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All of us were embarrassed by the failed prediction of Jesus? return on 21 May 2011.  Far more important than the inane prophecies of Harold Camping is his theology of the church.  I came across an important article published by the Christian Research Institute, written by James R. White, that focuses on Camping?s theology.  After reading this, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Harold Camping is a false teacher, indeed a false prophet.  Let me explain.

• First, a few thoughts about Camping?s role in modern Christianity?both past and present.  Harold Camping is the president of Family Station, Inc., a California-based radio ministry with worldwide broadcast facilities, including more than 150 outlets in the United States.  Over the years, this ministry has been a significant blessing to believers as they heard both national and local pastors preach and teach over Family Radio.  However, over the last several years, White writes that ?Harold Camping has chosen to pit himself against the entire church, proclaiming that God has destroyed the church, that the era of the church is finished, and that the only means God uses to evangelize the world is Family Radio ?and ministries like it.?  Camping spends much of his on-air time explaining to listeners why they should leave their churches, abandon the oversight of elders, stop using the ordinances (baptism and the Lord?s Supper), and gather around their radios for ?fellowship? in the ?post-church age.?  He has declared that churches that once aired their worship services on the network must follow new rules.  They can no longer call themselves churches on the program.  They cannot announce meeting times, and pastors cannot refer to themselves by that title on the air.  As a result, most have removed their services, leaving Family Radio a relative ghost town.?

• Second, what is Camping?s theology of the church?  His ideas have not been published in a book.  There is one pamphlet, entitled ?Has the Church Age Come to an End?? that he published, but he has preached extensively on his radio stations on this topic.  Most importantly was a 13-part series on his new doctrine during the summer of 2001.  White quotes from this program and provides a succinct summary of the crux of Camping?s theology:  ?At the beginning of the final tribulation, God has a quick change in his action.  The beginning of the tribulation signified that the churches have ceased to be the means by which God plans to evangelize the world, and this is why it is great tribulation.  Remember in our last study we talked about, it?s a time of weeping.  It?s a time when we ought to be sorrowing in our hearts because we see the churches that should have known better, they have not turned away from wrong doctrines, and so finally God has removed the candlestick so they have a form of godliness, but they really deny the power of it.?  To Camping, the Holy Spirit is no longer in the church guiding, directing, blessing the preaching, giving divine authority to the proclamation of the Word, and especially applying the gospel in order for souls to be saved.  The church is thereby an ?empty shell.?  There are no more elders or deacons and no more divine authority in the church.  Further, the ordinances have been done away with.  White shows that ?Camping believes that baptism and the Lord?s Supper were ?ceremonial laws? that were given to the church alone.  Since the church age is gone, so are the ordinances.  There is to be no more baptism and celebration of the Lord?s Supper.?  What are Christians therefore to do?  Camping teaches that such precepts as a ?Sunday Sabbath? are valid and commands that believers are not to forsake ?the gathering together.?  But believers are to flee the local church and ?gather on Sundays, sing hymns, and listen to Family Radio together.  If there is a group, they can form a fellowship.  These fellowships, however, are to have no elders, deacons, or ordinances.  They are unorganized groups that simply meet for edification.?

• Third, how did Camping arrive at such a bizarre set of teachings?  White offers an important insight:  ?There is one simple answer:  Unfettered, inconsistent, arbitrary, and, at times, incoherent allegorical interpretation of the text of Scripture.  Camping has long taught the view, popularized by Origen in the early church, that first sees a basic, literal meaning anyone can understand.  More important is the moral meaning, which requires more insight.  Most important is the ?real? meaning, or ?spiritual? meaning, which requires spiritual insight and knowledge.?  An example of how ludicrous Camping?s allegorical interpretative scheme has become, he has used the two witnesses of Revelation 11, Jerusalem and Judea, all of the Old Testament, Hezekiah?s life, and the boat the disciples used in John 21 as ?pictures? of the church.  As White so correctly observes, ?Allegorical interpretation destroys the authority of the text of Scripture.  No one using this method can honestly say, ?The Word of God says,? for their system replaces the meaning of the text (which is communicated through grammar, lexical meanings, context and background [called the literal-grammatical-historical method of interpretation] with the more-or-less relevant insights and imagination of the interpreter.?  The source of Scripture?s authority?the God-breathed text [2 Timothy 3:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:19-21] is replaced by the mere thoughts of men and women!!  Camping is proclaiming a false and dangerous set of teachings rooted in a provocative and treacherous interpretive scheme.  I am defending the very authority of Scripture, ?for a Bible that cannot communicate God?s truth consistently to each generation cannot be a solid foundation for the faith.?

• Finally, a few closing thoughts.  Years ago, theologian Anthony Hoekema offered four disitincitves that can alert us to a set of false teachings:  1.  An extra-scriptural source of authority.  2.  The denial of justification by faith alone.  3.  The devaluation of Jesus Christ and His uniqueness.  4.  The group as the exclusive community of the saved.  The danger of Harold Camping and his teaching is that # 1 and # 4 seem to fit.  When his so-called prophecy about 21 May did not materialize, he did not apologize, nor did he concede it was false.  Instead, he offered that 21 May was actually a ?spiritual judgment day,? and the actual day of cataclysmic judgment will come on 21 October 2011!  As theologian Albert Mohler has observed, ?Harold Camping has refused all correction and all efforts to persuade him to cease his false teachings. . . He has received delegations of concerned theologians and major Christian leaders, but he has resisted all efforts and repudiated all accountability to the church.  He is a classic example of a false teacher and a false prophet, about which the Bible has much to say.?  He claims to have a ?secret? knowledge that has arisen from his allegorical interpretive scheme, has rejected all correction from the believing church and claims that ?he and he alone is right.?  Harold Camping is a very sad individual, who began well in his early radio ministry, serving many in the body of Christ.  But he is now leading countless people down the road of theological bankruptcy and heretical teachings.  It is God?s Word that sits in judgment of him and his false teachings.

See James R. White, ?Dangerous Airwaves:  Harold Camping?s Call to Flee the Church,? Christian Research Journal (25:1 [2002]); AlbertMohler.com (1 June 2011) and James P. Eckman, The Truth about Worldviews, p. 89. PRINT PDF