Camping may be right?

¹³ “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴ But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

    ¹⁵ “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. ¹⁶ By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

   ²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

As most of you know, there is a group of Christians predicting that the day that marks the start of God’s judgment, the day of the rapture of believers is this coming Saturday, May 21^st . This group is led by Harold Camping of Family Radio a network of Christian stations that once was quite evangelical but now appears to be the center of outreach for false teachings. Camping is absolutely convinced he is right and refuses to even think he may be wrong. This is because he thinks God has given him a special revelation that no one else has had. He has convinced thousands of people into following him.

 

His purpose seems to be to alert everyone that they must turn to Jesus before it is too late, yet his plea and the pleas of his followers is not very emotional expressive or passionate as it should be if they were truly interested in saving souls from imminent catastrophe. Rather their presentation seems to be judgmental and condescending. They act as if they possess a truth that no one else has, that they are better than everyone else. They do not seem to care who gets else gets saved as long as they do.

 

When I first heard of Camping’s teaching I became a little uneasy. As his predicted date of May 21^st approached I began feeling frightened and scared. I had to ask myself why it was so scary to think about the Lord’s return. After all, I would welcome His return as all true believers would. I would welcome the rapture of believers because I would be one of those saints so blessed. Yet Mr. Camping says that only those who agree with his teaching will be saved. All those who profess to be Christians who attend the Christian churches throughout the world would not be raptured because they are all apostate.

 

Jesus tells us here in Matthew 7 that false prophets masquerade as true Christians: wolves in sheep’s clothing. They seem to be righteous. They speak good and godly words and claim to do so in the name of Jesus but He does not know them. We know them by their fruit. Mr. Camping’s fruit is error, fear, confusion and lies. It will actually cause many to turn even further away from Christianity and the truth.

 

What Camping teaches contradicts the clear teaching of the Word of God. Like any false prophet he has interpreted the scriptures to suit his agenda. To him the scripture does not say what it says: its says what he thinks it says. Everyone else is wrong. All the churches are wrong. Mr. Camping claims that the church age ended in 1988, something which he forgot to mention until only a few years ago. True believers must not go to church. All Christian churches according to him are evil and corrupt.

 

He has contradicted and reinterpreted the clear teaching of Hebrews 10:25. This verse tells us that we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together and so much the more as we see the day of the Lord’s returning drawing near. Mr. Camping would have us believe that this is no longer true, that we need not assemble together as the church in spite of the fact that the end of the world is near.

In addition he deliberately contradicts what the Lord Himself stated that in Matthew 24:36 "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” Mr. Camping claims that he now knows the final date and time even though Jesus said that no one knows except the Father in heaven. He claims to have figured the day out by searching the scriptures. No one else has this figured out but him. Yet now thousands of people believe his claim. They have spent millions of dollars to air his false teaching.

Finally Mr. Camping comes under the condemnation of the Scripture itself because he is a false prophet. He has predicted the end of the world 3 times before in 1994 and 1996. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 tells us “But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.”  You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.”

Thus we must not heed him now, even when the world is in such a state of violence and upheaval. We are not to fear what Mr. Camping says or be afraid that he is right. But then why do I still feel uneasy? Why then do I feel scared at the idea that Jesus may be returning soon? I think it is because Camping’s prediction could be right. Since as Jesus said no one knows the day, He could come back at any time. Camping’s guess is as good as anyone else’s. Jesus could come today or tomorrow or May 21^st or 22^nd or the day after that or the day after that and so on. We do not know.

And why would I find that scary even though I am one of the redeemed? I think I find that it is scary because if the time of Jesus’ return is so imminent, if he were to return today it will be very sad. It would be too late for many of our loved ones, friends and the billions of people across the earth who do not know Jesus. Though God’s justice will be glorified He would take no pleasure in the death of the wicked for he desires all to come to repentance (Ezek. 18:23). This then is scary: Billions will be judged, punished and condemned to eternal separation from God.

 

Now some of you may wonder how can I make such a statement in these days when pluralism and universal salvation dominate the beliefs of the world. Such beliefs have even infiltrated Christian theological circles, churches and denominations. Many believe in universal salvation. So how can I state that billions will be condemned to hell? How can I know that? Because of what Jesus said in these verses from Matthew 7.  

 

Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴ But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

 

In the modern world we are surrounded by many religions, many choices, options, philosophies and worldviews. The popular view which marks the enlightened minds of 21^st human beings especially here in America is that all roads lead to heaven. Therefore these words of Jesus trouble many people in the world as well as many Christians and maybe some of us. Many just disregard them or ignore them as the ideas of religious fanatics rather than the word of God.

 

This is because what Jesus presents here contradicts the popular way of thinking for He declares the absolute nature of the one choice that faces all of mankind. We all would prefer to be given many more choices than only one, but Jesus will not allow us an easy and politically correct solution. Instead he insists that ultimately there is only one choice, because there are only two possibilities from which we may choose each with eternal differing consequences.

 

The one choice is between two roads, 2 different ways of living. One way is easy. This word means “broad, spacious, roomy”. There is plenty of room on it for diversity of opinion and competing views of morality. It is the road of tolerance, permissiveness and political correctness. It has no boundaries of either thought or conduct. Back in the 60s we used to say do your own thing as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody. Now we say, do your own thing without considering anyone but yourself. People who travel this road follow their own thoughts, inclinations, and opinions about what is right and wrong. They are governed by the desires of the human heart in its fallen nature: superficiality, self-love, hypocrisy, greed, false spirituality, false ambition, harshness, violence. Such things do not have to be learned or cultivated. That is why the broad way is easy.

 

The other road is the hard way, the narrow way. It is narrow because its boundaries are clearly marked and limited by divine revelation. Divine revelation restricts the travelers on this road to the confines of what God has revealed in Scripture to be true and good, not our own ideas and opinions. His revelation imposes a limitation on what we may believe and sets the standard for godly behavior and righteousness.

These two roads are accessed by two gates. The gate leading to the easy way is wide, and it is a simple matter to get onto it: we are born onto it. I liken it to our modern computers. They come from the factory with default settings. A default, in computer science, refers to a setting or value automatically assigned to a software application, computer program or device. Such settings are also called presets, especially for electronic devices. Default values are generally intended by the manufacturer to make a computer or device usable "out of the box".

According to the word of God the default setting for every human being is the sin nature. The apostle Paul quoting Psalm 14 says in Romans 3:10-12 "None is righteous, no, not one;
 ¹¹no one understands;
   no one seeks for God.
¹²All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
   no one does good,
   not even one."

And then in Rom. 3:23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

 

Our default setting is set to sin from the beginning. It controls and affects everything we do. Thus we can see that from birth we all travel the wide road. On this road we can take as much baggage as we like: there is no limit. We can take everything along with us including our sins, self-righteousness and pride.

The gate leading to the hard way, on the other hand, is narrow. One has to look for it to find it. It is easy to miss, narrow as a needle’s eye as Jesus said. In order to enter this narrow gate we must leave everything behind: fleshly desires, selfish ambition, pride, self-sufficiency, covetousness, and perhaps even family and friends. We must deny ourselves to enter that gate, our default setting must be changed. This involves a total change of the operating system, a total change of life, a new way of looking at it and a totally new set of values than are preset on pleasing God and not ourselves.

We can’t do this, only Jesus can. He Himself is the gate, the entry way, the access to this narrow road. He said in John 10:9. “I am the door, if anyone enters by me he will be saved”. He also said in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” That means there is only one way, one gate. Jesus is that one way. We enter this narrow gate only by faith in His atoning sacrifice of the Cross.

The two ways have two eternal consequences. They lead to 2 different destinations. The easy way, entered by the wide gate, leads to destruction. Jesus did not define what he meant by this, but it sounds terrible. The word “destruction” tells us that in Hell everything good will be destroyed: love, relationships, beauty, truth, joy, peace and hope. All that the world vales and holds dear will be gone. Such destruction is total, complete, eternal. Such destruction means separation from God forever. This is a prospect that is a sad thing for us to contemplate for anyone even perhaps for our own worst enemy or the vilest of sinners. The broad way, the wide road that seems so easy and fun is the road to damnation.

The hard way, entered by the narrow gate, leads to eternal life, fellowship with God. It leads to heaven, the place where we will see God, dwell in His presence, share His glory, and find perfect peace and fulfillment in His service.

Now comes the most difficult and scary part of Jesus’ teaching: the numbers of people who are traveling on those roads. Entering by the wide gate and travelling along the easy road to destruction there are many travelers. The broad and easy road seems to be quite busy filled with many pedestrians.

 

The narrow and hard way that leads to life, however, seems to be comparatively deserted. “Those who find it are few.” This does not sound like a great prospect to us. The number on the narrow road are few in proportion to those on the wide road. This may not be as few as we might think. When if we consider Revelation 7:9, we learn that the crowd of the redeemed standing before God’s throne is a great multitude no one can number. Judging by today’s world population even if a mere 10% of the people alive today were saved this would amount to over 600 million people, certainly a vast number. Yet that would still be a dire prospect: for every 100 laughing and carefree people with apparently no thought for the dreadful end to which they are heading on the wide road there are only 10 on the narrow road.

