Harold Camping Seminar, 2002

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

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

That is a confession we don't hear a whole lot today. 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 Reformation tend to overreact in a negative way to an overemphasis upon a perversion of the Church in Roman Catholicism.

And as a result, we don't confess our love for the Church because we hear people talking about the Church, the Church, the Church in a negative fashion. 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 Apostle Paul, for example, concerning the body of Christ, the Church.

And 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.

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 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 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.

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. 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 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. 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.

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

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

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

I mean, this man is engaging in the most egregious errors of interpretation with a straight face. Why would anyone listen to this? Well, we need to understand the motivations, the mindset, because what 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.

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 short wave, 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.

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 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 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, 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?

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 a 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.

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

There are many issues that the Harold Camping situation raises. I'd like to start off, however, with a sound clip from Mr. Camping that I find tremendously troubling. Tremendously troubling. In fact, there's two of them.

I'm going to reverse the order in which I was going to play these. One of the things, one of the reasons why 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 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 Mormon Church. Out where I live in Phoenix, Arizona, Mormonism is there what Jehovah's Witnesses are to you.

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

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 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.

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 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.

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

That should cause all of us to go, hmm, I see, really. Listen to what he has to say. This is from Open Forum or from his, straight off of the Family Radio website.

Now, incidentally, you noted that as time is going, I become more and more firm in the conviction that we're at that time. And that is true. It's based on more and more evidence piling up from the scriptures.

This is not something that is talked about in an incidental manner. As a matter of fact, I'm getting calls, I'm getting letters, I'm getting information from all kinds of people who are ahead of me. 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 Bible is teaching. We're at that time in history. And that the church now is under the judgment of God.

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. 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.

God's work is not frustrated. He used the churches for over 1 ,900 years and their work now has been finished. And God has used the churches very successfully for over 1 ,900 years.

Now there you have his assertion. Yes, God used the church for over 1 ,900 years, but now the church has come under judgment. God's judgment is there. But notice what he says. He emphasizes that, you know, there are some people that are ahead of me.

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

If you've looked at this, we should have seen this coming because it's nothing new. I mean, this is the same methodology. And this is what amazes most of us who are familiar with what's going on here.

This is the same methodology that he used to derive 1994. Nothing has changed. You go to the book 1994. He attacks the church in there. 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., etc., that really doesn't mean anything.

And in fact, since everything in the 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. 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.

Because once, I'll give you an example. I wish I could play all of this, but it's way, way too long. John 21 has become Harold Camping's favorite place in his attack on the church. 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 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 West Coast Conference and finished up over at Tuscarora, which is somewhat ironic.

That's where he presented the rest of this material. He keeps coming back to John 21 and back to John 21. When you start looking at John 21 and understanding what Harold Camping is saying, it is absolutely, positively amazing.

In John 21, we have the apostles who go fishing. And, of course, there are seven apostles, and, of course, that's significant. And the apostles represent the church. And in the church age, the church is to be fishing for men.

And so this is what they're supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be fishing. However, it's night, and that's very significant too. In fact, everything is significant. And now remember, they get into boats, and boats are significant.

And there are two boats, and two boats are significant over in the other story about boats. Because remember, as long as the term boat appears in a text, for Harold Camping, they're all the same text.

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

Happens all the time. And 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. And so he can just simply say, we've already seen that the Word of God says, and it's like, okay, 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 I'm talking about. And so he says, well, you see, over here you had two boats, and the boats began to sink.

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. 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.

It's like theological Plato. You just simply get a piece over here and get a piece over here and form whatever you want. There are no rules. There's no canons. There's no way you can disprove this kind of interpretation.

Of course, you can also prove anything that you possibly could ever want from this kind of interpretation. But back to John 21. So they go out on the boats, and it's night. And they don't catch anything, and that's a bad thing.

That's a bad, bad thing. You don't catch anything that has something to do with the tribulation period. And everyone can see that, right? And so when the morning light's starting to break and they see Jesus on the shore, they don't know it's Jesus.

