Harold Camping & May 21st

Got to keep you on your toes, Calhoun, so it keeps you young. That and my Limbaugh ties, I like it, keeps everybody awake. The Synoptic Gospels, we have been for many, many, many years now, and we've come to Section 279, which we've actually sort of already covered, but I may, in a very cheesy, surface-level way, use it to at least mention something here at the start, and I may very quickly depart there from and get back into the study, but just a question.

Are you all ready for next Saturday? You ready for next Saturday, Calhoun? You're ready. You don't know what next Saturday is? May 21st, 2011, is next Saturday, and I was reading in the New York Post about a man who has spent his entire life savings of $140 ,000 to purchase advertisements in the subways of New York.

Harold Camping, May 21st, and the Failure of Date-Setting

When I was in Glasgow in February, there were advertisements, same kind of advertisements, all along the rail lines in Glasgow, all about May 21st, 2011. I listened to an NPR report, a couple NPR reports.

One was an interview with a man who had left his family, left his wife and children, because they did not believe, and he was out preaching in the city square. A couple, she's expecting in June. They have one child, and they have budgeted it so that they will be penniless on the 22nd, because there is no 22nd.

So, they have used everything, so they are running about. There are people driving around the country in Winnebago's that they have had painted with the May 21st, 2011, Judgment Day. There is a, there's a, somebody in my neighborhood, I drive by their house regularly, and the back window of their car, very professionally done, May 21st, 2011, Judgment Day, are you ready?

I don't know if you've seen some of the signs in the Phoenix area now, but they've added a line to it now. It says, the Bible guarantees it. The Bible guarantees it, and as much as it is painful to do so, I've actually tuned in a couple of times recently to the open forum on 88 .9 FM here in the Phoenix area.

It's also available online, but, and listened. As people have been calling in with questions such as, what should I do with my pets? Should I euthanize my pets before the 21st? Hey, if you really think that's it, and you're leaving, and your pets don't pray with you, then, you know, that would be something to think about.

Yes, sir. And then, there's a group of atheists. I went to their website, and for $135, you can sign up, and when the rapture happens, they will come and get your pets, and we'll take care of them for you, and it's good for 10 years.

When Harold starts adjusting his dates, which I'm sure he will have to, starting Monday the 22nd, you'll still have 10 years for your $135, and they all say that they are good moral atheists, so they will, and they love animals, so we can trust them to come get the pets at that particular point in time.

I've had to be thinking about this. Some of you know that I debated Harold Camping. I think I'm the only person that has debated Harold Camping. I debated him last year on all this stuff, and the family radio even played the debate, which surprised me just a little bit.

Harold Camping? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Family radio is Harold Camping, and some of you may recall many moons ago that Harold came up with the end of the world before. He had a book called 1994, question mark.

That's how he got out of that one, and has since then determined that that was the end of the church age, actually the end of the church age was 1988, which ironically and interestingly enough just happens to be when his local church, his local Christian reformed church in the Oakland area asked him to stop teaching, and that becomes the same time when the Holy Spirit left the church.

Isn't that interesting that they would be the same time period? Well, the Holy Spirit left the church. No one can get saved in the church, and I've been on this for a long time. I did an entire seminar back in New York in 2001, so a decade ago, on Harold Camping and his, at that time he hadn't set the 2011 date yet, but he was saying that the church age was over.

The Holy Spirit had left the church. You couldn't be saved in the church anymore. There's an entire series of videos on YouTube of yours truly responding to Harold Camping, and I listened to him and transcribed stuff, and wrote a book.

Some of you have seen the book, Dangerous Airways, on Harold Camping, and then, I don't know, about four or five years ago, he set the 2011 date, May 21st, 2011. He's 89 years old, and a lot of people figured, well, he set it far enough down the road that he probably didn't figure he'd have to be worrying too much about it.

Well, he's still ticking, and still doing the open forum broadcast. The man is not senile. Senile people do not speak as he speaks. He's always spoken as slowly as he speaks today. That's nothing new, but his memory is quite good.

I have the sad feeling that he actually believes what he's saying. I don't have any evidence that he has a villa in Tahiti waiting for him, and he's got a jet waiting, and he's going to take off, because, I mean, people have been giving everything that they have to Family Radio, which is not Family Life Radio, as Family Life Radio keeps warning us and telling us, we're not them.

It's not us, really. It's us. But, you know, what has made me think about it, partly, was listening to the interviews. Of these people. What are they going to do on the 22nd? He has closed every door.

Initially, when people said, what do you think is going to happen? Well, 1844, Edward Miller, a Baptist, had determined that in September, Jesus was coming back, and they're all out on mountains, and they're dressed in white robes, and they're waiting for the coming of Christ, and the next day, the morning, you know, the next morning, the sun rises, and it didn't work.

So, what did he do? Well, he spiritualized it. That is, he said, well, Christ did return, but he returned to his heavenly temple, instead of to earth. And some of you might know, the Seventh-Day Adventist group grew out of all of that, and they have a doctrine called the investigative judgment.

And the investigative judgment doctrine is this idea that Christ returned in 1844 to his heavenly temple, and sent them the lives of all those people who have trusted in him. He's been reviewing them to see if they live the law faithfully enough for him to apply his atonement to them.

Now, I don't know about you, but that's been 166 years now. And even if he did, you know, one a day, I think he would have gotten through all of them by now. And so, you know, that's what happens. You can always spiritualize something away.

Oh, it did happen, but, you know, it happened in the heavenly realms. Well, he hasn't left that door open. He has said, the Bible guarantees it. May 22nd will come, but we will not be here. Millions of people will be dying every day for the next, I think it's 154 days until October 21st.

And that's when the universe ends. And the weird thing is, what they're expecting to happen Saturday is, and I'm not sure where this is supposed to start. They're a little foggy on this one. But most of them say that at 6 p .m., in each time zone as it marches across the world, there will be an earthquake, somehow only in that time zone, that will be greater than anything the world's ever seen before.

So, Japan will be a minor trembler in comparison to what's going to happen starting at 6 p .m. Now, I don't know if they expect to be gone by then. I don't know. I'm not really certain how that works.

But I would assume that my neighbor down the street is going to be glued to the television. Because if it's 6 p .m., I'm trying to figure this out. Would that be Greenwich Mean Time? I mean, that wasn't around back in Bible days.

But camping uses all sorts of stuff that wasn't around Bible days anyways to come up with numbers. So, I guess London gets hit first, because that's where Greenwich Mean Time is. 6 p .m. is going to hit there first.

And so, it should just go around the world or something. I don't know. Start there and then head this direction. Or start the date line. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work. But what's it going to be like to be those folks?

Some of you... How many of you remember the 19... Well, sorry, David. How many... And any of you, the youngest. But any of you remember the 1975 Jehovah's Witness prophecy? The Witnesses, for years, for about a 5 or 6 year lead in, were pushing 1975 as the end of the world.

And in the 5 or 6 years or so after 75, they don't talk about this, but 1 million people stopped associating with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. A million people left. You know what the sad thing is?

Almost none of them joined any other religious group. They became the great religiously abused. The, I don't want to even hear about it anymore. Don't talk to me about it, type of folks that you run into.

They no longer believe the Bible. They no longer believe anything at all. It's just, hey, I did that. Tried that. Leave me alone. And you want to effectively shut someone's ears to any message of the gospel.

That's a pretty effective way of doing it. No two ways about it. Now, I don't know how many followers Harold Camping has. He doesn't keep records. And since he said flee the churches, all they do is gather around their radios on Sunday nights and listen to Harold Camping.

So there really isn't any means of having a numerical idea of how many people there are. But family radio is a worldwide thing. And I have listened to reports about their operations in the Caribbean and in Africa.

And, you know, they're around. Now, I don't think they're nearly as big as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was in 75 or is today. So I don't know how many people. There are some people a little concerned about a Marshall Applewhite Heaven's Gate type thing happening.

You know, purple Nikes and so on and so forth. I sort of doubt that, though I would not at all be surprised if there are certain people, especially, you know, the fellow penniless in New York, life savings blown to buy advertisements that the New Yorkers are going to be walking by on Monday, May 23, snickering at.

And his money paid for all of that. Would someone like that possibly off themselves, jump out a window? People have done it for less. What are they going to do? Campingites are an odd group. I've met Campingites.

Since I have sort of taken a stand against Harold Camping down through the years, they sometimes show up at some of my things and, you know, they're an odd group. They don't like authority and that's why they bought into his, the church is dead, get out of churches type thing.

