Chris: I am going to begin by reading a couple of statements that people have made after reading the “May 21, 2011 Judgment Day!” tract. We get a lot of responses from this tract, which is good. Whether it is positive or negative, I tend to think that a response is good; at least they are responding. This is kind of like what happens when we go out with the Gospel. Sometimes when people come up, it is a good conversation. Other times, they maybe just want to say something negative. Either way, it is impacting them and they are responding.
Question #1 is from Philadelphia, PA from someone who visited the website and made a statement in response to reading the “May 21, 2011 Judgment Day!” tract: I was wondering if you could sign over your property holdings to me beginning on November 1, 2011. I am sure that you will not be needing the properties anymore. Since I certainly will not be joining you in the Rapture, I would not want your buildings to deteriorate, so I promise to thank care of them. Thanks.
Chris: I do not think that this person understands completely what is coming. They have a wrong idea of what is going to happen on May 21st. This is possible with some people because the churches teach that the Rapture comes and the world continues on, minus those people, for a period of time; but this is not how things are going to be.
When God comes for His people, it will be the Rapture. It will be the resurrection and it will be Judgment Day. It will be the day when God will be judging the sins of man. To begin this process, He will bring about a worldwide earthquake. This will certainly bring destruction to all property.
It is just of no use to get into these kinds of discussions with people. There was one person who wrote a while back and said, “If you sell your house and liquidate all of your possessions - your funds, your stocks, your bonds, your retirement account – if you do this and if you then use this money in order to better man in the time that is left, then I will believe that you believe that May 21st will be Judgment Day.” He was not thinking in terms of using the money to get the Gospel out, because the world does not have this kind of a mindset.
Okay; so I have to go through all of this. I have to sell everything that I have in order for someone to believe that I believe it. What good is it for someone to believe that I believe this? Is this going to help them? No; I think this would be a huge waste of time. I do not care whether or not others believe that I believe this. This is not the issue.
Of course, what others tend to do is to make this a bit more significant by saying, “If you sign over your home, then I will believe this. I will then think that you are really serious about this, and then I will take this seriously and believe that this is going to happen.”
What is the problem with this? If all of us did this, if all of us sold everything that we possess and we used it for the Gospel and someone was so impressed by this that they said that they believed, would this have helped them in any way spiritually? Would they have believed unto salvation? Would this have made them finally accept the truth of the Word of God?
No. This is based on the wrong understanding and doctrine that the churches teach, which is that man can believe unto salvation on their own. They could see this and much, much more but they will never believe unto salvation. The Israelites saw the mighty hand of God destroy Egypt and they did not believe unto salvation. They crossed the Red Sea with waters as a wall on either side and they did not believe unto salvation. They drank water from a rock and ate bread that fell from Heaven, but none of these things convinced them. None of these things convinced the unbelievers in the past and nothing that a true believer could do today could convince the people of our day.
It is actually a big fault of others and a big problem for them when they start watching Mr. Camping, which many do. They are watching him because they do not understand that this information is from the Bible, that it is the Bible that we have to go to, finally, if God will give them mercy to believe. They are watching him or they are watching others to see if they are serious and really believe this, but this is never going to help them. A lot of them are even watching just to try to find fault or error within someone so that they can finally say, “Aha! That person did this or that person said that; therefore, it is all a hoax. It is all make believe.”
Yes; they can find fault in man. They can find sin in any individual if they look hard and close enough, but this is not where anyone should be looking. We have to look to the Bible and to what the Bible says.
The next question is from London. By the way, Family Radio had a campaign in London. I am not sure how many posters they had put up in their subway systems, but I think it was into the dozens. Billboards went up in Ireland and I think that posters went up in Scotland, London, and Wales.
Question #2 is from London, England: Hello. I have a question about how you believe Judgment Day will be on 21 May 2011. From Mark 13, no one knows the time or hour. Please explain and I will be in touch with you on 22 May 2011 to confirm to you that He will come as a thief in the night. No one knows, so watch and pray and do not mislead God’s people and those who do not know Him. Let Him not catch you sleeping.
Chris: Yes; the Bible has a couple of statements that say “of that day and that hour knoweth no man.” In one statement in Mark 13, it also says “neither the Son.” Because of this verse, many people are convinced that Jesus does not know the time of the end.
This is about as false as anything can be, because Jesus is eternal God. He is the Almighty. He is The Everlasting Father, and the Father knows, right? The Bible says, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” Well, Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” He is the Father. I do not know how this is possible, but He is. Therefore, He knows, and there are many other ways that we can prove that He knows. Some of His names are: “Omega,” “the end,” “the last.” These are names of Christ.
So He takes upon Himself these names, and then are we to believe that He does not know when the end will be? Are we to believe that He does not know when the last day will be, when one of His names is “the last”? He knows as much about when the end will be as He knows about when the beginning was. He was the Creator, and so He is the “Alpha” and He is “the first” and He is “the beginning.” If He is this, then, of course, He is the opposite.
