Community Corner

How Do They 'Know?'

A look at why WeCanKnow thinks the end times are near.

Family Radio chief Harold Camping arrived at the May 21 date through a twisty calculation of scripture and religious celebrations. Here’s a look at how he arrived at his conclusions:

  1. Camping believes that the end times clock started ticking when Israel became a nation in 1948 because of a parable of a fig tree in Mark. End-times believers say the fig tree refers to Israel, and the verse states, “When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near.” Camping (and, it should be noted, many other apocalyptic groups) concluded that the birth of Israel means the final days are near.
  2. Camping drew from various scriptures to conclude that there will be an 8,400-day “great tribulation.” He breaks this down into two parts: 2,300 days when virtually no one will be saved and a remaining 6,100 days when there will be a “great multitude” saved.
  3. Jewish and Christian scripture talks about a “Year of Jubilee” that occurred every 50 years (many scholars say it was actually every 49 years). During this year, land was to lie fallow, property was to be returned to its original owners and indentured servants were to be freed. In the Christian tradition, Jubilee came to be associated with forgiveness of sin. Camping believes that Jesus was born in 7 B.C., a Jubilee year. Because of that and because the last phase of the tribulation involves “a great multitude being saved,” he argues that the final 6,100 days must start in a Jubilee year. The first Jubilee after the birth of Israel was 1994.
  4. Remember the 2,300 days? That’s a little more than six years. Camping subtracted six years from 1994 to determine the year he thinks the first part of the great tribulation began.
  5. Now to set an exact day. Mainstream churches celebrate Pentecost as the day that the Holy Spirit descended on believers. Camping takes this a step farther and states that the first Pentecost marked the start of a so-called “church age.” Because this age began on Pentecost, he believes that it must end the day before Pentecost in some future year. Pentecost was May 22 in 1988, so the beginning of the great tribulation must have been May 21, 1988.
  6. Camping adds 2,300 days to that date to arrive at Sept. 7, 1994 as the beginning of the “great multitude being saved.”
  7. He adds in the remaining 6,100 days to get May 21, 2011 as the end of the great tribulation—when believers will be raptured up to heaven.
  8. Jews celebrate a feast called the Feast of the Tabernacles or the Feast of Ingathering—the latter name referring to a thanksgiving for a good harvest. Camping believes that this connection to a harvest relates to “a final huge harvest of people who become saved just before the end of the world.” So he places this last huge harvest—the end of the world—on the last day of the Feast of the Tabernacles: Oct. 21, 2011. This is five months after May 21, convenient because Revelation speaks of five months of darkness and judgment.


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