7-Point Program from the Brink of Insanity

I was going to post this (with a gloating wrapper) at 00:01 on 5/22/11, the day after the end of the world. But the discussion has heated up beyond my expectation, and I don’t want to wait.

Once upon a time, my adolescent self more or less bought the line that I’d never see my 41st birthday since the Rapture would come before 40 years (one biblical “generation,” my indoctrinators said) after the founding of modern Israel, coincidentally the year I was born. I rejected that in my late 20s in favor of what commended itself as, among other things, a Christian view that actually existed before the 19th century (imagine that!).

Since then (by God’s grace, since several times I thought I’d already arrived), my roots have gone deeper still into Christian history, which is a bracing tonic for breathless pseudo-biblical bullshit — or as Father Jonathan Tobias more literately puts it,  “freelance apocalypses,” “odd, slinky … mélange of numerology, Scofield-dispensational and conspiracy-junkie interpretations,” and “born-again horoscopes.”

So here’s what I’ve learned from historic Christianity, greatly distilled to focus on the present circumstance of Harold Camping having now joined the ranks of cult-leading heretics:

1. The Bible is not written in code so really smart people can predict the future to the amazement and delight of their friends. There is some really rich typology, which really Godly people point out to dullards like me, but seeing the types as a subject of academic interest is no more the ultimate point than is divining the future. That’s just one of countless distractions to keep us from what matters (e.g., points 4 and 5).
2. Nobody knows when the Lord will come again, and nobody is meant to know. We’re not told much about the future generally, either. Knowing the future isn’t what Christianity’s about. We should always be watchful and ready for Christ’s return.
3. The Bible is about Jesus Christ, including the Old Testament (John 5:39). If a Christian doesn’t believe that, he should re-read the account of Jesus walking and talking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus (especially Luke 24:25-27). That’s what the typology (see point 1) is about.
4. All the Bible teaching in the world will only tell us about Christ. If we want Him, made known to us, we need Sacrament, and that means we need His Church, too. Those disciples at Emmaus didn’t even recognize Christ until He was made known “in the breaking of the bread.”
5. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Salvation is more than keeping your sorry self out of hellfire. It’s about reconciliation between God and mankind. It’s about becoming partakers of the divine nature, as God intended for the first-created man and woman before The Fall. Jesus is (not was — He ascended in glorified human flesh) the God-Man. “The only-begotten. God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made. of one essence with the Father …. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate ….” Joining himself to our human flesh forever is how far God went to reconcile us.
6. All we need to know about Christ’s return is that “He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”
7. All we need to know about Christ’s millennium is that His “kingdom shall have no end.“

This is not rocket science. You don’t have to be smart to remember them. I didn’t have to be smart to distill them. I just had to be in Church (not just any Church, sorry to say) regularly and pay a little attention.

Those seven points can be your markers on the road to recovery if your soul is sick and addicted to prophesy porn.

But you need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Stop going to “Prophesy Conferences” and avoid like a plague any Church that sponsors them.

I don’t care how nice the pastor is.

I don’t care if the Church is big and has dozens of ministries and a great youth group for the kids and small group ministries for mom and dad and a health club and a swell coffee shop and a Praise Band that sounds like the Doobie Brothers.

I also don’t care if it’s small, and intimate, and the Pastor “really gets to know you.”

I don’t care if your friends are there.

Get out! Now!

I don’t say this lightly, because I personally like and even believe in the goofy sincerity (I must add “goofy” because it’s just so darned convenient that feeding prophecy frenzy feeds the offering plates, too) of several men who lead such Churches and hold such conferences. I’ve known one of them since my adolescence. None of them has gotten conspicuously rich and arrogant. None of them has set any exact dates, so far as I know.

But conferences held to obsess over matters that are mysteries (closed to us by God’s own intent — see Matthew 24:36 and 25:13 if you must have a proof-text) are intrinsically toxic.

Flee and don’t look back!