The Wrecked Ship of Acts 27
Another of the tenets of the Depart Out Theory (DOT) is that the wrecked ship in Acts 27 represents the church. I heard Camping claim on his Family Bible Study program that the wind represents Satan. He never explains how he arrives at this false conclusion, nevertheless, he teaches this. The wrecked ship of Acts 27, which he claims represents the organized church, is one of their biggest “proofs” that the church age is dead. Since his exegesis is too long to be included here, I want to attach my own interpretation of a single verse in Acts 27. On that same program, where Camping claimed that the wind represented Satan, he came across the following verse and he stumbled in his effort to bypass it.
(Acts 27:43-44 KJV) But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land: {44} And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.
The verse I want to focus in on is verse 44. Now if the destroyed ship represents the organized church, then we see in verse 44, that after the ship was wrecked, it was not completely destroyed and we read there were fragments of the ship still in the water. We notice that some of the passengers, which are supposed to represent the true believers, clung to pieces of the ship which were still floating in the sea. Since the wrecked boat represents the organized church, then the fragments of the boat represent the faithful congregations that will still be found here and there as we approach the end. Notice that the people are clinging to these fragments. It is interesting to note that in verse 44 the term “boards” is the Greek word “sanisin” which is a noun and in the Feminine Gender. Is not the church called the “Bride” of Christ. Is not the woman the bride? So we see very clearly that the fragments of the boat are a representation of faithful congregations which are located in the sea (which represents the world). The result of finding these fragments (faithful congregations) is that all were saved, which means that God will still be saving people in the churches until the end of time.