Reading Time: 6 minutes

I always wondered what it would be like to know I only had one day left to live, and now I do.  Obviously, this will be the last blog entry for, well, ever.  Apparently the rapture is taking place tomorrow, not because God said so (because if I read the Bible correctly, He won’t), but because a sweet, little, 89 year-old false prophet named Harold Camping did.

Sure it seems kind of harsh to call someone’s grandpa a false prophet, but just because he drinks a lot of prune juice doesn’t make him harmless.  In fact, I’d say it makes him a bit more dangerous because his appearance makes him a little more believable (that was just one of the multitude of points I tried to convey recently in a post about Boston Rob and Survivor, too).  There’s something that seems nice about a man who can pull out his teeth, but he’ll fool you quicker than the blink of an eye, which, ironically, is how long it takes for those of us who are raptured to get out of here:

It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. (1 Corinthians 15:52)

Before we camp out too long on this prediction that the rapture will take place on May 21, 2011, (and we can’t take very long, since we’ve all got a lot of last minute stuff to do, like GET RIGHT WITH JESUS and such) let’s start off with the only real argument from Scripture about why Harold Camping is a heretic:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,but only the Father (and Harold Camping)…so you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.  (Matthew 24:36,44 – heresy added)

Did you catch the 2 main points in those verses?

1. No man knows the day or the hour.  No man.  Period.  Now, I suppose it could be debatable as to whether or not a man could know the month and the year, but day and hour?  Nada.

2. We’re supposed to always be ready because there’s some element of surprise built into the end of the world event.  Following Camping’s mathematical wizardry (which includes taking the square root of the tangents of the multiplied cosines of the angles found in the upper deck of Noah’s ark and then dividing that number by the totaled width of the moon phases since the last day before “W” became a lame duck president), it looks like we may be able to sin right up until the end as long as we leave ourselves just enough time to whisper a quick “I’m sorry” to Jesus.  Good to know.

See, stupid. Let’s dig a bit deeper and see if it don’t get more stupider (sorry, I couldn’t resist the bad grammar).

Harold Camping first predicted the rapture would take place on September 6, 1994, but after missing that one still felt confident enough in his predicting abilities to then change the date as necessary to September 15, then September 25, then October 4, next was December 25, then February 25, 1995 and finally May 3, 1996.  All of these dates were based on Scripture, albeit very liberal translations of Scripture.  As an example, the Christmas date was based on the fact that Revelation 11:10 mentions the giving of gifts.  There are no words for how bad of a misuse of Scripture that is.

So, like all prophets who are wrong 7 times over a couple of years about small things like the end of time, Camping took some time off to find his game and raise as much money as possible to use later when he’d return with another bold prediction.  Turns out, he wasn’t wrong about the significance of September 6,1994, but instead of it being Judgement Day for everybody, it was the beginning of the Great Tribulation.  According to Camping, then, “simple arithmetic would put the return of the Lord no later than 2008.”   His fatal flaw, of course, is that his formulas for date picking aren’t simple math, and so he missed again.

Now, it appears, the 9th time will be the charm, and so Harold “If I keep guessing someday I’ll be right” Camping and his ministry at Family Radio have been spending millions of dollars on a billboard campaign announcing that the rapture (when all believers leave earth and go to heaven) will take place on May 21, 2011.  What’s interesting to me is that the campaign’s website is WeCanKnow.com.  I guess the domain WeThinkWeCanKnowAfterEightWrongGuesses.com was taken.  Curse you, GoDaddy.

Now, it’s possible that I have misjudged Camping, and if he’s right and I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to apologize here publicly on The Blog Channel.  Wait, if he’s right and I am wrong, then I won’t be here to write it.  Well, I guess this will have to serve as a pre-Rapture apology that others can read if he’s right. I’ve got no problem admitting when I’m wrong.  But will he?

