It's Not the End of the World

THIS WEEK the world did not end.

As you may have noticed, we are still here. The world did not end at 6:00 PM on Saturday, May 21, as predicted by Pastor Harold Camping in California.

I heard about this man's predictions and saw my friends on facebook wondering whether he would be right, most of them not taking it very seriously. When 6:00 came, I was taking a nap. Mr. Camping had been wrong. Interested in what his reasoning might have been, I looked up interviews with him. From www.nymag.com and www.huffingtonpost.com I learned a few things about him and his idea.

Mr. Camping searched the Bible and found a few things he interpreted as clues to the date of the end of the world. He made his prediction based on the multiplication of several holy numbers - 5, 10, and 17 - and the time since Christ's crucifixion. When he had mathematically determined that his calculations lead to May 21, 2011, he spread the word widely, across continents. He thought the Rapture would occur on a time-zone by time-zone basis at 6:00 PM. But it didn't.

But why didn't it? What I read of Camping's responses to interviewers' inquiries emphatically indicates that he was very sure that his ideas came directly from the Bible, and that he (and those who believed him) were so convinced that they didn't even consider that he might actually be wrong. Maybe they shoud have, seeing that Camping made another prediction for September 6, 1994, which was also incorrect. But if his ideas were founded in Scripture, which is always true, why didn't the world end yesterday? Why aren't we all home with Jesus today?

I believe that Mr. Camping overlooked one important thing. I saw one verse in particular quoted more than any other yesterday, both before and after 6:00. In Matthew 24:36, Jesus says, "But concerning that day or hour nobody knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." I think that's pretty clear. If Jesus says that we will not know when the Rapture and the world's end are going to happen, why would we think someone has calculated it mathematically? Why would Scripture contradict Scripture? God doesn't speak against His own word.

I think that Jesus is more likely to come on a day when nobody is predicting it. He said in verse 42 of the same chapter, "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming." I think that He doesn't want us to try to guess. That's not the point. He left the date unknown to us to encourage us to always be ready for Him to return. How weak would our devotion be if we only had to see that the date was coming up and we tried to prepare just in time?

My friend Peyton put a great quote by Martin Luther in her facebook status: "Live as if Christ died yesterday, rose this morning and is coming back tomorrow." That sums it up well. He wants us to love Him enough to keep serving Him all the time, whether He may come back tomorrow or a hundred years from now.

So He didn't come back on May 21. Maybe He will come back in just a few days. Or a few years, or decades. But He will come back, and He wants us to be serving God in the meantime. Not as a way to try to get into heaven, but as a way to glorirfy the God of our salvation. A lot of the signs He predicted - treachery, war, pestilence, natural disasters, etc - are already occurring.

Honestly, I wasn't scared that the world would end. Christians don't have to worry, because He is coming to take us all home with Him. I would only wish that all my friends had been saved before the end came. Every day that happens in the world is necessarily a day when God has something important left to do. He's not done. So let's all serve Him until the day He returns.

v.45-46 "[45] Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? [46] Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing."