This article first appeared in the News Update column of the Christian Research Journal, volume 25, number 3 (2003). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org
Failed end-times prognosticator Harold Camping, best known outside his own following for his false prediction that the Rapture would occur in 1994, has published a book marshaling evidence and arguments to support his contentious teaching that God is finished with the church. Camping’s latest book is called The End of the Church Age and After. It repeats for a new audience Camping’s recent scriptural “discovery” that all contemporary churches are from Satan and Christians should worship in their own homes without benefit of clergy, baptism, communion, or church structure — but with their radio dials locked on his Family Radio network. The book is replete with logical fallacies, out-of-context Scripture references, mismatches between contemporary news and biblical prophecy, and a dismally inadequate knowledge of church history and biblical interpretation. Camping has no theological training or education, his only degree being in civil engineering from 1942.
In an interview with the Associated Press regarding his new book, he announced, “The Bible says God is not saving people any longer in the churches, they’re being saved outside the churches.”
Family Radio, founded in 1958, is heard on more than 150 stations and translators in the United States, on the Internet, and in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Donations to Family Radio in 2000 totaled more than $12 million.