Believers weren’t “raptured” up into heaven on May 21st, 2011, like Harold Camping had predicted. That’s no surprise. Camping was a fringe kook. Right?
Don’t be so quick to judge. A 2010 Pew Research poll found that a staggering 41% of Americans believe that Jesus of Nazareth will probably return to earth by 2050. That’s not 41% of evangelical Christians, or even 41% of Christians. That’s 41% of all Americans.
The only difference between Harold Camping and that 41% percent is that Camping picked a one-day span, and they picked a 40-year span. Many of the Christians who mocked or decried Camping’s prediction were not doing so because they thought the prediction was wrong, but because it wasn’t as vague as their prediction. Harold Camping isn’t fringe. He’s just more specific.
Ryan says
Holy crap those stats are scary.
I hope none of the Americans I know are that insane/stupid.
Shane Gowland says
…and herein lies the problem with the world.
eyecool says
And now he’s saying he was off by 5 months.. The real rapture will be Oct. 21, 2011.
http://yhoo.it/krWXNk
Justin Sainton says
Myself a Christian, I think either time span is insane. If you actually believe what the bible and Jesus say – and you have even a basic understanding of history – predicting any date at all is just plain senseless.
David says
It’s almost as bad as the percentage of people that believe in man-made global warming despite that fact we’re polluting more yet somehow we’re in an estimated 10-year period of global cooling.
Michael Torbert says
I disagree. You’re saying that in the non-Christian view of things, the earth/sun has billions of years to go, so whether you narrow it down to either 40 years or 24 hours is an insignificant difference. That’s not really what’s happening. It isn’t a a matter of a 24 hour period or a 350,000 hour one. Camping used a “day” as a specific *point* in time when the Earth will definitely end, not a 24 hour span of time. The other Christians you’re referring to aren’t referring to a 40 year point in time as the definite end of the world, rather pointing out that signs indicate the start of the Biblical end, which could have any relatively short span, possibly within our lifetimes.
One is a fundamentally false prediction, the other is a general belief. Either way, we don’t know for certain when He will call us home.
Mark says
On December 30th, 2049, the two positions become equivalent, as they both have been narrowed down to a single day. Both predictions or beliefs are silly, both objectively, and from a Biblical perspective (as the Bible clearly says, many times, that no one knows this date, and that it will be a surprise).
Bnpositive says
I disagree. I think the fact that he thinks he can predict the day does make him “fringe”. The stat that 41% of Americans believe God is coming back by 2050 doesn’t have that much odd merit to it. I believe that sometime in the next 40 years I’m going to be in a car wreck and should be prepared for it. That’s not to “out-there” is it? Now if I woke up tomorrow morning and said I’m going to be in a car wreck today, along with everyone else on the planet, now that’s pretty “fringe”.
Mark says
Both positions are oddly specific in a way that they can’t possibly objectively or Biblically know. It hasn’t happened for almost 2,000 years of Christianity. There have been 50 forty-year periods in there. Why is this forty-year period special?
It isn’t, of course. It’s nothing but vanity and an inflated sense of being in a meaningful time in history.
Aaron D. Campbell says
My first thought after reading this was that there’s a difference between thinking God will *probably* return by 2050 and saying that He *will* return on a specific day.
Unfortunately, the issue is actually worse than you state. It says “By the year 2050, 41% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ definitely (23%) or probably (18%) will have returned to earth.” I wish I knew exactly how the questions were worded (hoping that there was ambiguity that confused people), but unfortunately the truth is likely that 23% of Americans are extremely confused and don’t understand what they profess to believe. I believe the Bible to be true, so I believe that God will return but that I don’t know when (no one does).
This bring us to a much more involved discussion that would probably be better over drinks and with LOTS of time, but I’ll just touch on it here. Basically we all profess to believe something that we don’t fully understand and can’t prove. I don’t claim to fully understand God and I can’t prove He created the world (I have no video evidence, I can’t get Him to just “do it again” in a lab, etc). Likewise, many believe that the world happened by chance. That something came from nothing with no external force. Possibly that gravity is actually negative-energy and the entire universe is zero-sum (yep, I watch the stuff you link to), but it still can’t be proven and even if it *is* proven there’s no way to prove that the world came into existence in that way.
Anyway, all that as well as why I believe what I believe is a can of worms for another day 🙂
Scot Manaher says
I am a Christan but practice my faith privately. Many of these church leaders are just out to make money off their congregation. So this whole story comes at no surprise. Look at how Benny Hinn TV evangelist is living in luxury “all in the name of God”.
So the whole story behind Harold Camping is an elaborate hoax to promote his website, radio broadcast, and “church”. The kicker here is all that money he makes in donations that feed his media campaign our untouchable by the IRS.
Maxx Kremer says
These predictors, Christian or otherwise, come and go. Why people even listen to them, is beyond me.
Depending on the Christian strain followed, will depend on what they believe. What burns me, is that Christians only follow certain parts of the bible, and disregard the rest. For instance, Jesus said to a gathering that, “…heaven is not up there or over there, but within…”. So why do a large percentage believe that when they die they are going to heaven? Heaven is a state of being, well, that is how I read it. And what about when Jesus addressed a crowd and said, “I tell you all, it is not written in your laws, but you are all God’s?”
Because of the unreliability of the bible, why would anyone take it seriously? Did Jesus die on the cross, that so many take as true, when at the time that this supposedly happened, people spoke in parables? But modern Christian’s believe it to be literal. The whole parable is to show us that you must kill off your old ways, before experiencing heaven.
Is there a beginning or end to this universe? I think not. If you look at anything in this world, where is the beginning? Take some moss growing on a wall, for instance, show me where it started, show me where it ends! What is true on the micro, is also true on the macro. Creation is not started by some superbeing, but is created through causes and conditions. Is there an end to anything in this world? I believe that nothing disappears, when it supposedly “dies”, it just transforms into something else. When a leaf falls, it just decays and becomes part of the earth. it is still there, but known by another name.
I believe that Christianity devalues us as humans, as they say that God did everything for us and what happens to us. As Jesus said, “We are all Gods.” We are the creators of our world, we are God.
Dan says
The 41% of Americans, I’m afraid, are too much influenced by the predictions by the kooks who are in it for the money.
Ryan Scott (@39Blogger) says
Christians and atheistic Scientists have one prediction in common. They both believe one day the world will end. Christians by God and atheistic scientists by a return to the pre-Big Band state.
Comparing the Christian opinion that God would probably come back in the next 40 years with Camping is, no offense, simplistic and ignorant of Biblical text.
Jesus said nobody would know the day or hour that he would supposedly come back. However, the Bible is full of claims that Christians could “see the day approaching.”
To put a “false prophet” on the same scale as all Christians would be to put Al Gore in the same scale as Steve Jobs.
Disclaimer: No, Al didn’t invent the internet.
Mark says
Isn’t that what Camping says? Again, my point is that the only difference between “on X day” and “in the next 40 years” is your level of specificity. It’s still a bold, unfounded claim that will necessarily skew your world view.