August 14, 2010

Not too many people in South Africa would have heard the name Harold Camping, until the month of May 2011 that is. Since 2005 this radio preacher from the USA has been boldly proclaiming that the Rapture would occur at 6pm 21^st May, 2011. The press got hold of this and gave him a prominence he didn’t deserve.

I remember reading a book, ’88 reasons why the Rapture will be in 1988’ and I also remember throwing it in the bin in January 1989! The book apparently sold more than 4.5 million copies – can you believe it?! Well, in similar vein, it is now, as I write this article, 23^rd May, and so Pastor Camping’s teachings also need to be binned. Actually, they should never have been aired in the first place.

I don’t have much sympathy for Pastor Harold but my heart goes out to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his followers. I wonder how they are feeling right now. I am sad to think of so many people being disillusioned and broken. But God works all things for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28) and so we need to identify what we can learn from this stupid yet sad non-event.

A major lesson concerns the way Camping interpreted the Bible. He used two methods of calculating the day he believed the true saints would be caught up to heaven. The one involved a weird and convoluted number manipulation but the other was based on his reading of the Genesis account of the Great Flood. Genesis 7:4 records how God warned Noah that the flood would start in seven days’ time. The Great Flood was a judgment on all humanity and so Camping reasoned that it must be a type, a sort of spiritual template, for the coming judgement. This is lesson One – we are not entitled to make assumptions like this unless the Bible actually makes the connection for us. Next, Camping arrived at a date for the Great Flood of 4990 BC. I don’t know how he arrived at this date. Bishop Ussher’s chronology placed the flood in 2348 BC while others place it at 2304 BC or even 2750 BC. All of these are more than 2,000 years from Camping’s date.

Somehow Pastor Harold thought that Genesis 7:4 contained a hidden warning concerning a coming calamity. To unveil the meaning the good pastor multiplied 7 by 1,000 and subtracted the 4990 BC date. He then added 1 to allow for the change from BC to AD and, hey presto, we have 2011! Why did he multiply by 1,000? He did so because 2 Peter 3:8 states that one day is like a thousand years to the Lord. So, Lesson Two – we can’t selectively apply one text, out of context, to another text. Genesis 7:4 also states that the flood would last for 40 days, so does this mean that the coming judgement will last for 40,000 years?!

So much for the year, now what about the day? Well, according to Camping, the Great Flood started on 17 of the Hebrew month Iyyar which equates to 21^st May in the year 2011. I presume he chose 6 pm as the ‘lift off’ time because the ancient Hebrew day started at 6 pm on the previous evening – but wouldn’t that make it the 22^nd May? …. Now I am even more confused.

Harold Camping’s interpretive methods come from a belief that the Bible needs to be interpreted allegorically. Preachers in the middle ages used this method extensively because they, like Camping, thought that every text in the Bible contained a hidden meaning. They taught that these veiled meanings could be revealed by relating the text to other texts, irrespective of context, or simply by applying ‘spirit-led imagination’. For example, when the two coins given by the Good Samaritan to the innkeeper (Luke 10:34) are given the hidden meanings of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper!

Unfortunately, Camping is not the only one who interprets the Bible in this ‘mystical’ way. Several years ago I heard the leader of a major church group preach on how the twelve gates in the walls of ancient Jerusalem each stood for a particular church age. He went around the gates in a clockwise direction and concluded that we were currently in the age signified by the Dung Gate – phew!

Some texts may have more than one meaning, but any ‘deeper’ meanings must be governed by the meaning the original readers/listeners would have attributed to the text. There are some exceptions to this in the Bible itself ( for instance the 1 Corinthians 2:16 use of Isaiah 40:13) but the general principle is sound and will guard us from ‘Campingitis’, a not so rare, faith debilitating interpretive ailment.

Jesus-centered

I remember a TV advertisement for cheese-filled steaks from the 80’s where the waiter says “It’s in the center Mr. Venter”.

