Timothy Dalrymple: A Letter to the Followers of Harold Camping

Tim Dalrymple, the editor of my column at Patheos, has written a thoughtful Christian reflection on the whole “rapture,” Harold Camping, “end of the world” thing.  But first, let me make a few comments:

If my Facebook feed is any indication, Christians and non-Christians are having a field day with Camping’s failed rapture prediction.  We had some fun with it as well.

I have been utterly amazed at how this prediction has become a media event.  Everyone is talking about it.  On Saturday night I was doing a book signing in Wilkes-Barre, PA and the entire staff at the Barnes & Noble could not stop commenting on this.  I have been getting e-mails and Facebook messages from family and friends soliciting my thoughts on the matter. 

On Saturday night at 6:00EST I was sitting in my car in the  parking lot of a Panera Bread in Wilkes-Barre watching a man and a woman in the nearby parking lot of an Outback Steakhouse. They were just standing there looking into the sky.  I have no idea what they were doing.  Maybe they were watching a plane fly overhead or noticing a unique cloud formation.  But it sure looked like they were waiting for the rapture. At about 6:03 EST they stopped staring at the heavens, chatted with each other for a few seconds, and then headed into the restaurant, presumably to get their steak and “bloomin’ onion.”

As a historian, the craze triggered by Camping’s prediction has been fascinating to think about.  If I was a historian living a hundred years from now, I would be asking the following questions:

1.  Why did Camping’s rapture prediction strike a chord with so many Americans?

2.  What was the social-demographic make-up of the people who believed him?  Can we find any patterns?  What was the relationship between the economic downturn and these end-time longings?

3.  What does the fact that Camping was mocked so mercilessly and adamantly by non-Christians and Christians alike tell us about American culture and its relationship to religion in early 21st century America?

4.  How did the wildly popular “Left Behind” novels, written by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, set the cultural stage for this specific rapture prediction?

As a Christian, I approach this whole thing a bit differently. (And here I will be speaking largely to my readers who are fellow Christians). Camping was clearly misguided and should, in some way, be held accountable for leading so many people astray, dividing families, etc….  Those who are fed up with the cult of personality and the Left Behind theology that defines American evangelicalism have my sympathy.  I can understand why so many of my fellow Christians who are evangelicals no longer want to be associated with this movement any longer.  Thoughtful Christians want nothing to do with Harold Camping and, in fact, see him as harmful to the cause of Christianity in the world.  I don’t disagree.

But at the same time it is a fundamental belief of historic Christianity–Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, etc…—that Jesus will one day return and will judge the living and the dead.   I hope Christians will not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Camping is deluded. Many Christians do not buy into the rapture theology he is selling.  But to identify oneself as a Christian one must affirm that Jesus will one day come back.  There will be a Second Coming.  This, after all, is where we place our hope.  This is the belief that gets us through day.  As Christ rose, we will also rise.  I hope my friends who are Christian intellectuals, Christian academics, and Christian scholars will remember this because, frankly, we don’t talk about it that much.

Here is a taste of Tim’s piece:

This letter is more for those who are wondering: How did this happen?  Why was I deceived?  Why did God allow me, when I sought the truth in prayer, to believe this and go into the cities and distribute flyers and tell my loved ones that they should prepare for the Day of Judgment?  How do I face the mockers now?  And how do I know that my faith as a whole is not a falsehood as well?  When I once went about with my youth group or college group or small group and proclaimed the gospel, and told people earnestly that Christ had died for them and that they should receive God’s gracious offer before the end — was believing that and pronouncing that any different than believing and pronouncing that May 21st was Judgment Day?  What if it’s all just a silly story, and I’m a fool to believe it?

Tonight the Rapture Parties will go on.  The atheists will gloat, the mockers will mock.  Yet there’s nothing funny about this for you.  You are broken and crestfallen, left abandoned in the ruins of unfulfilled expectations, among them the very highest expectations a human can have — the hope of union with God, the hope of a world made new, the hope that every tear will be wiped away.  You are left disoriented.  You were so sure of this.  People you love and respect — perhaps your parents, your pastor, your mentor, your brother and sister — may have believed it too.  You do not feel relieved that the end of the world did not arrive.  You are not rid of this world yet, so all of its weight fell back upon your shoulders.
So let’s reflect on this together.  First, what can be affirmed? What were you right to feel and to believe?

1. Your heart was in the right place. This may sound like a minor matter, or it may sound like condescension, but I assure you it’s not.  This is a rare and exceedingly important thing.  It’s perfectly right to yearn for the day of Christ’s return.  It’s right to desire with all of your heart that you could be with God right now.  ”Better is one day in your courts,” writes the Psalmist (84:10), “than thousands elsewhere.”  You longed to be in those courts together with the saints.  It is a good thing to thirst for God and to look forward to the day when God’s truth and grace and justice will be made known to all humankind.  I believe that desire is precious to God.
2. You were right to believe that God will, one day, gather his children unto himself and draw history as we know it to a close. The most persuasive falsehoods are always the ones that contain the greatest proportion of the truth.  Although only a very small slice of the Christian community believed that Judgment Day was arriving on May 21st, the vast majority of the church around the globe and throughout its history has believed that Christ would come again to bring judgment and restoration, and ultimately the beginning of a new age of peace and justice.  We should always live as though Christ’s return is imminent.  Today is always the day of salvation.
3. You were right to spread the warning.  It’s important to say this, because the Harold Camping prophecy and the movement he mobilized will be used by the skeptical press to make Christians in general look silly.  Yet given what you believed was coming, it would have been irresponsible and unloving in the extreme if you had chosen not to spread the news as broadly as possible.  Some will jeer at the billboards that were rented and the literature that was distributed.  Given your sincere belief that the end was near, sounding the alarm was the only loving option.

Read the entire piece here.

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