He didn’t the other 8 times, so my guess is he won’t this time, either.  And that’s what burns me up about men like Camping.  They are able to spout this garbage with little to no accountability, and they screw with good people like Allison Warden, who is the lady beside the car featured above.  She is so convinced in what Camping has said, that not only did she get an awesome car decal, but she also went on record saying

If May 21 passes and I’m still here, that means I wasn’t saved. Does that mean God’s word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all. (source)

Ummm, no.  It means you were wrong, not about your salvation necessarily, but about your ability to discern when someone’s lying to you.  Don’t worry, Allison, you weren’t alone.  Seems that a retired subway worker spent all of his 20 year retirement savings putting ads up in subway cars and busses around New York City.  In fact, it appears that lots of people have been selling a lot of things that they may need on May 22 in order to get the word out about how they won’t be here to use any of it.  Well, almost everyone.  3 guesses who hasn’t gone all in.

That’s right.  Harold Camping.

While people give themselves totally to his message, he’s sitting on Family Radio, which is estimated to be worth $70 million. Yep.  That was MILLION.  That’s a lot of money he won’t be needing in a few days, and yet he has twice ignored offers to purchase what he will no longer be here to use.  One man offered to buy everything for a dollar, but another group offered $1 million for the radio network. Camping isn’t selling.  That’s the way to be totally committed to the cause, Grandpa!

It’s a bit surprising that he wouldn’t sell it all, just like many of his devoted followers, especially in light of his statement to New York magazine when they requested an interview on May 22.  Camping’s response?

I can’t even think about that question because you’re thinking that maybe, maybe Judgment Day will not happen. But it will happen, and I believe the Bible implicitly.

Really?  Implicitly?  Surely he knows that the word means “unquestionably and without reservation,” right?  It seems that he would happily be selling all he had if he did believe it implicitly, or at least he’d be giving most or all of it to the poor of the world who will no doubt be needing it on Sunday.

If Camping does believe the Bible implicitly, might I suggest he meditate on Deuteronomy 18:20-22.

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”  You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?”  If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

So, if a prophet didn’t speak for God, he was to be put to death.  And the way you knew he didn’t speak for God was when what he prophesied didn’t happen. So, we should have a pretty good clue about what should happen to Camping when we wake up on May 22nd, right?  Perhaps, if he needs another idea for his next publicity stunt and fundraiser after May 21 comes and goes without any of us going, he could post a video on YouTube showing how he lives out this part of the Bible implicitly.

I’m sure it would go viral, aren’t you?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

I read an article over on the Fox News website yesterday about Katy Perry that really made me think. Feel free to head over that way and read it, too, and then come back to read my thoughts. Don’t worry. I’ll wait.  I need to make some more coffee anyway.

Welcome back.

Let’s go ahead and get the obvious out of the way first.  Like most parents, I’m sure hers did the best they could.  Some days they got an A in parenting, and others days, well, they didn’t.  That doesn’t make them wrong.  It just makes them parents.  This post isn’t about blaming them, and if Katy Perry did the interview in Vanity Fair to blame them, then she’s missing the point to.  I’m not going to write a column slamming her parents for raising her according to their beliefs.  I just want to open the discussion that challenges some of the beliefs that they may have, and that many Christians do have.

Here are a few that jumped out at me:

Wrong Belief: Change happens outside-in
The Truth: What is in us will come out

Did you catch the part in the article where Katy said she wasn’t allowed to say things like “deviled eggs” or “Dirt Devil?”  I couldn’t read that and think anything other than “bizarre.”  When she mentioned that she didn’t have a childhood because of a very strict upbringing, I don’t think she was exaggerating.  Not be able to say the d-word implies that there were plenty of other things she couldn’t do as well, and when we put the focus on changing our behavior before our heart, we set ourselves up for failure.  “Fake it until you make it” comes to mind, and while it may sound like a great leadership strategy, it is, at the core, a lie.  Isn’t it?

Our faith is an inside-out faith.  Proverbs 4:20-27 instructs us to put the truth of God’s word in our heart, then to guard our heart, and as a result our speech and steps will change.  Jesus said in Matthew 12:34 that our mouths speak what is in our hearts.  It’s just like a NASCAR restrictor plate.  The presence of that plate doesn’t change the engine, and if you remove it, the true nature of the engine will be revealed.  Pretend all you want.  Dress the part of good Christian, talk the part of righteous believer; I can guarantee you that whenever the restriction is gone (whatever form it takes for you – parents, friends, pastor), your true nature will be revealed.  I mean, Katy Perry isn’t exactly holding back on her words now, is she?

