Now What?

"For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall [show] signs and wonders, to seduce, if [it were] possible, even the elect." Mark 13:22

Well, May 21st came and went without much in the way of any rapture. How bout that? So now, we have the process of moving on. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be another “prophet” who says that they have the exact date of when the world will end. The problem with that is that it is against scripture. So, if you are using Biblical scripture to justify the fact that you have the exact date of the end of the world, then you have some explaining to do. But I wanted to address some of the issues that we have to be aware of when the next “prophet” comes along.
1 – The Bible is not God - I recognize the authority of scripture as having been inspired by God, but it was not written by God. It is not supposed to be an idol, but many times people make the bible an idol without even knowing it. Harold Camping, leader of the whole May 21st thing, used the Bible as God. If you listen to a lot of what he said in interviews, he would talk about the bible as if it were God. There is a big difference in honoring and revering scripture as a God-inspired text to give us insight into the character, nature and person of God, and making the bible God. You might not even know that you are doing it. But check yourself in how you talk about scripture. Harold Camping said this in an interview: “Because I trust the Bible implicitly, the Bible is God’s word — it’s not from a man, it’s not from an organization of some kind where there’s plenty of room for error. It is the word of God. When God speaks that it is going to happen, the Bible is a very factual book, and God gives many examples of how he has made prophesies and it always has happened in exact accord with what God has prophesied.” This is an indication that something is wrong. There are prophesies in the bible that have not yet come to pass. The bible is not supposed to be what you trust in, but what you read in order to know the one you trust in. According to them, the bible is so factual that May 21st was definitely going to happen. But I write this on May 23rd. Now what? Nothing but God is to be trusted implicitly. Because the words written must also be interpreted. And as we can see, interpretation can be pretty subjective. Follow what John said in 1 John 4:1, “Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.” Make sure the spirit lines up with the Word. But the Spirit of God is the barometer.
2- Love those who believed – Unfortunately, so many people have been deceived by the whole rapture thing that they now have to pick up the pieces of their life. Many quit their jobs, sold their property, gave their life savings to the ministry, uprooted their whole lives for the sake of preaching this word. Now they have to come to terms with what they thought was their mission from God. We have to be sensitive to those who were among these who genuinely believed. They are going to need to know that just because the man who predicted this was wrong, God is still real and God still loves them. True believers won’t make fun of them but will demonstrate the love of God to them. I made jokes, too before that day, but in all seriousness, they are going to need some love right now. Many of them may stray away from the faith having been so jaded. Let’s offer them the love they need.
3- Read the bible for yourself – Nobody can walk your walk for you. If you don’t take the time to ask questions of scripture, read these passages for yourself and get to know the person of God, then you are likely to fall for false teachings. In times when I fell victim to false teachings in the past, it was because I was taking somebody else's word for what the bible or God said. That made me go deeper. I don’t like to be deceived if I can help it. Just because your pastor says it doesn’t make it truth. READ IT FOR YOURSELF!!! Is it consistent with the message of scripture? Or is it an isolated text that can be taken out of context.
4- Don’t worry about the end – Jesus said he was coming back. That’s all I’m really concerned about. When he’s coming back is irrelevant. I’m supposed to keep doing what I’m called to do and then one day I will either die or see him coming in the clouds. But until then, if I try to make predictions based on numerology or look for patterns in scripture to try to make predictions of when certain things will happen, I’m wasting my time. With each prophet that God used in scripture, he didn’t use hidden symbols to give them the answers to a message they had to preach to the world. He spoke plainly. And it usually involved them doing some strange things, and often giving up their wealth. Last I checked, Harold Camping was a millionaire. That’s not to say that God can’t use rich people. But he did not hide cryptic messages in His word for people to figure out. Some of the people who wrote scripture did when they needed to hide their messages from the powers that be in that day (like in the book of Revelation). But God’s word is yea and amen and if he wants us to know when the world will end, he will tell somebody directly and not have them use the wisdom of man in order to “figure it out”.
I think I’ve ranted long enough. I could talk about the twisted use of scripture all day, but I won’t. I’m done my soapbox for the moment. But remember to demonstrate the love of Christ to all, but especially to those who have to recover mentally, spiritually and physically for believing the false rapture prediction. That might do more to bring about the coming of Christ than trying to figure out what the next date will be.