 

Such talk is extremely unpopular today. People want to keep their options open, to be free to commit themselves to whatever they choose or not to make any commitments. They like to think that all roads lead to heaven or that eventually God is so merciful that every one gets there, even guys like the late Osama Bin Laden. His recent death sparked a fair amount of debate about various spiritual issues. One of the discussions I got involved with on FB was in reference to the question: Can we forgive Bin Laden? It was a question posed by a Roman Catholic blogger. He was of the opinion that though he did not feel like forgiving Mr. Bin Laden, he was sure that God had extended that forgiveness to him shortly after his death. And he hoped that Mr. B had rejected it but might feel differently in the future.

 

Part of the Roman Catholic their belief system is that God gives each individual a second chance after death, in that split second between life and death to make the choice to accept His forgiveness or he sends them to purgatory to work off their debt of sin. A lot of Christians share a variant of his belief especially as they try to come to terms with the death of a loved one or a child who they did not think was saved. We like to think that had a final chance in the moment of death to repent. It gives us comfort. It helps us cope.

 

But the Scripture presents us no such option. Hebrews 9:27 tells us “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,”  And in his story of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar Jesus related in Luke 16 He did not indicate that God’s forgiveness was offered to the rich man after he died or even that the rich man asked for it. A person who lived his entire life for self and was opposed to God and rejected Jesus is not going to change his mind. Remember how the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh because Pharaoh chose to oppose Him even in the light of devastating signs and wonders. This is what happens to people. Their hearts remained hardened, they will not change even as Abraham told the rich man in hell, if someone were to come back from the dead a clear reference to Jesus’ own resurrection.

 

Therefore when I replied to my friend I stated that it does not matter whether or not we forgive Mr. B nor does it matter that God offered him forgiveness for it appears from the details of his life and death that he rejected the holy and loving God of the Bible and wanted nothing to do with Jesus. His god was a god of violence and vengeance who does extend grace, mercy or forgiveness.

 

Now it is easy to say we forgive him because we can let go of the situation: justice has been served. Mr. B suffered the justice of human law carried out by a government authorized by God to promote justice and punish evildoers. Now Mr. B is in Hell suffering the justice of God’s law.

My FB friend was outraged and thought it ludicrous and quite presumptuous on my part to state that Mr. B or anyone else is in Hell. He claimed that the Catholic Church does not state dogmatically that any particular person is in Hell, not Bin Laden, not Hitler or Stalin or Mao Tse Tung or even Judas Iscariot.

In fact they feel that absence evidence to the contrary we must assume everyone goes to either purgatory or heaven. After all if the salvation of all is the will of God, then as the Evangelical preacher Rob Bell asserts: in the end God’s love “wins.” That is, God gets His way and saves everyone.

As much as I find comfort in such a thought, and though the scripture commands us to pray for the salvation of all, Jesus; words about the many on the wide road indicate that many are either in hell or bound for eternal destruction. So unless people repent, turn to Jesus and show that they have indeed changed their lives, we must assume that most everyone is bound for Hell. The default setting of humanity is sin, and the default setting for all those who do not know Jesus is hell. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10: when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels ⁸  in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those  who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹They will suffer the punishment of  eternal destruction,  away from  the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰ when he comes on  that day  to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

 

Though it is unpopular to say so, though it is far from a comfort to those of us we who have unsaved friends and loved ones, it is a fact that unless a person repents and comes to Jesus in faith accepting His one sacrifice for sin as atonement, he or she is going to go to face judgment and hell.

 

There is a way out and Paul indicates what it is in that last verse: because our testimony to you was believed. The testimony is up to each one of us to give to those who are in imminent danger of destruction. The testimony is what Christ has done for you and me. The testimony is of what Jesus did on the cross, taking our sin on Himself and suffering our punishment. The testimony is that now forgiveness is offered to all human beings with the guarantee of reconciliation to all who accept that offer and repent. The presentation of this is testimony is the job of every Christian. As Paul states in Romans 10:

^{13For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."}

 ¹⁴How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? ¹⁵And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" ¹⁶But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" ¹⁷So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

 

We have heard the word of the Lord. Are we willing to obey it? Mr. Camping may be wrong but the fact is we do not know the time of Christ’s return. But that means it is necessary for us to go out to the lost and preach the gospel while there is time. Remember the time is short, His return is near. We have to help others to be saved from that terrible day. We must be willing to go forth and preach the testimony in word and in deeds of love and kindness so that others may experience the love and compassion of Jesus in each on of us.

 

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.