Date: Tue Oct 2, 2001 5:17 pm
Subject: Re: Harold Camping

There is a man attending our church who is related to the Camping family. I hope his thoughts prove helpful. To protect his family from more personal grief, he wishes to remain anonymous.

Todd Bordow
Fort Worth, TX

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Dear Rev. Todd Bordow

(I've written my response in a formal manner in the event of its distribution to other church officers and/or members within the denomination)

All things considered, I feel it's my responsibility to make a significant response to your offer for advice. As one who has married into the Camping family, attended the Reformed Bible Church of Alameda and talked many hours with Mr. Camping personally about his teachings, my hope is that my experience help you in this situation.

Background:

At the beginning of this year Camping was a ruling elder in the independent Reformed Bible Church of Alameda. Previously, Camping was elder in Alameda CRC before he announced that he and others would be splitting.

Years later, after the growth of Family Radio ministry (hereafter FR)- a non-profit Christian radio organization - Camping publicly predicted that Christ would return in 1994. The thrust of his book "1994?," was to present his reader with Scriptural evidence that 1994 would indeed be the year of Jesus' second coming. In fact, Camping said that he was 99.9999999% sure that 1994 was the correct year. Of course, the year came and went and many left the church or became disillusioned. But to the loyal few that remained the whole ordeal took new meaning - God truly used Camping and his 1994 prediction to bring others to Christ and to think more about their salvation even if he was wrong. However, though Camping realized that he had made "a simply miscalculation" somewhere he wasn't altogether wrong.

Presently, Camping has the full picture. Camping was correct that 1994 did amount to something significantly, but it wasn't the end of the world, but rather the end of the church age. He did not account the period of time called the "latter rain" which fits in between the church age and Christ's return. This latter rain period is a second sending of the Gospel, so to speak. In the "former rain" God used the church to send his Gospel forth to the nation, via missionaries. Now due to the corruption of the church, the prevalent wickedness in the world and the never before paralleled number of people in the world, God is now using radio and Internet technology via ministries like FR to send forth the Gospel.

The following are some thoughts on how the OPC may deal with current church members who are either

(1) influenced in any fashion by the teachings of Harold Camping or

(2) giving serious contemplation to revoking their membership from their local church as a result of these teachings.

· The method of dealing with this situation must be direct, unwavering and serious at every point. Listening to error is not neutral and the power of influence shouldn't be minimized. Moreover, following the suggestions of Camping must be shown to be detrimental to the spiritual well being of the believer and outright sin.

· I'd be in favor of emphasizing the approach of dealing with the doctrines of Camping over the pronouncement of him being a false prophet. That is, not because I don't think the label is warranted, but because a pronouncement of this sort will in a sense only serve to fortify the claims in the undiscerning minds of listeners that "your churches will tell you that I'm a false prophet." Mr. Camping is not reluctant in being the martyr, so his audience is primed for this response. However, if such an approach is pursued I'd opt for the term false teacher instead of false prophet because false prophet has the connotation that he's heard a special word about the future, which Camping is not claiming. The 1994 idea was built on an exegetical basis, not a prophetic one.

· It's not a stretch to say that those who have been influenced are inundated with similar methods employed by the major cults:

(1) there is the general distrust of anyone outside the circle.

(2) The visible church majority is in the process of falling away or has completely fallen away.

(3) No accountability in organizational structure.

(4) A single charismatic leader who his followers tout as being very unique and an instrument that God is greatly using to bring the Gospel.
(5) Scripture is filtered through the interpretation of this one man. Members only find it natural to "see" the same things while studying the Scriptures for themselves.

(6) A constant focus on the apparent huge doctrinal antithesis between them and others. Those no longer affiliated with Family Radio will cite a "brain-washing" mentality in no uncertain terms.

· Pastors will know their individuals better than I will, but my experience has been that those influenced have been attracted to the anti-Arminian element of Camping's teaching; many who found Camping's Calvinism a breath of fresh air. Thus, loyalty is naturally rendered to the instrument that God used to pull you out of that theology.

