret your words?

55:52

Would you want them to try to understand what kind of a person you were? Would you like them to understand your historical context and the language in which you spoke?

56:02

Would you want them to be fair with what you write? Or would you want someone like Harold Camping to interpret your letter and determine that in reality you believe things that you've never even thought of, that you stood for things that you don't stand for, that you taught things that you don't teach?

56:26

Wouldn't you like to be taken in such a way as to what you write is what represents what you actually believe?

56:33

What if I start interpreting Harold Camping the way Harold Camping interprets the

56:39

Bible? What if I listened to his words and said, well, what we need to understand is

56:46

Mr. Camping here is using the church as a symbol for, and then

56:52

I start coming up with some wild and wacky theology about space aliens and the

56:58

New York Giants. Why not? I mean, once you don't have any, once what he meant is irrelevant, what

57:09

John meant in John 21 is irrelevant. It doesn't mean anything. The historical context, the grammar, the language of John 21 means nothing.

57:20

And when John wrote it, in fact, it meant nothing for almost 2000 years. So why can't I take

57:26

Harold Camping and say that Harold Camping preaches about space aliens playing for the New York Giants? Why not?

57:33

Let's do it. Start a rumor. It might work. Who knows? I don't know.

57:40

Allegorical interpretation has no way of communicating anything meaningful.

57:47

The final arbiter of allegorical interpretation is whoever is practicing allegorical interpretation.

57:55

Mr. Camping, it's interesting. It's going to happen. Give it time, any movement, it happens. Someone's going to come along and challenge him.

58:03

Someone's going to come along and go, you know, I sort of like this idea of having people following me around and hanging on my every word.

58:10

So I'm going to start building on this. But you know what? Eventually they have to say, well, Harold missed this one.

58:16

How is he going to disprove him? The only final authority is that he's the final authority.

58:24

You can't say, no, your allegorical interpretation doesn't work on what basis?

58:31

Maybe Peter isn't a picture of Jesus. Maybe the boat isn't the church.

58:37

Maybe there's something else. Maybe the boat's family radio. Who knows?

58:44

There's no way of knowing. There's no way of proving one way or the other. And in fact,

58:50

I'd ask people, how do you know that the boat isn't family radio? What's your final authority?

58:57

And getting them to recognize that in reality, what they have done, what they have done is they've turned over their thinking process, their interpretation of scripture to the final authority of Harold Camping.

59:13

And once they can see that, then maybe you can get them to distance themselves enough from him to begin examining him.

59:22

Because you can say, and if you had done that in 1993, you would have thought

59:28

Christ was returning in 1994. And what might you have done? What did people do?

59:35

We all remember that one. That is a very, very important thing that we need to recognize, is that we have to attack that allegorical interpretation and help them to understand that they need to listen to the word of God for what the word of God says, not for what

59:52

Harold Camping says it says, by ignoring its actual meaning and its actual context.

59:58

Because you can't end up dealing with what the scripture teaches about the perpetuity of the church without utilizing a proper method of interpretation.

01:00:08

You go to Ephesians 3, and it happens to say that God the Father received glory through the church.

01:00:15

Well, how is he receiving glory through an invisible church that no one can see up in heaven someplace that has been replaced by quote -unquote fellowship on earth that we have no idea what that involves?

01:00:28

Harold Camping has no idea what that involves, but it's been replaced by it somehow. And somehow, throughout all the ages, he receives glory through this church, except when he then destroys the church.

01:00:40

Oh, but no, no, no, he doesn't destroy the invisible church. Oh, so what you're saying is the invisible church can be seen, recognized, and give glory to God separate from its manifestation in the only way the

01:00:54

Bible has ever told us it is to exist, with elders and deacons and the ordinances of baptism in the

01:01:01

Lord's Supper. Those things somehow are temporary. And in fact, that's what he says.

01:01:07

I'll play you a clip if we have time. It looks like we're sort of running out of time, but I'll play a clip for you if we have time, where he specifically says the ordinances were ceremonial laws and they can be done away with.