Wrong Belief: The world is bad and will corrupt you
The Truth: Because we’re corrupt, the world is bad

She wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music or read any books other than the Bible, and that usually comes from the belief that what is in the world will get on you if you get too close.  Listen to one bad song with a good beat and you’ll run the risk of tapping your toe to it, which we all know is just the first step towards becoming a serial killer.  Sure, there are plenty of bad things in the world, but when we focus on “them” we forget that our biggest problem is “us.”  Jeremiah 17:9 says that our hearts are deceitful more than anything else and impossible to understand.  Even after salvation, when the Bible teaches that our hearts are made new, there is still so much work for me to do on my own stuff (Philippians 2:12) that I don’t have time to deal with everyone else’s junk.

I love how Mark Driscoll puts it when he says that we need to stop seeing the world as bad people and good people and start seeing it as bad people and Jesus.  Face it, not one of us is as good as we think we are.

[Tweet “Stop seeing the world as bad people and good people and start seeing it as bad people and Jesus. @PastorMark”]

Wrong Belief: Our separation from the world must be physical
The Truth: Our greatest connection with the world is often physical

This wrong belief is what leads to Christian clubs, Christian gyms, Christian civic groups, and a ton of non-Christians going to hell. This belief embodies the world that Jesus stepped into.  An Israel that was divided between the religious and the real, and Jesus chose the real.  He didn’t choose to stand on top of a 12-foot platform behind a plexiglass pulpit and scream truth at them, either.  Philippians 2:5-11 describes beautifully what the Gospels re-tell about Jesus: He was God come down to man.  He walked with us, talked with us, laughed and cried with us.  He healed us.  He touched lepers and prostitutes.  The first group had never been touched and the second had never been touched with love and grace.  Jesus’ physical interaction is what paved the way for His spiritual intervention.

[Tweet “Jesus’ physical interaction with people paved the way for His spiritual intervention for people.”]

It is no different now.  The church has failed the world because we have fled the world.  We can’t meet their needs because we’ve never even seen their needs.

Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:15-17)

Is it possible that the greatest evangelistic programs already exist, and that the world has already funded them?  They’re called rec leagues, school clubs, and civic groups.  Maybe we should join them and start rubbing shoulders again with the hurting people in them.  That connection alone could go a long way towards opening a heart to Christ.

Wrong Belief: Questions lead to doubt
The Truth: Questions lead to Jesus

Katy says something that should be a dagger to the heart of all who have placed their faith in Christ. “I’ve always been the kid who’s asked ‘Why?’ In my faith, you’re just supposed to have faith. But I was always like … why?”  Did you catch that?  “In my faith, you’re just supposed to have faith.”

When did Christianity become a “don’t ask, don’t tell” faith?  When did we decide that it was better to leave the obvious questions unasked?  The day that we decided the faith was really all about us.  The day that we assumed that if we didn’t have the answer, then the questions might reveal us as frauds.  Isn’t that ridiculous?  If the whole of Christianity rests on the foundation of my understanding, then the end of it is inevitable, and will come sooner rather than later.  But it doesn’t rest on me, or on my questions and answers.  It rests on Jesus, and I believe that the more we talk, the more likely we are to find Him.

[Tweet “The church has FAILED the world because the church has FLED the world.”]

Paul went to Athens (Acts 17) and he explored their culture and then engaged it.  He spoke with them, asked questions of them, and heard questions from them.  He knew that the more they talked, the closer he could move them to seeing Jesus.

All this leads me to one final wrong belief that must be addressed.  I don’t know if it is a belief that Katy Perry’s parents hold, but I do think it’s one that the majority of believers in America hold.

Wrong Belief: I’ll start when I know more
The Truth: Start and you’ll learn more.