Actually I have a vague memory of that expression dating back to my teens when the response was “In the middle Cyril”. Please don’t ask me what it meant though.

What we put in the center isn’t cheesy or frivolous, it is vitally important. The bye-line for both the church and seminary I founded is ‘Bible based, Christ centered, Spirit led’, and even here Christ is placed in the middle.

Carl Barth, a great scholar of the mid-20^th century, was known as a Christocentric theologian. This simply means Christ-in-the-center. I too am passionately Jesus-centered and believe that we should interpret all of scripture and life from a Christ-centered perspective. By this I mean that we should seek to understand the Bible and interact with the world around us from the perspective of what the Lord Jesus revealed concerning the values, principles, and priorities of the Triune Godhead. I call this the Christocentric Principle.

Most, if not all evangelical scholars would agree that we should regard the entire Bible as pointing to Christ. We are all familiar with the old adage ‘the new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed’. Most people also know that the Old Testament is replete with prophecies and pointers to Christ. Again, most evangelical theologians would acknowledge that a doctrine is not complete until and unless it includes what Jesus said or modeled concerning it.

For me, though, the Christocentric Principal is more; it is all I have described but more. It is not only a case of seeking to answer the question, ‘what did Jesus say or do concerning this?’ It goes further and deeper by asking another question; ‘how do I understand this from what Jesus reveals of the mind of God?’ By ‘mind of God’ I mean the worldview, character, values, and priorities that Jesus evidenced.

Jesus revealed the mind of God because ‘in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2:9), He is ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15), and ‘the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3). If we want to know what God thinks and feels then we look to Jesus (John 14:9). In this way we have the ‘mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

A question that many people are asking recently is ‘did God send the Tsunami to decimate northern Japan?’ I have heard and read several answers to this question. They range from ‘God predetermines all things’, to ‘God was warning the Japanese to repent and so let’s pray for them’, to ‘God didn’t send it, bad things just happen in a sin-sick world’. How do we answer such a question?

To seek an answer we look into scripture and find that in the past God has indeed used natural catastrophes to punish people groups (Ezekiel 38:19). Of course this doesn’t mean that God is responsible for all natural calamities although some believe that God is the author of everything that happens in the natural world.

This is called determinism which in my opinion is very hard to support from a comprehensive understanding of the whole biblical revelation. It is particularly incomprehensible when we look to how Jesus spoke and acted.

Still struggling for an answer we enquire as to whether God sent prior warnings to the Japanese. The testimony of scripture is that God always warns and allows much time for response before He punishes. Examples range from the great flood of Noah’s time, to the way God dealt with the city of Nineveh. Besides these and other examples, the scripture declares that ‘the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets’ (Amos 3:7). As far as I know there is no evidence of God sending prophetic warnings to the nation of Japan.

Another, and for me more decisive, way to deal with the dilemma is to ask ‘would Jesus do this?’ In this particular case the question is ‘would Jesus send a Tsunami to kill thousands, among whom were surely many of His faithful disciples?’ The Jesus revealed in the Bible healed, restored, and raised to life. Indeed He did warn and admonish but never with destruction and death. He rebuked the disciples who wanted to call down fire from heaven on His detractors (Luke 9:54). When one of His followers cut off the High Priests servant’s ear Jesus admonished the disciple and healed the ear.

So the answer to the Tsunami question is determined in the final analysis by taking account of what Jesus revealed of the mind of God concerning such things. So no, I do not believe that the recent Tsunami was a divine judgment.

I believe that perhaps we would all be a lot clearer in our thinking about the ways of God if we adopted the Christocentric Principle. I also believe that it would help us agree more and divide less over our interpretations of the scriptures. What we acknowledge is in the center makes all the difference. It’s in the middle Cyril – Jesus is the center.

Jesus-centered Read More »

What can Harold Camping teach us?

Jesus-centered

I remember a TV advertisement for cheese-filled steaks from the 80’s where the waiter says “It’s in the center Mr. Venter”.

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