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

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

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, 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.

And so all this comes together, and so you've got the apostles out in the boat, and they recognize it's Jesus. Remember John 21 7? Peter is in the boat, and the 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.

But whatever it was, Peter's naked, and so he wraps his outer cloak and casts himself into the sea. And the sea, of course, represents hell. Because that's where we're pulling souls, somehow pulling souls out of hell when we fish for men, or something along those lines.

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 Jesus. Peter becomes a picture of Jesus, who was naked on the cross, and then, and I'm not making any of this up, folks, this is all directly from his own mouth, and then girding the outer cloak around him is related to Psalm 18, which is a messianic psalm, 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. So Peter, at first he's an apostle, and then he is a picture of Jesus, and the boat is the church, and since they can't bring the fish into the boat, that's why he keeps saying, see the fish are outside the boat.

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

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 wonderful theological weapon in their hand called allegorical interpretation, are ransacking the entire text of Scripture, the entire canon, and oh, look, we can make this a picture of this, and we can make this a picture of the church, and it's under judgment, and that means we're right.

And they're sending all this stuff in to Harold Campion. The beginning of this clip was due to the fact that 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.

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, and that was part of the response that was given to that particular one.

But this one I find more troubling, and this one's almost three minutes in length. This actually is from the conferences that they had, and notice some of the most interesting things come about when we're saying something sort of offhand, sort of a side point.

Here he's going to start talking about ships again. He thinks the destruction of the ships of Tarshish has a lot to do with the destruction of the church and all the rest of this stuff. 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 study that they are undertaking and how no one has ever understood the things that they are now teaching about. Now when we look at,.

The Claim of New Insight and the Allegorical Method

Let me first of all talk a little bit about ships. Remember when we were looking, maybe some of you heard this study on Sandman Radio about Tyre Insight, and let me just review one or two points in case you didn't hear it, or if you did hear it, this is all such new material.

In fact, I go over it again and again and again, and each time I have something more to learn because this is material that has never been taught at any time in history. 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. 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 Bible. But heretofore, it has not been known to anybody. It was not known to me.

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

Abraham, for example, was spoken of as the father of a multitude of nations, yet nobody understood it. Nobody understood it. Finally, Paul comes along under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the book of Ephesians and says, a secret, a mystery has been revealed to me.

And he talks about the fact that the gospel is to go to the Gentiles. There was a timing for revelation. Now, we're living in a day right near the end where all things written must be fulfilled. So we can expect that in our day, we can understand passage after passage after passage that heretofore has been unable to understand.

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 Bible. But just because it's in the Bible, it doesn't mean that we can be blessed by it until God the 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. And that's one of the cudgels or one of the disciplines or one of the encouragements that causes me, for example, and I'm sure it causes many of you, to keep reading and reading and reading.

What else is there? What else can we understand? And here we have come to a point where we are beginning to understand a lot of things that have never been understood before.

Well, I hope that for everyone, that causes a shiver up your spine. We're learning and we're understanding things that no one has ever understood before. Don't underestimate the attraction that that has for many people.

You as pastors know who I'm talking about. And I've talked about these folks before. In fact, I remember the first time I ever used this illustration was at Bill Shishkoff's church. That was like the second time, about 1997.

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

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.

And I was using that illustration in regards to the sufficiency of Scripture. That is, people who want to look for more, they're not satisfied with what is here. They could never pray the 119th Psalm and understand what the psalmist was saying, that my soul is satisfied with your word.

They're always looking for something new. Well, those types of folks, first of all, you know they're eventually going to find something. They're eventually going to find something. But those are the types of folks who are going to hear Harold Campion go, oh my, oh my goodness, what an interesting possibility we have here.

Because this guy is offering me new things, things never understood before. And if we thought the Gnostics were dead, they're not. Gnosticism is alive and well, and it's alive and well within evangelical congregations.

People wanting to feel like, you know, I've got an insight that no one else really has, just me and a few others. In fact, I once talked to Brother Campion, and I showed him something that the Lord had shown me, and I heard it on family radio later on, you know.