You can already think of people who need you.  They need someone to give them the permission to ask questions, to explore the faith that we hold.  They don’t need an expert; they need a friend.  Most of us hide away from people like that, memorizing Scripture and trying to prepare for the day when we accidentally meet them at Wal-Mart.  We expect the conversation to be more like an interrogation, and so we spend our time cramming to prepare for it like a kid who hasn’t studied all semester would on the night before a final.

But they aren’t tests.  They’re people.  People who are hurting, searching, reaching.  And if we learn from Katy Perry, I think we’ll be better prepared to help them.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It seems like the world is divided into 2 camps concerning the Royal Wedding: the group that thinks the kind of money being spent on it is shameful and a waste, and the group that thinks a royal wedding should cost whatever it costs.

The first group argues: “When there are so many people unemployed, hungry, and tornadoes have just done in excess of a billion dollars damage, how can anyone justify a wedding that costs in the neighborhood of $50 million?”

The second group replies: “It’s a ROYAL wedding. Shut up.”

I’d like to propose a third group, and invite you to become a part of it.  My group is the “before we start throwing the Queen under the bus and telling her how to spend her country’s money, maybe we should look at ourselves first and that will probably cause us to shut up.”

I admit that I was finding myself in the first group.  I’m not exactly sure why, but it could have been because I was growing sick of the wall-to-wall Royal Wedding coverage interrupted periodically with distracting images of destroyed homes in Alabama.  At any rate, I kept finding myself getting more and more frustrated with what seems to be a total waste of – or at least, misuse of – money that seems to be in short supply.

I say seems to be, because when I did a little research about the spending in our own country, I found myself standing face to face with some harsh words from Jesus.  Apparently the money isn’t in short supply; we’re just on the short end of knowing how to spend it.

This week-end is the NFL draft, and in the last 10 years $3.5 billion in guaranteed money has been paid out to first round draft picks. $2 billion of that has gone to players taken in the first 10 picks.  That means that every year the NFL pays out $350 million to 32 players.  Every year.

“Sure, but that’s the owners’ money.  What’s that got to do with me?”

I thought that, too, until I realized that we’re the consumers.  The money for the players comes from the ticket sales, food and beverage sales, merchandise sales and television contracts worth more because we watch.  I’m not sure that I’m lobbying for us to stop, I’m just saying that we can’t blow that number off by saying it’s the owners’ problem.

Need more proof?  I’ve got it, and I’m pretty sure you won’t want to read it.  In fact, this long sentence is really a meaningless way to stall so that you have enough time to click away before your eye wanders down to the next paragraph.  Oops, too late.  Well, I did warn you…

There are 122 million “consumer units” in America.  Basically one unit is one household, although not always.  But to keep the math simple, we’ll go with it because it’s close enough.  We get that number by dividing the population of the country by 2.5, which is the average size of one of those units.  Still with me?  Here’s the mind blowing part.  According to the stats at the Bureau of Labor, each unit spent close to $3,000 in 2009 on entertainment.

If we do a little math, we find that 122 million times $3,000 means that our country spent $366,000,000,000 in entertainment.

Um, that’s billion.

In other words, all of us in America that are raising a stink about the Royal Wedding are upset about something that costs 1% of 1% of what we throw away in disposable entertainment spending each year.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

It’s not the big things that matter.  The NFL drafts, the Royal Weddings, heck, even the launching of the Space Shuttle today that will cost $450 million.  It’s the smaller things, the $30 here and $20 there, that over time, collectively, add up to a figure so staggering it blows our minds.

Look at these words:

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin our vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. (Song of Songs 2:15, emphasis mine)

It is the little things that are out of control, and instead of thumbing our noses at the country on the other side of the big pond, perhaps we should take a longer look at ourselves and decide what we can do here in order to help our own.  Imagine if every consumer unit decided to cut their entertainment back only 10% and used it instead to help the people hurting around us?  Do that math and you’d see that, without even missing much, we’d have over $36 billion dollars to use to attack homelessness, unemployment, and disaster relief.

All because we got the little foxes under control.

When was the last time you considered where your money goes?  What are the little foxes in your consumer unit?

Who do you know that needs help?  How much could you give toward that need by making just a small cut in your entertainment spending?