Harold Camping and Amos 3:7

One of the key verses of the “Church is Dead” movement spawned by Harold Camping is the verse found in Amos 3:7. Camping claims that God will not do anything unless He first reveals it to His prophets. When Amos penned this verse under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that was a true statement to the utmost because Judah was being very rebellious. God was sending prophets to Judah to warn them of the impending judgment which would come upon them if they did not repent of their sins and return unto the Lord. Well in 587 B.C.  Judah was invaded by Babylon and they were removed to Babylon as the judgment which God warned was coming, had finally arrived.

Camping and his followers continually refer to this verse when speaking of the teachings of Camping. They teach that God is still bringing truth by one man just as He did in the Old Testament. There God used Moses, Joshua, Solomon, David, and many others as central figures to disseminate His truth. Now we must face the question, is God still using this method today to bring His truth to the billions on earth? We can find an answer to that question very easily in Hebrews 1:1:

From 1447 B.C. to about 445 B.C., over a period of about 1000 years God spoke in parts to different prophets. The earliest was Moses and the latest in the Old Testament was Nehemiah and Malachi, as they were contemporaries. God spoke through the prophets during that 1000 years and it was not a steady revelation. The book of Job is dated about the time of Abraham which would put it about 2100 B.C.

Here, God teaches us plainly that this method of revelation to a certain few was done in “time past” which means the days of one person receiving revelation from God to disseminate it to the world is over. That method was used before the cross of Christ. Once Christ went to the cross and was resurrected, He then went back to Heaven and the Father sent the Holy Spirit to indwell every true believer. According to Hebrews 1:2:

The method that God is using in these last days, (which commenced from the cross and will end on the last day) is that He is speaking through His Son. The times of the prophets are over and now the Son gives the truth through the indwelling Holy Spirit and every believer is now commanded to prophesy, that is, to declare God’s Word. Nowhere in Scripture do we find that any one person is going to receive special revelation or warnings from God, whether audibly, through dreams, or even through the study of the Scriptures. All the warnings to the human race have been placed in the completed Bible and are sufficient to send forth warnings of judgment and warnings to repent from sin and warnings for the last day judgment of the unsaved portion of the human race. These warnings are sent through the Body of Christ which is spread out throughout the whole world. God no longer uses only one person in the New Testament era as He did in the Old Testament era.

Harold Camping uses the allegorical method of biblical interpretation and that method allows a person to apply any meaning to any verse. For example, here is one of Camping’s twisted interpretations:

Camping claims that this verse refers to the corporate churches that they had some truth through the church age but now even the little truth they had has been removed as Satan now rules in the church. Do you see how easy allegory makes it to create an application, especially a mythical one. Since when is the corporate body of believers referred to as “him?” This is why Camping can so easily go back to Amos 3:7 and indirectly name himself to be a prophet because he thinks that he has been given the calendar of history which will end on October 21, 2011 which is 5 months after the believers have been raptured on May 21, 2011. As we can plainly see that God now speaks through His Son and not through individual prophets as He did in the Old Testament. Here too Camping makes a very erroneous application and his disciples will never challenge it. Hebrews 1:1-2 makes it so plain that the method of individual prophets bringing truth is over and done with, and since Pentecost, that job of world evangelism and warning is given to every believer. There are no special cases. Camping’s followers have declared that he is a prophet and that is why they avoid verses like Hebrews 1:1-2, because it shows the false and satanic teachings of Campingism.

Back