Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9411080060
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's an hour before dawn, and a breeze chill enough to color a maple's leaves rattles the blinds. In bed, the summer covers refuse to warm even when they are wrapped tight as a mummy's shroud.
Too early to get up. No way to get back to sleep.
Emerging from the primal semiconciousness of dream comes the realization that another day - with its own mixture of the mundane and the miraculous - is beginning.
And the world hasn't come to an end.
Joy! Rapture!
No, wait. No "rapture," contrary to the predictions of the book "1994?"
Despite the question mark in its title, the book's predictions don't seem to be conditional at all. We really shouldn't be here.
Of course, author Harold Camping has a couple of days yet to see his prophecy of the "Last Day and return of Christ" come true.
A California radio evangelist, Camping has been attempting to discover the time of the Second Coming for the past 20 years - or so he says in the book's preface.
Relying on complicated computations of biblical dates and predictions, Camping "discovered" that 1994 was the big year back in 1992 and published his book.
For instance, he has determined - to his own satisfaction, anyway - that this year marks exactly 2,000 years since the birth of Jesus. He believes the Bible predicts Christ's Second Coming exactly 2,000 years later. This year also marks exactly 4,000 years since the births of Jacob and Esau, Camping says, and exactly - exactly, mind you - 13,000 years since the Creation.
Despite all these precise calculations, Camping acknowledges the truth of the words of Matthew that "of that day and hour [of Christ's return] knoweth no man." For Camping, that's no generalization to try to dissuade fruitless searches for the apocalyptic deadline. He takes it literally, meaning that we CAN know the week or month or year of the end, even if we can't know the day or hour.
Camping decided on a 12-day period this month for The Second Coming. The period began on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which this year fell on Sept. 15, and ends Tuesday -Sept. 27.
I suppose that means I shouldn't be too cocky yet about having survived still another scare. But I think the odds are with me on the 10th day.
It amazes me, but I'd bet if I had a dollar for everybody who takes this guy seriously I could take a fancy vacation in Monaco this year. If I had a dollar for everybody who contributed to all the other "prophets" who prey on those who want to know when Christ is going to return, I could retire to Monaco.
What's truly scary is that we have several years of this eschatological frenzy ahead. Some people who have already paid $15 for Camping's "1994?" probably will pay up again when he publishes "2027?"
These are people who scorn palm readers and phrenologists, condemn gamblers and denounce astrologers.
In the 550 pages it takes Camping to justify his predictions, he makes one prophesy I think we can bet on being fulfilled again:
"Writing a book on the timing of Christ's return and the end of the world is a difficult and dangerous task. Anyone who dares to write such a book should do so with great fear and trepidation.
"This is true because every attempt to do so (and there have been many attempts), has proven to be altogether futile. Each predicted date passed by and the world continues to exist right up to the present day. Thus the prophets who made the predictions have been shown to be without authority and without wisdom. Fact is, they may have become the laughingstock of those who never trusted their prognostications in the first place.
" ... [T]he blind followers of blind prophets, who dared to give a date for the end of the world, have frequently been hurt by such forecasts."
Amen.
by CNB