History repeats itself: Camping resets the date to October

Well, it was almost predictable. After the failure of the “rapture” to materialize om March 21, Harold Camping decided not to abandon his date-setting but to have another go at it. Now it’s all going to happen on October 21. Don’t hold your breath, readers! It won’t happen.

In fact, this kind of disaster has happened before. History is repeating itself.

The most famous case involved William Miller, who stirred up the USA in a big way in the 1840s by predicting the End, based on calculations like Harold Camping’s.  First, it would happen between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Then when that didn’t happen, the date  was reset by some of the Millerites (Miller was slow to accept this himself) at October 22, 1844. Up to 50,000 Christians became Millerites and maybe up to a million were sympathetic to the ideas he preached. Many took radical steps such as not harvesting their crops, forgiving debts and disbursing fortunes to unbelieving heirs. Some preached that other churches were antichrist and believers should “come out” of them.  Does any of that sound familiar now? All for nothing, as it turned out, though in the aftermath of the “great disappointment” that followed October 22, 1844 some of the adventists reinterpreted what had happened and founded what is now the Seventh-day Adventist church. (see, e.g. Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse; Oxford University Press, 1994: 101-110).

Closer to the present, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have have several goes at setting the time of the End. So also have some influenced by Dispensational premillennialism. See my book, Revelation Reclaimed, for some details. But many have tried to set dates based on events in modern Israel. For example, modern Israel was born in 1948, a Bible generation is 40 years, so the last generation would wind up in 1988.  One author even wrote a book called “88 Reasons why The Rapture will happen in 1988.” Then they calculated from1967, since that was when Israel took control of old Jerusalem and the old temple site.  But 2007 has also not produced a rapture. Others built their calculations from various Arab-Israeli peace accords brokered by successive US presidents.  And so the sorry saga continues.

When will people realise that all this is based on faulty presuppositions?

Will Camping’s predictions lead to a new cult? That seems to be implied by  his agenda, especially his allegation that the Spirit left the churches in 1988, but he seems to old to benefit much, so perhaps (as happened with the adventists and the predecessors of the JWs) a new leader (a new Ellen White or Judge Rutherford) will rise up and take control of the “movement”.

I watch with interest, but let’s exhort anyone we know to abandon such date-setting before they make shipwreck of their faith.