01:01:19

They can be done away with. I think this is a little bit new on his part because a lot of folks were wondering.

01:01:26

I think it's a natural question we all want to ask ourselves. In fact, I've already got it queued up, so here it is.

01:01:33

What do you do about those things? I mean, didn't, doesn't the scripture say that when we partake of the

01:01:39

Lord's Supper, we are proclaiming his death, what? Until he comes.

01:01:45

Well, camping isn't saying he's come yet, but he's not having the Lord's Supper anymore either.

01:01:52

How do you put them together? Mystery caller asked. Are you also teaching that the ordinances of the church are no longer in existence when people meet in their homes to listen to family radio?

01:02:06

Should they not have the Lord's table and not baptize? The Lord's table and water baptism are ceremonial laws.

01:02:14

Incidentally, I was never taught that, that they were ceremonial laws. I've been in the church for 80 years.

01:02:21

I've been taught that they were sacraments and everybody has taught their sacraments.

01:02:26

The Bible doesn't call them sacraments. There's an implication there and, and the confessions that he, if you search the confessions,

01:02:36

I don't care what church you belong to, what your church confesses concerning those ordinances, those ceremonial laws, you'll find that they put more into it, way more than the

01:02:49

Bible will allow. They are signs. They are shadows that are, God uses to point us to the

01:02:57

Lord's death until he comes and emphasize that we are a communion of believers, but they have no spiritual substance in them.

01:03:08

And God, if he has destroyed the church, if he's brought the church under judgment, well, then that's where they are to be carried out.

01:03:18

They were given to the church throughout the church age. They have served the church in, in, in assisting in instructing what the gospel is.

01:03:29

But, but if you're outside of the church, you can't use those anymore, anymore than ancient

01:03:36

Israel, when they were driven out of Jerusalem, when Babylon, when the

01:03:41

Babylonians destroyed them, they couldn't observe the, the ceremonial laws of, of, of burnt offerings and blood sacrifices and all of these things.

01:03:57

Let me just mention something. Did you notice if you're what? Outside. That's his big term now.

01:04:03

We are outside the church. That's why you have to flee the church is because judgment is now inside the church.

01:04:10

So if you don't want to have judgment, you've got to get outside the church. And so we who are outside can't do that anymore because the

01:04:19

Lord's supper is an ordinance for the church. And so if you're outside the church, then you can't do it anymore.

01:04:25

That's exactly what he's saying. Because they were driven into, they were sent to Babylon, Babylon to be captives there.

01:04:32

And, and, but God is the one who terminated it, that the church didn't,

01:04:38

God did. And today we're not terminating these things. God has terminated these things.

01:04:45

And now we're, we simply now have the word of God and we have no ceremonial laws to assist us.

01:04:52

We can read about them in the word of God and, and being received spiritual edification from it.

01:05:00

As we read about it, we receive spiritual edification from reading about the

01:05:06

Lord's supper, which we can't have anymore. That's what, that's what I just heard said is we can receive spiritual edification from reading about the

01:05:15

Lord's supper and remembering how we used to get to do that, but we can't anymore because God destroyed the church. But insofar as observing it, that, that has to be under the rules of the church that God had so carefully established that the corporate body was not just any old body of people.

01:05:33

It was a, a, a divine institution that God had established and given very careful rules for the spiritual oversight of that congregation, for the membership of that congregation, the character of the elders and the deacons.

01:05:55

The Bible has a lot to say about the character of that institution, but now it's come to an end.

01:06:02

Its work has been finished. It's under judgment. And so we have to leave it with all of its, with all of the activity that it had been previously involved in.

01:06:15

So there you go. You have to leave it. And since baptism was part of that church, we don't baptize.

01:06:23

Since the Lord's supper is part of that church, we don't have the Lord's supper. We just gather around the radio and have fellowship with one another and read our

01:06:31

Bibles and talk about how God has destroyed the church. I'm not sure that there's going to be a whole lot really attractive to this new fellowship, no,

01:06:40

I'm not a church movement. It'll eventually get some name given to it. Maybe we can come up with one.

01:06:46

I don't think that one works very well, but it doesn't seem overly attractive except to those who for a moment see in this a way of getting out of Hebrews 13 and 17 and obeying those who have the rulership over you.

01:07:03

The problem is you know what's going to happen when they start getting together, don't you? They start putting those fellowships together.

01:07:12

Someone's going to want to take the lead. Someone's going to, it's just natural. And then someone's going to say, well, wait a minute, we don't have any leaders.

01:07:22

Well, I just wonder how these fellowships are going to work with no leadership. Let's just all get together and well,

01:07:30

I think you can see that's not going to last very long. That's not going to work very well. But for someone who wants an excuse to get away from the authority of the church, for whatever reason, you know of the people who in your congregation, they have personal issues, they have issues of sin in their life, but they won't face them.

01:07:52

And it's all your fault, right? I mean, they're mean to the wife, they're mean to the kids, they're mean to the dog and the cat as well, but it's all your fault.

01:08:04

If you were a better pastor, they'd be a better person. And they're just looking for anything to give them an excuse.

01:08:13

Don't, don't, don't laugh so much there, Rick. Specific name just floated right past my mind, right?

01:08:19

When you said that, how did you know about that situation? You know, we've all had those situations. We've all sat with the people who've left and they've told us why they left.

01:08:28

And then they told everyone else in the congregation, something completely different about why they left. You know what

01:08:33

I'm talking about? And it was always our fault. You know, all you just, you know, if you elders were just better,

01:08:39

I'd be a greater person. Those are the folks that are going to find this attractive for a while. But the problem is, and we all know this, when they leave our church, go someplace else, guess what?

01:08:49

They don't take their problems and leave them in our church. They take them with them. They take them right into that new situation.

01:08:56

And they're going to take them right into the quote unquote fellowship situation as well. And you're going to have the exact same issues taking place there as well.

01:09:04

You've just got some new religious movement that gets started that is unbiblical and in fact anti -biblical in its teaching.

01:09:12

Now, I have, as I said, there's a tremendous amount of clips and things like here.

01:09:18

I have one that I was going to be looking at. And I will play this last one. It's very short. It's only 25 seconds.

01:09:26

But we need to understand that while Camping didn't initially take this view, he is now taking this very perspective.

01:09:34

And here's what he says. Should we leave the congregations that we're members of?

01:09:40

Well, now, let me ask you the question. If God the Holy Spirit is not operating in your midst, and the

01:09:48

Bible teaches that, so that regardless of how well your pastor is preaching, no one is becoming saved, would you really want to be in that congregation with your family?

01:10:03

There it is. Should we leave? Well, if the Holy Spirit's not there, why would you want to be there?

01:10:10

That's what is being taught. The Holy Spirit is left. The power of the gospel is gone. And therefore, well, where do we find the

01:10:17

Holy Spirit now? Well, he's outside the ship. He's outside. That's the big phrase now.

01:10:24

He's outside. So flee from within. Go outside.

01:10:30

I haven't heard him do it yet. And I don't listen all the time. I couldn't stand listening all the time.

01:10:36

I would move to Alaska and sell tires if I had to listen to him every single day. But something's going to eventually, eventually, we're going to start hearing comparisons to Martin Luther and the reformers being persecuted by the established church.

01:10:53

It's going to happen. If he doesn't think of it, somebody will suggest it to him. This is the new reformation.

01:11:01

I can just see it coming. And I don't know if any of you heard the program on WMCA yesterday, but wasn't it fascinating that two of the callers, and of course,

01:11:12

I could be on WMCA talking about selling tires in Alaska, and I'd still get

01:11:17

Roman Catholic callers arguing about sola scriptura. But two of them, they just love me.

01:11:25

But two of the callers, what were they saying? They're saying, well, I agree with you.

