My mom asked me today if I believed that tomorrow was going to be the end of the world? I said, “what?”
She went on to tell me how Howard Camping has predicted (for the second time) that tomorrow, May 21st, at 6:00pm the end of the world will start with the Christian believers disappearing. Then the destruction fo the world will happen in the following months.
I have heard about quite a few of these predictions, and I am just as skeptical about this one as I am about all the others, past and future. But I had to wonder, how did Howard Camping calculate this date?
So what does any questioning American do when struck by a question such as this? Google it!
So here is what I found:
Howard Camping first started with the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, which is estimated to have happened in 1447 B.C. and counted the generations backwards to the Flood. Using this method, he calculated the Flood to have happened in 4990 B.C. (other biblical scholars calculated this event to have happened around 2000 B.C. …hmm?)
In the story of the flood, God gave Noah 7 days to prepare. That is his first clue….
Then he read this passage
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8)
This was his second clue.
So Camping put these two clues together and he decided to say that just like Noah had 7 days to prepare for the first destruction, we have 7,000 years to prepare for the second destruction.
Howard Camping has estimated that tomorrow, May 21st, 2011, is 7,000 years since the flood.
I’m not sure about you, but that is kind of far-fetched to me…. especially with the passage that says
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24: 36)
So how could Howard Camping possibly know something that even Jesus Christ does not know?
