QuakerInfo.com Forum

[kevin roberts]

I have it on good authority that the end of the world will occur on 21 May, 2011:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/01/BA8V1AV589.DTL

Harold Camping has always been hesitant to actually state a date or to unequivocally even assign the end precisely to 2011. But apparently it's becoming clearer.

[orPowers]

Halleluiah! I'd been AWFULLY worried about that.
_________________
Romans 8:38-39

my blog: http://mild-side.blogspot.com/

[kevin roberts]

Well, you should worry. The Mayan calendar ends after 2011, so that must mean something. Everybody tells me so.

I'm actually more worried than that. The little calendar on the dashboard of my truck here ends at 31 December 2010, so there's reasonable evidence that we actually have less than a year.

[bradleyp]

Dear everyone!

I looked it up and it is the year 5771 according to Jewish calculations.
7519 according to those made related to the Byzantine era.
Secretly I want to write my dates using either the years 1432 taking on an Islamic calculation, or the Diocletian year of1727, just because I want to confuse people (okay, I admit that I like the 1700s as an era to repeat because of some of the interesting historical things that happened the first time around).
Either way, by some calculations, I figure we missed the year 2011 or 2012 already.

I found these years/eras in my copy of “The Old Famer’s Almanac”, which is a fine read.
_________________
Bradley P.
Somewhere along the pathway back, the pathway forward, wherever it leads, I wish for an interesting walk.

[Shay]

Kevin, you are a scamp.

The world ended on September 6, 1994. Apparently people didn't catch on or something. I know my little sister started high school and felt weird about it... symptoms like this need closer attention.

[james]

September 6, 1994 in History:

11th MTV Awards: Aerosmith, Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson win

Not with a bang but a whimper.
_________________
James Riemermann
www.nontheistfriends.org
www.liberalquakers.org

[kevin roberts]

Well, my own first year in high school did pretty much feel like the end of the world, to me. Dunno about MTV. I've been out of the media loop since before 1994.

Spending eternity listening to Michael Jackson would make me wish for the end all over again.

[bradleyp]

Can someone explain to me the 9/6/1994 End of The World theory, please?
_________________
Bradley P.
Somewhere along the pathway back, the pathway forward, wherever it leads, I wish for an interesting walk.

[kevin roberts]

Hey Bradley-

Harold Camping is a pioneering radio evangelist who made radio church a success in the 1950s when everybody else was still setting up stripey tents in small towns, which I remember well and still occasionally see.

He started out as a Dutch Reformed Church (CRC) Calvinist but departed from them and has spent the last 30 years explaining how the church age is over and remaining a participant within a "local church" means you are one of the tares, not part of the wheat.

He reads the KJV with an adding machine, and uses interpretations of the numbers he finds in it to establish exact dates for Biblical history and to predict future prophesied events. He is especially fond of taking big numbers and factoring them, then taking the factors and interpreting them according to old Jewish Kabalistic symbolism.

Like 490 = 7 x 7 x 2 x 5, where "7" implies completeness and 2 and 5 mean something or other.

He predicted the end of the world to occur on 06 September 1994, based on his calculations. When it didn't happen, he revised his math and decided that 1994 was actually a pre-end Jubilee event, and the actual end would be around 2011. Now he has focused on 21 May 2011 as the last day.

Camping has abandoned some of the Calvinist beliefs of his past, but still holds strongly to others. He broadcasts from Oakland CA every day, I think, and I listen to him whenever I come across his voice on the radio. His book "Time Has an End" is a classic, and my father in law hands out free copies to anybody who will accept them.

If you're interested in the results of extensive Biblical scholarship combined with arcane home-grown numerology, he's a must-read. He's a useful example of the end-point in Calvinism because he will not only assert that grace and salvation are arbitrary, but that any decision or attempt on your part to actually conform your behavior to God's directions is a sign of apostasy and an indicator that you are not one of the elect.

[bradleyp]

Oh I see.
I think I would have liked to have been alive before 1960, that sort of thing, tent preachers and real life circuses and sideshows (true, not all three where related) would have been fun to say the least to see, the spectacle of the whole thing, and the afternoon out it would have made.
I think we miss out on a lot of things that used to go on, as technology and the media progresses.
I’m glad the world hasn’t ended though. Thank you Kevin for the explanation!
_________________
Bradley P.
Somewhere along the pathway back, the pathway forward, wherever it leads, I wish for an interesting walk.

[kevin roberts]

The past doesn't completely go away. There's lots still going on. There are still tent circuses in this country that we go to when they come to town, and although the local rodeo isn't held anymore in the town where I was born in Oklahoma, you can still get a cow to step on you for free in lots of places.

There was a tent revival in the next town to the east last summer, but I confess I didn't go.

[pilgrim]

I had an interesting talk with a person on the street a few days ago. There is a group in my city that participate in a weekly Peace Presence. We stand on the busiest corner of the city during rush hour, holding signs, passing out information, talking with people, etc., and being a presence for peace.

Anyway, a man came up to me and told me that everything we are doing is pointless, because everything, including war, is preordained by God, and people can't change that. He quoted some verses from the Book of Revelation, which he claimed predicted the 9/11 attacks and some other current global atrocities. Once he was done talking, I simply stated that the Bible also says, "Blessed are the peacemakers," and that I think God wants us to work for a more peaceful world even if it is outside the realm of possibility. I really think my words got through to him, and he looked as if he had never thought about things that way before.

It seems like so many people are so preoccupied with the "end of the world" and interpreting the Book of Revelation, that they lose all focus of the message preached by Jesus in the Gospels.

[punkrainbow]

Imagine what Christianity would have been like if the Book of Revelation has never been included in the cannon. Mind you, without the language of Apocalypse it is unlikely Quakerism as we know it would have emerged. Ah, the pros and cons!
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I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.

[michaeldavidjay]

We almost were able to see such a Christianity.
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Do Friends speak to today's condition, or are we only a historical footnote?

[pilgrim]

I'm really not opposed to Revelation, I just don't think it should be the central focus of Christianity. I don't think that a person's interpretation of the book should have the power to veto the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels.
That being said, I think the Book of Revelation does an excellent job in speaking against the evils of Roman Empire (to whom I believe it was directed), much like earlier prophets spoke against the evils of Israel and Babylon.