Some are simply undiscerning, while others are doctrinally lazy. Still some just relish the idea of being the "correct few." However, many are simply scared and confused. Having been saturated in poor reasoning, erroneous exegesis and half-truths, these folks don't really know who or what to believe anymore. Regardless, the question must be pressed whether they follow God or a man. Ask them to present the Scriptures that support Camping's position or to reiterate the argument for the elimination of the external church. You'll find more than often those influenced can't do it and fall back to quoting Camping or making general claims like "there's a lot of error in the church" or "there's so much wickedness out there."

· There is a complete absence of church history with those influenced by Camping. The eschatological viewpoint holds a very short timeline between "the good 'ol days" when the church was strong and the current woeful plight of the church. As with many in Christendom, this generation (supposedly) has all the outward signs of being the end of the world. The war cry is that "never before have we seen so much sin in the world" or "that the church has never been so corrupt." Those influenced should be exposed the richness of faithfulness of the church in history as well as the many, many prognosticators who have come many years before Camping and claimed that the end will take place in their generation.

· In FR circles there is a huge emphasis on the Scripture only. Appeal to a Confession will only reinforce the implanted idea that the Confession ("man's word") is held in higher regard by the Reformed community than God's Word.

· My suggestion is to show the unavoidable lack of Biblical evidence for Camping's position. Once the allegorical premises of Camping's arguments are disregarded the whole doctrine falls apart. Pastors should properly define over-used and over-emphasized terms such as "high places" and "latter rain" and show the Biblical description of these terms to be quite different from Camping's use of the term. (e.g., high places are signified as places of pagan worship, where persons offered incense to graven images and idols. - 2 Kings 8:14)

Meanwhile, Camping uses the term to encompass any doctrine that the church holds to be true, which in his estimation is unbiblical. For instance, he cites the doctrine that divorce is allowable in the event of fornication as a high place. Whether Camping or the confession is right on this point is not the issue here. The issue is that Camping's use of the term does not accurately depict the Bible's usage.

· The implications of the end of the external church shouldn't be neglected: no infant baptism, communion, order or discipline. The Bible presupposes the existence of a visible, corporate church in which to administer the sacraments, to worship, and to discipline, and never gives us a reason to believe in its non-existence. There is not one shred of evidence that God ever removed His candlestick from the visible church. This whole ideology that God has removed all the candlesticks from the churches is a monstrous claim with no empirical or biblical verification. It's built on one reference - Rev. 2:5, which as I've stated is not about what did transpire, but rather a presentation of a conditional - if X, then Y. Even if we were to grant Camping that God removed all the candlesticks at a certain period in history (a big "if" by the way), he still must demonstrate that God stopped placing candlesticks. His doctrine presupposes that we start with X amount of candlesticks and once the all of X are unfaithful and thereby removed we are left with zero. Pastors may want to go over Camping's latest work with their members and show the numerous stretches, interpretative chaos and flawed reasoning that is throughout this work -

· There's a flawed method on how to deal with error in the church. Inadequate time is not given to huge denominations even if they agreed with Camping. Camping's own doctrine has changed throughout the years (at one time he believed in divorce for fornication) and he hasn't extended the same patience to others. If seminaries and churches do not respond to Camping's writing, then FR interprets this as not having a response, because Scripture won't support a contrary position.

· Finally, the fickleness and ever-changing character of Camping's teaching should be juxtaposed with the ever-changing Word of God. From reading his latest article, I see that one of his views on the external church has even changed within the year. Not more than a year ago, I asked Camping whether God would still use the church if, on his view, they removed their high places. He remarked that if they repented God would still use them. This has changed as we can see from his article: "Not a stone will be left," meaning no church regardless. Has Camping finally gotten it right this time? Or perhaps in five years he'll find that the Bible speaks of yet another period that he forgot to account for.