Don't underestimate people. There are people like that, and they may not have seemed that way when they first came through the door. 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. And that's why we need to be aware of what Mr. Campion is saying and his claim that no one's ever understood these things. I would assert to you that that is a direct contradiction of the teaching of Scripture.

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

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. 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.

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

So that anyone, anyone who really is stirred in their soul and they say, they think, this can't be. What about this verse, or what about that verse? Those questions can be raised, and we can talk about it together.

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 it. And I value comments and questions and interrogations and so on from anyone, because I never, never want to be in a position where I say, well, this is what I said.

Now, whether you like it or not, that's where it is. No, no, no. There's no personal ego about this, none whatsoever. If I say, this is what I read in the Bible, and if you have a serious question about that, now, wait a minute, aren't you misunderstanding that?

Please let me know, let me know, because maybe you can teach me something. I tell you, I learn from people. I learn what I learn from the Bible.

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

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.

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

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 we want to take the worst-case perspective and assume that Harold Camping quite some time ago had a plan that he was going to lay out 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.

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.

Generally, people accept it 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.

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

And guess what was on? Open Forum. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. The last thing 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, and in two of those calls, this was the subject of discussion, 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, and thank you very much for the warning about the church. She said, you know, and it was fascinating to hear these words.

I was sitting right at the stoplight leaving the shopping center over there, by the way, for those of you who were there. And the woman said something that was just fascinating to me. She said, you know, it's just natural to want to be in the church and have fellowship with other Christians.

But I just always felt there was just something wrong, something missing. Now, Camping interrupted her and said, well, you do want to remember Hebrews chapter 10 and gathering together with believers, and even if it's just around the radio, you want to do that on Sundays.

But her whole idea was, you know, it's just sort of natural to want to go to church. Yeah, I wonder why. But I always felt there was just something not quite right. And now Mr. Camping has given her a reason for accepting that there's just not something quite right.

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, and they're always looking for some sort of a reason.

And then the last caller, fascinating caller. The last caller was not Mr. Camping's friend. I don't know that he realized that. But he calls up and says, so there's no church anymore. Well, so what are you going to do about funerals?

Well, we haven't had to face that yet. It's exactly what Harold said. It's going to happen eventually, Harold. You know, it's the way of life. 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 Christian weddings?

Well, we should have. And you could tell, I could honestly tell he's making this up as he's going along. He's never thought about this before. Well, you could have some people stand up and talk about a Christian marriage.

And then this is fascinating. And then you want to have a Christian celebration in the fellowship hall afterwards. Excuse me, fellowship hall? Where did you get one of them if you don't have a church in the first place?

Where did that come from? And then the fascinating question. Mr. Camping, now that there's no church, can the women speak equally with the men? Oh, fascinating response. Well, no, because 1 Timothy 2 says, Well, excuse me, but I thought 1 Timothy was written to Timothy so he could know how to order things in what?

The church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth? Oh, but that's still binding. Fascinating. Sort of groping along. How are we going to do this? Doesn't know. And yet has the temerity to tell people, flee the church.

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

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

Like I said, this takes a few minutes, but it's a good summary statement.

They in turn sent out missionaries and other churches were established. And then those other churches, they in turn also began to send out missionaries. And that's the way God's whole plan of evangelization has been going on for the last 1900 years.

At time, that plan has faltered a little bit. And denominations have gone apostate. But then God raised up other denominations, other churches, other congregations, so that the work proceeded. And this was God's plan.

But in our day, when the population is exploding, God has developed a new plan. And we're seeing more and more of that as we look at this study as well as we study some other things in the Bible.

Let me stop it just for a moment. He expands on that in many, many other places. And his assertion is God has not only brought judgment on 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.

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

And 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 and the wrong practices that have been part of the New Testament church all through its history.

Even as in the Old Testament, we read about the kings of Judah. And each one, many of them, loved the Lord greatly. God blessed them greatly. And yet within their kingdom, there were high places. High places is where they worshipped other gods.