Because, you know, it's real easy to say I love the Brethren when you never have to meet with them. When you're sitting in your easy chair, it's real easy to love the Brethren, you know, because they're nowhere to be found.

And so they do not play well with others. And so will they, will another movement start? Will there be a charismatic leader that comes along and picks up some of the pieces? Maybe two or three, you know, that build upon what Camping has said, but here's where he missed it and here's a new day.

It's possible, it's possible. I mean, you know, when Victor Paul Weirwill died and the Way International split into all sorts of different groups, that's what you had happening is smaller charismatic leaders are picking up some of the pieces, getting their followers, you know, getting some of the crumbs, don't know, don't know.

But for some, they're going to remain believers in the sense that, and I'm not using the term believers in the true sense, because Camping has veered off into other heresies that he didn't veer off into back in 94.

And honestly, they have added belief in May 21st as part of the gospel. There's no repentance after this. Once the first earthquake hits, that's it, they're out of here, and if you didn't accept that, you can accept everything else.

So if you didn't accept May 21st, you're toast. You're going to be destroyed and you're going, the nice thing is, at least for Harold, is he's now abandoned eternal conscious punishment. So when you die, that's it.

So I suppose that's sort of the consolation prize for all of his followers whose family members are going, you're nuts, and so is he. At least they're just going to cease to exist. But anyway, they've really added that to the gospel.

They've veered that far off into NaNoWan. But there will be some who are just going to continue on, and they're going to find ways of explaining it, and they're going to come up with new dates or whatever.

But I have to wonder about, you know, they interviewed one lady, she was just about to go into medical college. When she learned about Judgment Day, and now she has spent all that money, she can't do that now.

Why? Because the world's about to end, and she's going to wake up on May 22nd, and here we are. And how many of those folks are going to become the religiously abused? Now the world's looking at this, and here's what I really, I guess, wanted to talk about.

It has some connection to the parable of the Great Supper somehow. The world's going to look at this, and they listen to Harold Camping, and one of the things some of you might not realize is Harold Camping has a Calvinistic background.

And a lot of his followers right now are, this came out a couple of times in interviews on NPR, they're saying, Well, I hope that I'm saved, but you see, no one can get themselves saved. There's nothing we can do to save ourselves.

It all has to be of God. So, I'm hoping and I'm praying and I'm crying out for mercy, but that's all I can do. And the world is interviewing these folks and talking to these folks. And let's face it, when, I mean, there are atheists planning rapture parties for the 22nd and all the rest of this stuff, and it's just, once again, the world is going to mock and deride, and we can, in our minds, say, How's the camping guys?

I didn't even know they existed until my Sunday school teacher mentioned something about it to me, or something like that. I mean, how many of you, this is the first time you've heard anything about this?

Is there anyone who had not heard about May 21st? This is the first time you've heard about it at all? Last one, okay. Anybody else? First time you've heard about this? Okay. Oh yeah, that's the Mayan stuff, that's the movie thing, don't worry about that.

Oh yeah, thank you for calling and sharing, may we have the next caller on open forum, thank you for calling. That's Harold. When something like this happens, we might say, it has nothing to do with me.

Well, maybe. I don't think it is fair to hold us accountable for something like this, but the fact of the matter is, you listen to Harold Camping, and Harold Camping says, We need to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and we need to believe that the Bible gives us a truth about God, and who Jesus was, and the cross, and his resurrection, and it's all true in what it says about history.

Now yeah, he has totally abandoned and attacks any meaningful form of biblical exegesis. The numbers, you know, he just, the number five has to do with this, the number seven has to do with this, and we know the number fourteen has to do with this.

You go, where do you get that from? Well, it just comes from his fertile mind. And that's the very essence and matrix of his method of interpretation. That's why the CRC, the Christian Reformed Church he was a part of, eventually said, Harold, you got to stop.

And when he wouldn't, they kicked him out. But if you listen to the debate that I did with him, that's all it's about, is going back to, how do you interpret the Bible? How do you know that these things mean these things?

And he does claim that, well, you know, Daniel chapter 12, there was the small book that Daniel was to eat until the end times, and now God has given more light, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's Latter-day Revelation.

It's almost a Joseph Smith type thing. But he doesn't claim that there's any further revelation. It's just that, well, the Bible itself says that there's going to be greater light. And now this light has broken forth, and I'm just one of many who has seen this.