01:11:31

This Harold Camping guy is a kook. But if you just believe in the Bible, there's no way you can prove it.

01:11:37

You need to have the authority of the Roman church. And Roman Catholic apologists are getting their mileage out of it.

01:11:44

See what happens when you have sola scriptura. You have all this confusion. You've got

01:11:49

Harold Camping. Well, actually, as I pointed out, that particular individual, that's not the case at all, because Harold Camping is, in fact, violating sola scriptura right and left.

01:12:02

Allegorical interpretation is not consistent with the belief in sola scriptura. And it was

01:12:08

Origen long ago who, in fact, his means of allegorical interpretation was used, for example, the

01:12:15

Second Nicene Council to establish the veneration of images. All through the medieval period, allegorical interpretation was the very marrow of biblical defense of the papacy.

01:12:28

I thought we got rid of all that with the Reformation. Well, not with Harold Camping. We're going right back to where we were before.

01:12:36

And he uses that to say, get out. Get out. The Holy Spirit is active only outside of the church.

01:12:46

Now, as I said, there is much more, but I wanted to leave time for questions and answers as well, because I want to know what you're encountering and if there's anything that I can be of assistance to you in that way.

01:13:00

I'm not sure exactly how we're going to be handling that particular aspect of it. We have a handheld microphone that we'll be able to use somewhere down this direction.

01:13:11

But let me just mention a few things. I do not claim to be an expert on Harold Camping's history, his genealogy, the structure of family radio in specific, the issues that have brought my attention to Harold Camping has been the fact that, in essence, this is the same kind of teaching against the church that I've responded to for a long time, for example, in regards to Mormonism.

01:13:38

Mormonism taught that the church ceased to exist after the first generation of the apostles. And so the perpetuity of Christ's church and the teaching of the

01:13:46

New Testament regarding that issue is something that is nothing new. It's just sad to hear it on allegedly evangelical radio, to hear people saying the same kind of thing.

01:13:56

And so really, more of what I want to try to be of assistance with is how do we deal with people who've been impacted by this?

01:14:06

How can we, for example, work into our preaching means of teaching our people how to do proper interpretation?

01:14:16

Maybe we actually need to, instead of doing all the interpretation in our study and then presenting the results, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if we brought our people along once in a while, in the sense of actually in the sermon, instead of basically opening up to them the process by which we came to the conclusions that we would normally present in a sermonic style.

01:14:44

How? Not just in a dry, okay, we bring a whiteboard up front and then, you know, here's rule number one, here's rule number two.

01:14:51

That's fine. I think that needs to be done in the teaching part of the Sunday school class,

01:14:56

Bible study class, Wednesday class, however your church is designed along those ways. I think we do need to consider having some classes on biblical interpretation, the specific term hermeneutics, where we lay out what some of the issues are and lay out why allegorical interpretation can be used to prove anything for anybody.

01:15:19

But basically, we need to take this issue and we need to recognize that, look, if our people are going to live in a post -Christian society where there is so much anti -Christian attitude and so much bad information being disseminated through the internet in other ways, then we need to teach our people how to be real students of the word.

01:15:45

We can't hold their hands at all times. They're up against false teaching all the time.

01:15:50

It doesn't just have to be Harold Camping. It just happens to be he comes along with pretty music and borrowing the good will, shall we say, of those many good men of God who've preached on his station in the past.

01:16:08

He's borrowing their capital, borrowing their credibility and adding it to himself. That's what makes it somewhat insidious.

01:16:15

But our people face false teaching all the time and they need to be students of the word.

01:16:21

They need to know how to truly hear the whole counsel of God that's right there in their

01:16:27

Bible and be able to recognize all of the silliness that is out there in regards to the misinterpretation of scripture.

01:16:36

So that's really where I'm coming from. So we have a microphone that is right there.

01:16:43

And the gentleman, I guess, are you just going to sort of pass it to someone who has a question or what?

