The End?

But when the fullness of time was come,

God sent forth His Son,

made of a woman, made under the law.

Galatians 4:4

Today is May 19.  In two days – May 21, 2011 - the world is supposed to end.  The truth of that statement is very real to the followers of Harold Camping, the 89-year-old minister and director of Family Radio – an evangelical network based in Oakland, California.  Rev. Camping has “discovered” a mathematical formula that guarantees the date of Christ’s second coming – or at the very least, the rapture of the Righteous.  Brother Camping has plastered his message on the airwaves, billboards, and vehicles that have been dispatched to every state in the U.S.  He has followers all across the world – many of whom have quit their jobs and disposed of all their worldly belongings.

Is it possible that this man is right?  The Christian Science Monitor stated: “Will the world actually explode on May 21?  There’s no way to prove that it won’t!”  We can’t “prove” that anything will or will not happen in the future – not even the weather!  But we can learn from the past. 

Mr. Camping previously predicted that the world would end in the 1970’s.  When it did not happen, he stated that he had not “read enough” of the Bible, and that his calculations were wrong.  This time, he believes that his mathematical calculations are without error, and Jesus will begin the apocalypse on Saturday, with a final explosive finish in October.

The Bible states that no man knows the day or the hour of Christ’s coming, only the Father [Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36].  When Jesus was born as a babe on this earth, the event happened when the fullness of time had come.  I believe that the same will hold true when He returns to this earth.  Jesus will return when the fullness of time has come – God’s time, not ours.