He's the only one who's seen it. Everybody else is saying it's gotten it from him. But look, he talks about the Bible as Scripture. He talks about the coming of Christ. Well, we believe in the coming of Christ.

And the world looks at something like this, and they go, so you're like Harold Campion. You believe Christ's coming. And the thing that's been a little bit creepy about the whole thing, honestly, is here's Harold just sitting there with this sort of zombie-ish look on his face going, yes, beginning May 22nd, millions of people will be dying every day.

Isn't it exciting? And the world goes, you people are nuts. Every time one of these false prophets comes along, I think back to what Peter said, and where is the promise of his coming? And the mockery level gets higher and higher and higher.

And we can't help, I'm sorry, we cannot help but have this feeling that someone asks me, someone looks at you sometime this next week and says, so don't you believe Christ is returning too? What's the first thought across your mind?

What's the first feeling you're going to have in your heart? I mean, are you going to be ready to, well, I most certainly do. Are you ready, brother? Yes, we're going to go, oh, no. How do I differentiate myself from the Lulu's who are driving down the road with the May 21st Winnebago?

I mean, if we're honest, that's what we do. And there's going to be a hesitation. There's going to be some embarrassment. And that's really something you got to think about. How do you handle that? How do you respond to that?

You got to think about it before it actually happens. What kind of response would you be giving? And it's a bit of a bummer to have the first response that comes to your mind. Well, yeah, but not like that Harold Camping guy.

Because now the entire conversation has been delimited by some guy who, you know, is just so far off the beam on so many things. And yet, look, the world's not going to differentiate between him and us.

All they hear is Bible, word of God, coming again. You're all in the same boat. You're all in the same boat. That's one of the difficulties in living in a nation that is experiencing the wrath of God.

And I honestly believe a proliferation of false teachers and false teaching is a part of the wrath of God upon a nation. And it makes it all the more difficult for us to give a meaningful response for our faith.

It really does. So my suggestion would be, come May 22nd, two things. First of all, you might want to be thinking how you could, in a positive way, respond to hearing mockery about Harold Camping. I mean, if it's someone with whom you have a decent relationship with, there might be ways of doing that.

I don't know that there's a glib way of doing that. I really don't. But with someone with whom you have a decent relationship, some long lines of, you know, this really, really, really proves what I've been saying all along.

You have to handle the word of God carefully. If you do not honor what the Bible says by allowing the authors to speak for themselves, you do what this guy did, where he's just, he is the ultimate interpreter.

And it's, well, this number means this, and this number means that, and I'm the one to blah, blah, blah. Then you're not hearing what the Bible's saying. You're only hearing what you want the Bible to say.

And that, well, here's an awesome example of that. That's why we are so careful on this very thing, to try to avoid exactly that. It might open up an opportunity, just a thought. But I know one thing I've thought of as an elder, is I've listened to some other folks talking to the campingites.

Now, again, I've known campingites now since the late, late 80s. I remember stumbling across him once, one night, driving over to Target years and years ago, and going, who is this guy? And, and especially when I went back east, for some reason, camping has had a lot of influence in the New York area.

So most of you know that I've spoken in pretty much all the Reformed Baptist churches back in the New York area, and they've, some of those churches have been devastated by camping. I just had, and we've had a few show up here.

They don't last long, but we've, we've had a few walk through the back door, and then back to the back door, pretty much same time period. And, but they've, you know, they've been around. And I've heard some, I've heard some of my fellow ministers saying, in regards to the 29th, now, now you realize on May 22nd, which is next Sunday, you realize that our doors will be open to you.

Well, on the level of being gracious, yes, of course. But, but if next Sunday, we have a visitor who walks in, and they say, hey, I haven't been to church in six years, I'll come. Because Harold Camping told me that church age had ended, and I, it didn't.

You know, the only, the first, the first thing I have to say to any follower of Harold Camping, are you willing to repent of your sin? What do you mean? Harold Camping said the church was dead. The church was a haunt of demons.

That the bride of Christ had been done away with. That no one could be saved in the church. That's sin. That's sin. And if you're willing to repent of your sin, specifically, well then, come on in and sit down and listen.

Because my experience has been, Campingites will not sit and listen for any period of time at all. They want to teach. They will manifest themselves very quickly. And I would say, you sit around for quite a while, and you listen.