01:16:48

How are we going to do it? Okay. So if you have a question, why don't you approach the fellow with the microphone and we'll work at it from that perspective.

01:16:56

Now, I know that many of you were down beforehand imbibing of the coffee.

01:17:03

And some of you have already had to leave. And the rest of you are getting to that point where you're somewhat distracted.

01:17:11

So we will try to take about 10 or 15 minutes to have questions and answers and then we'll be dismissed.

01:17:19

Yes, sir. Just a suggestion and then a question.

01:17:34

We have a Bible Institute at our church. So we're able to train our layman in things such as hermeneutics, expositional preaching and things like that.

01:17:42

Unfortunately, not everybody takes advantage of it. So we now have it on Sunday afternoon, which helps our people.

01:17:49

We recently taught a course in principles of Bible study, which deals with hermeneutics, how to interpret scripture, the errors of the allegorical approach and so on.

01:17:59

And so that's a suggestion. We can't just rely on the Bible colleges and seminaries to do that work.

01:18:06

God has entrusted that to us pastors. Also, if you do expositional preaching, verse by verse exposition of a unit of thought, that will teach your people how to interpret just because they see it happening every

01:18:22

Sunday. But a question for Brother White, you've done a lot of study in the issue of cults.

01:18:29

The marks of a cult seem to be very evident in Harold Camping. One of the key one being his exclusivistic attitude that he doesn't have to check with his pastor or get the opinion of other spiritual leaders and elders.

01:18:52

What do you think? Is this a cult in the making? Unfortunately, you are exactly right.

01:18:59

That's why I played those first two clips. The parallels between this and what happened with someone like Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russell are just too glaring to ignore.

01:19:14

You have a single individual. This is not a group of people. This is a single individual.

01:19:20

You have a rejection of the already established authority that God has given in his word and in his church.

01:19:29

You have a following of that particular individual resulting then in the establishment either of completely false doctrines or doctrines that are merely the traditions of men.

01:19:42

And now, given what's going on with this fellowship concept, who knows what could come next?

01:19:50

There's no boundaries. He could come up next and do what a lot of churches, cults, and isms have done down through the ages and forbid marriage or something.

01:20:03

Why not? There just isn't any foundation for saying to him, Mr. Camping, here, no farther.

01:20:11

And once you break through that line, once you get to that point where you have, in essence, rejected all the restraints that are supposed to be placed upon us, then yeah, you are definitely on the road to a cultdom.

01:20:26

Well, what could stop that? Well, every single other cult that has ever survived, and there have been thousands and thousands that have started, made a splash, and then died out.

01:20:36

Why? Basically, in every single situation, there was no strong second generation leadership.

01:20:44

I don't see anyone on the horizon. I don't see anyone being groomed to take that position of leadership.

01:20:52

And in essence, once Harold goes, and Harold's not the youngest fellow on the planet, what happens then?

01:21:00

Well, I don't think a movement like this can survive simply replaying old open forum broadcasts.

01:21:08

Maybe there'll be two or three people in one house on a mountainside someplace that can survive that, but the rest of humankind can't.

01:21:15

And so, I don't see how it could continue as a full -blown movement without further leadership.

01:21:22

Right now, my concern is, ours are the people that are affected by this. Ours are the people whose lives we are going to see being affected by this.

01:21:32

Whether it's going to last for another 20 or 50 years, there's no way of knowing unless there is that kind of leadership that develops.

01:21:38

Yes, sir? I wanted to suggest that whoever's going to ask questions should line up here, because I'm asking a question also.

01:21:45

Actually, I'm not a pastor. I'm here representing the session of the OPC with my brother Ray, who had to run.

01:21:51

They're at a presbytery meeting, so they asked me to come, asked us to come. I've gotten through a couple of times to Harold Camping, and three times that I've challenged.

01:22:00

I knew I recognized that voice on those other calls. I've heard them all. I listen to them all the time, because at our church, we've been affected very, very hard.

