See You Tomorrow!

As I type this tonight, we are just about four hours from the beginning of the Day of Judgment according to Harold Camping. I have to admit, after years of studiously avoiding Family Radio, I have been drawn to the last few days of broadcasting. I guess there's a morbid curiosity at work.

I used to listen to Family Radio (WKDN, Camden, NJ) when I was in college. At that time, there was a nice spectrum of conservative Christian programming on FR, and Camping hadn't yet gone off the deep end. While the music wasn't always the style I preferred, the solid Bible teaching was.

Over the years, with Camping in financial control of Family Stations, more and more of the orthodox evangelical broadcasters left the station, and of course all churches left after Camping declared them apostate. What I have heard over the last two days is the shell of a once-great influence for Christ, now reduced to the pathetic echo of a heretical teacher.

This will make a great lead-in for my sermon this Sunday (assuming, of course, that Sunday comes). When we cut ourselves off from the stream of orthodox Bible teaching and set ourselves up as the sole arbiter of what the Bible means, we can go far off the trail, as Camping has done. That's why the Lord gave the church people who are gifted in teaching us about the Word, our faith, and the way we should live. We cannot reach full maturity without depending on each other and on the wisdom of past generations to keep us on the path of light.

I recognize that we don't all agree on everything about theology and Christian living. We need to understand, however, that together, as each person and each group goes to the Bible for the truth, we can work toward a common understanding of many things. Our goal, of course, is the full unity in Christ that will one day be ours when we get to heaven. Until then, we need to sharpen and challenge our brothers and sisters in Christ to seek after and live the truth.

In the meantime, let's pray for those who will be disillusioned by the failure of the false prophecy of Harold Camping, and may be tempted to give up on God and the Bible altogether. Let's pray for those who would use the heretical predictions of an eccentric teacher to discredit the Bible. Let's pray that Camping himself would recognize his error and repent and turn back to Biblical truth. And let's pray that we will be diligent in our own study so that we re not led astray by those who take a little truth and mix in a lot of falsehood, bizarre interpretations, and ego to seduce us away from the Bible's teachings.