And if you're consistent, and you show consistency, okay, that's one thing. But I have, I have said on, on my website, I've said on the dividing line, I've said, brothers and sisters, you, you don't just throw the door, come on back.

Yeah, with repentance. Because you do not do what this man has done. You do not tear apart families. You do not tear apart churches. You do not tell people, no one can be saved in the church, and the Holy Spirit's limited only what we're doing.

And then, when it's all proven to be a bunch of baloney, go, ah, well, hey, you know, I, we'll just bop on back to the church we were at. Really? Doesn't sound wise to me at all. And yet, I imagine that's going to happen for some folks.

But then there's going to be those other folks that just, they're either going to become cult fodder, atheist fodder, I guarantee you there will be atheist groups touting former campingites over the next couple of months.

I saw the light. Or they're just going to become the, don't ever talk to me, don't talk to me about this again, don't have anything to do with this. And again, part of the sad part to me is in trying to reason with the man.

I mean, you listen to my debate with him, and I told him during the, we did two days. The second day, he decided to no longer respond to anything I said. The first day, he actually tried to debate, tried to respond to what I was saying.

But clearly, his followers said, this is not working. And so, the second day, he started off, then I responded, and then he just picked up with a pre-programmed presentation in his next part and just kept going on.

And then I'd repeat that, and then he, but he just keep, he would never respond to anything I said until he got the last word. Then he tried to respond to a couple of things I said. So it wasn't really much of a debate in the second half.

But during that second day, one of the things I said was, I said, and Mr. Camping, I would like to make an offer to you that beginning May 22nd, we can set it up electronically, and I will be glad to join your network and for a week, do lessons on how to do biblical exegesis.

Because you refuse to do it correctly. Now, I don't know, maybe I'll get a call on Monday. I don't know. I made the offer. That would be, that'd be nice. But the way that he goes about it is so dishonoring to the text.

It is so, such a mishmash of this, this numerology. And, but at the same time, he joins that with saying, Moses really lived at this time in this place. And Noah lived at this time. In fact, the whole thing's based on 7 ,000 years from the date of Noah's flood, if you're really interested.

It's based on being exactly seven. So he feels like he has figured out the exact date of Noah's flood. There are actually a bunch of problems with it. We've pointed out the bunch of problems with it, which makes me wonder, is that how he's gonna get out of it?

Is he's been, he's been collecting all of the oopses and figuring out which oops would give him the most time? I don't know. It's been done by other people in the past. But there's all sorts of problems with it.

But if you accept his version, the point is, he really believes that these things took place in history. And that's what bothers me, is that people will hear that, and they hear us, and we think that this actually took place in history.

And what is the tendency then of people who then see the failure of this? Well, there you go. There's a reason why those liberal Christians, who don't, they just think all this is just a bunch of fantasy anyways.

And it's just all a bunch of parable. You know, like John Dominic Cross is just a parable, dummy. That's why we need to go with those folks. Because every time you folks try to come up with any type of prophecy based on this, well, of course, we're in the world, we're in the world, as the Bible say, that 7 ,000 years from Noah's flood is when it's gonna all wrap up in the first place.

I mean, you have to, you have to bring together so much stuff that just, trust me, to prepare for these debates and to write the book and stuff like that. Sometimes you just sit there staring at the speakers going, are you for real?

And yet people call, and they buy into this, and what they've done on the basis of this man's teachings, families destroyed, and education's interrupted, and life-saving squandered. I remember talking to a man in New York, back in 94.

He spent money, believe it or not, you all know what Jones Beach is on Long Island? Jones Beach is a really, really popular beach spot on the southern part of Long Island. And people go there from all over the place.

I mean, it's getting there, the traffic is just insane. He bought, he spent of his own money, he was a well-off man, not as well-off afterwards, but, and he had planes with the banners flying behind them, about 1994, flying over Jones Beach during the summer to warn people of the coming end of the world.

And I talked to the man, and you go, man, who could ever be taken in by, well, you know what? You listen to some of these folks, and it's just so sad for them to go, why do I believe this? Because I believe the Bible's Word of God.

It's right there. I mean, and most of us don't take enough, haven't taken enough, wouldn't want to take enough, shouldn't take enough time to dig into all the fertile thinking of herald camping. But these folks have, and now they've abandoned the churches, they're out on their own, they're their own authority, except that they do have one ultimate authority, and that's herald camping.