01:22:10

One of the questions that I did ask him was, is it possible that he could be wrong? And I think you spoke about cults, and he kind of dances around it as you have.

01:22:20

But I think as pastors, I think the question to ask anyone that is following him, is it possible that Harold Camping is wrong?

01:22:28

They ultimately must answer that question, that he cannot be wrong. And that, I think, is a good opening to a discussion that should bring, you talk about shivers up the spine, because whether he claims it or not, he cannot be wrong.

01:22:42

If he's being illuminated to this new revelation, he must be right. Otherwise, God would not be revealing it to him.

01:22:49

And I thought you might want to address that as a component. When did you ask him that question, if I may ask?

01:22:54

I actually asked it to him about six weeks ago, I guess, when it was that call that I had made.

01:23:00

It was interesting, because he had gotten a call. Someone previously had asked him if he had checked through any other authority at Family Radio, particularly

01:23:08

Gabriel Otero, if he had talked to him about the Greek. And his response to that question was that I always check everything through Gabriel Otero, and he has not found anything in the

01:23:21

Bible to dispute what I am teaching, implying that he agreed with it. But as we all know,

01:23:28

Gabriel Otero is hard against what Camping is teaching. So it's interesting. No one can come to him and challenge him, because he really does believe that he has this special illumination.

01:23:39

And I think if it's expressed in that way to someone who's following him, they would deny it. If you draw it out to its ultimate conclusion, they'd have to acknowledge that he's an infallible teacher, and God just would not allow that.

01:23:51

Most definitely. And I think that with time, there's going to have to be more clarification on his role.

01:24:02

That question that was asked last night about women in the church and about marriage and funerals and things like that illustrate that he's still groping his way along.

01:24:13

But eventually, he's going to have to start making some claims more openly than he has.

01:24:21

We all can hear it very implicitly. When you say, no one else, no theologian has ever seen

01:24:27

John 21 the way that I do, we can see what's being said there. But eventually, that's going to have to become more explicit in the face of challenges that inevitably are going to keep coming.

01:24:41

But let me just ask one question before Ed asks the question. Why is it?

01:24:47

You're here because you're concerned about it. But remember what happened back in 1994?

01:24:53

There was a general outcry. There was much more attention paid to it.

01:24:59

I mean, Larry King and all the rest of this stuff, there was more attention paid to it. Isn't it sad that when someone comes up with a false prophecy about the end of the world, boy, everybody's up in arms.

01:25:10

But when someone comes along and attacks the church and says there are no elders, there are no officers, the ordinances are done away with, who's talking?

01:25:22

Oh, we? Well, in my little circle, yeah, in our little circle, but generally, it's being ignored. That's a sad commentary,

01:25:30

I think, on where our passions really lie as far as allowing someone like this to go on.

01:25:36

Yes, sir? In refuting what he teaches, it's very easy for a thinking person to listen to what you're saying and then to say, well, that's obviously correct.

01:25:48

But I think that most of the pastors here would agree with me that when we're actually talking to real people, we begin to present facts, and these facts don't penetrate because there's a different hermeneutic or there's a different level at which they're listening.

01:26:02

From a pastoral standpoint, number one, how do we deal with these people that really don't think logically?

01:26:12

And secondly, how do we recover these people in four or five years from now when the dust settles and their lives begin to fall apart and it's going to be embarrassing?

01:26:26

It might be seemingly embarrassing for them to come back because my wife and I were just talking this morning about some of the people that had left our church, and the sad fact of the matter is some of these people were struggling spiritually to begin with, and we love these people.

01:26:45

But now when they estranged themselves from the body of Christ and from any kind of influence or accountability, you know that their spiritual life is really going to begin to dwindle.

01:26:58

I'm not wishing that upon these people, and I certainly hope that I'm not right about that, but that probably is going to happen.

01:27:06

Question number one is, how do you deal with people who really don't think logically? And number two, how do we recover these people when the dust settles?