What's going to happen to family radio? Estimated worth of 120 million dollars last year. Used to be a place where a lot of churches had their radio ministry and stuff like that. They kicked all the churches off because, well, the church ended.

So you can't really, you on a broadcast network that thinks the church is dead. But they had been built up over the years, there's still a lot of them worldwide. What's going to happen to them on May 22nd?

I've often wondered, have they scheduled staff? Is there going to be anybody to show up to monitor the equipment? Are there any programs that have been recorded for May 22nd? I don't know. It's a possibility.

It's a possibility. I'm not sure exactly on what grounds you would do this. Here's where we'll make an application real quick. One of the things that's amazing to me is that people call up all the time, they haven't listened to his excuse on this, but they keep calling up, no man knows the day or the hour.

Well, his initial response was, but we can, we may not know the hour, but we can know the day. But remember the text where it says no one knows, not even the Son, but only the Father? He calls that a trap in Scripture.

A trap in Scripture. It's a trap. It traps those who don't have enough faith to listen to what the rest of the Bible says. And he even at one point slurred it was the idea that the Son in that text isn't Jesus.

It's the devil. Because he's called like the Son of Perdition, or the Son of Belial. So there's other sons in Scripture. So the angels don't know, neither does the Son, that's the devil, but only the Father.

I mean, the lengths to which he has been willing to go in the twisting of Scripture would make you think eventually, and someone I think could make a decent argument, that someone involved by the Holy Spirit of God eventually goes, there's something, there's something right here.

This is, this doesn't make, this isn't making any sense. So what's going to happen? We got, we got six days, and the world's watching, and loved ones, people at work, people at school, whatever. It's going to be a big story for the next two weeks, and then it'll slowly die off.

But I am convinced that these kinds of things have long-term impact in people's thinking, including our own. And when you can go through in your own mind all of, and hey, back in the 70s and 80s, this was a big thing then too.

Not just the Jehovah's Witnesses, but there were a lot of people in quote-unquote mainstream evangelical churches. You know, Late Great Planet Earth was one of the biggest selling books of all time. And, you know, well, you know, we all know that Israel became a nation in 1948.

One generation later, it has to be all wrapped up. One generation is 40 years. So 1988, it's just, just mark it down. And remember, uh, Edgar Wiseman, Wiseman, I think was his name. I remember coming out of church one day, back about 87 or so, and here's a book on my car.

On all the cars. 88 reasons why Christ is returning in 1988. You know, I'm just convinced that over time, when you have a drumbeat of prophetic failure, what's the inevitable thought process? It chips away at one's confidence that someday Christ is going to return.

There's no question about it. And if we don't think about it, if we don't, if we just shove that back in the dark corner and don't deal with it. Now, all these people have clearly violated what scripture says.

No one does know. And so to make those prophecies, they've all been going against it. But certainly in our society, amongst people around us, um, you may have someone this week or in the next few weeks.

Now you go to a pretty conservative church. Do you folks believe that stuff too? How are you going to respond? Opportunity is there. If we think about it beforehand, you don't want to be thinking about it right there.

That's, uh, it's good to do some preparation, some thinking ahead. And, uh, so that's something we will do. Had absolutely nothing to do with the parable of the great supper, but I did at least quote those two texts.

Um, you know, we did, we did make connection. That's pretty unusual. If you're visiting, normally we just go through sections, we just normally do it. But you know what? Next Sunday, it's gonna be a past event.

Uh, not one coming up. So hopefully maybe that will, you know, if you do have the opportunity, I, it's, it's ironic as the only person who's ever debated him, I haven't had a single phone call from anybody.

Evidently no one's really been doing their research to find out who has been talking about this guy, published books about this guy in the past. Not a single call. The world doesn't really care. It really does not want a Christian view of this.

They want an unbelieving view of this. And, uh, Harold has given them their opportunity. He certainly has. So anyway, let's, uh, let's close the time with the word of prayer. Heavenly father, we do believe your promise and in times like this, when we see the world's focused upon someone who has twisted your word all out of shape, Lord, uh, be with us and give us wisdom to give an answer for the hope that is within us as we have opportunity.

And Lord, we would pray that, uh, you would, even in the midst of this judgment, that you would edify your people and that you would, uh, you would save your elect. Be with us now as we go into worship, lift up our hearts.

You might understand your word. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.