01:27:16

Two awesome questions, and the first question is extremely difficult to deal with because the fact that, as I've mentioned, there are those who seem to be attracted to anything that in essence smacks of the irrational and is so glaringly self -contradictory.

01:27:37

I don't think that the Spirit of God leads people to think in such a way that we cannot even understand

01:27:44

His Word. I don't believe that the Spirit of God engenders within us a mind that does not think in accordance with His own creation, and so that is a spiritual issue right from the beginning.

01:27:58

And all of these things, I think most of you pastors are sitting here, and if you've experienced something like this, you're going, man, you know, in hindsight,

01:28:07

I can see exactly what the issues were, and we didn't get them dealt with because I didn't see that this was associated with this or whatever, and you're probably second -guessing yourself and everything else.

01:28:19

The simple fact of the matter is, people will take all sorts of different issues and baggage they're carrying and will then utilize this, and part of the irrationality is not that they can't hear you, but that they don't want to hear you, and one of the things

01:28:33

I want to try to emphasize is we are not Superman, and you are not the

01:28:38

Holy Spirit of God, and you cannot reach down into a person's heart and change rebellion.

01:28:46

You cannot change the rejection of God's truth that they may have been dealing with for many years in their life, but now it comes to manifestation.

01:28:57

We can try as gently as possible to use real -life illustrations like I was saying, and to demonstrate the absurdity of what

01:29:05

Harold is saying and saying, well, why can't I interpret Harold Camping the way he interprets the Bible? I think that's one effective way of doing it, but the simple fact of it, it doesn't matter how clear you are.

01:29:15

If a person does not want to hear you right now, they're not going to, and you can't then sit there and go, oh, if this is on my shoulders, this is my fault.

01:29:25

No, you have to recognize that your duty is to clearly proclaim the truth to them, and Ed, I've sat in your church, and you have,

01:29:35

I remember when you were going through Matthew, and I know the work that you put into that. In fact, remember I mentioned it in one of the debates.

01:29:42

You have modeled that. You can't take when someone rejects that as a rejection simply of you.

01:29:50

Any of us cannot do that. We have to recognize that this is part of what ministry is all about, is that we are going to experience this kind of heartbreaking situation and say, and we want to go, haven't

01:30:02

I shown you? Haven't I modeled for you all this time in the work that I've done?

01:30:07

Do you know the blood, sweat, and tears I've put into the preparation? And haven't

01:30:12

I shown the respect I have for the Word of God and the way that I handle it, and so on and so forth?

01:30:20

That's generally not the issue. There's something else going on there within them. Okay, and then the second issue is, this is,

01:30:30

I think, an excellent, excellent question, and that is, what happens if a year from now,

01:30:37

Harold Campion goes the way of the world, and nothing takes off, and these folks are now left with, well, with nothing?

01:30:47

Well, the first, the biggest attitude that we have to protect ourselves against is, well,

01:30:53

I told you. I told you. Because you're right, there is going to be a sense of embarrassment when someone comes in God's grace they come to realize, man, did

01:31:07

I stink that one up? Man, did I make a mistake? What is the character of our fellowships?

01:31:14

Are they going to feel that they can come back and that we, with open arms, are going to accept them and accept their statement that, wow, you know?

01:31:27

Or are they going to feel like, man, whatever I do, I need to move out of state before I ever confess that I was wrong about something like that, because just the looks on those people's faces could be enough to send me to my grave.

01:31:41

Well, that's a question only we can answer, and that's going to affect, most of us are going to have a parting dialogue with those individuals.

01:31:51

When they leave, they're going to explain it. And how we handle that, and what we leave them with, is going to have a big part in that.

01:32:00

I'd keep track of them. I'd keep track of them. And I would not have any problem whatsoever in contacting them once in a while, saying, hey, we're thinking about you, praying for you.

01:32:12

God's still at work in our fellowship, and we're still meeting in the same place. Our meeting times are, you know, and let them know that the door is open and that you would just so rejoice to see them come in, and you all can sit down and talk again.