In so many ways, it is dishonoring and displeasing to God that people who profess to be Christians would think that the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty in the flesh, did not know. Does He know when He is going to save the last of His elect? Does He know this? You see, if He does not know one thing, then this will impact a whole bunch of other things. If He is in the dark about this very day, well, this day comes after the last of the elect are saved; then the harvest is gathered immediately, “When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle.” Are we to believe that He does not know this either?
How does Jesus answer the disciples’ question in Matthew 24, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world”? Should He not have said, “I do not know; I have no idea, because I am in the flesh”? The Bible says that He “knoweth the thoughts of man.” He knew that He would set down at the table with the Pharisees and He knew their thoughts, which is not something that men in the flesh can know. He performed mighty miracles in the flesh. He turned water into wine while in the flesh. He did all of these acts of eternal God in the flesh, and yet people say that, because He was in the flesh, He did not know the day or hour.
No; this cannot be used, and Jesus in Matthew 24 did not say, “I do not know.” When the disciples asked the question, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” He goes on to give signs: the falling away, the abomination of desolation in the holy place, Israel being the fig tree in leaf, and so on. He answers the question because He has full knowledge.
I say this just to indicate that if anyone thinks that Christ does not know, especially those in the churches, and they are flat-out wrong about this, then what about the idea that the churches have that no man can ever possibly know? This should, at least, cause someone to dig a little deeper and to not be so superficial in the approach to the Bible and just skim the surface of the Scriptures to come to their own conclusions. They read, “of that day and that hour knoweth no man,” and their attitude is, “Okay; I have my answer.”
We cannot do this with any doctrine of the Bible. If we do this, we are guaranteed to get into trouble and end up going the wrong way with any teaching. For example, we read that God is “not willing that any should perish.” We can then close the Bible and assume that we understand this, right? We can now say that God wants every individual in the world to be saved.
If this is anyone’s conclusion, then they have just stumbled upon a wrong gospel and a wrong doctrine. If anyone takes a superficial reading of the Scriptures and they run with it, then they are going to be wrong; and they can do this with many, many things.
So this person has great confidence that the 22nd of May will come, as he says, “I will be in touch with you on 22 May 2011 to confirm to you that He will come as a thief in the night.” This is tremendous confidence and faith in a date far off, as he is looking past May 21st to the 22nd of May.
People have written to us and guaranteed this. They are guaranteeing this. We thank God that He is guaranteeing 21 May 2011. He is matching the prophecy of man. He is matching the prophecy of the world, of man’s great belief and confidence and faith that this world will continue indefinitely; basically, it will continue eternally.
This is why there is so much opposition to the fact that May 21st is going to be Judgment Day, because people do not believe that this world will ever end. They think that it will just go on and on and on.
So, of course, May 22nd will come, but this is a prophecy. This is a prophecy just like God is prophesying a date. This is why His people are carrying the message that May 21st will be Judgment Day.
I do not know if you have noticed something. There is a phrase that is not only on the caravans, but it is also going up on the billboards now, “The Bible guarantees it!” This is very important to this message. God is guaranteeing this. It has His seal.
This is like when you buy something and it has that golden seal on it that guarantees a certain date for the product, like a ninety-day or a one-year guarantee. God is now saying that He guarantees this. This guarantee comes through His Word, the Bible, and now it is just a matter of seeing who is right.
I hope that no one is planning on sitting back and waiting to find this out. I hope that no one is thinking this, “I will wait until May 21st. Once the ground starts shaking, then I will start crying to God.” I realize that many people are going to do this. Great multitudes of people in the world are going to do this. It is then that they will believe. They will believe when the earth that they trust in, that solid piece of ground under their feet, when this starts to move like the waves of the sea, they will stop trusting in that and start trusting in what God has said; but then it will be too late.
Question #3 is from the fellowship: Matthew 24:51 says:
And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This sounds like judgment and a person being under the wrath of God, right?
Chris: Let us back up to verse 50. We read in Matthew 24:50-51:
The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I used to think that this was referring to a place called “hell.” This is what many used to think. I thought this as well; but once we understood the timeline and God put that last piece of the five months in, then we saw that from May 21st to October 21st would be five months of torment. Almost immediately after this, there was an understanding that developed about judgment; that is, the judgment process and how God will work this out.
In Luke 13, we find a reference to the door being shut. It says in Luke 13:24-25:
Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:
We thought that this was referring to Judgment Day. We thought that God would be on His throne, that He would have destroyed the world, that all of the unsaved masses of people would be standing before Him. He would judge them and then throw them into a place called “hell” forevermore. This is what we thought. We thought that it was at that point that unsaved man would be crying out, “Lord, Lord!” But when we realized that the door shuts on May 21st, this locked in the time period that this is talking about.
This is talking about May 21st. On May 21st, the door shuts. At that point, many will begin to say, “Lord, Lord!” because they have seen the Rapture, they have seen God take His people into Heaven, and they realize that they are left behind. Therefore, they are pleading with God and telling Him the good works that they have done in their Christian life. They are basically telling God that they should not be left here and that they should have gone to Heaven.
In this context, it says in Luke 13:27-28:
But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.
This is when the weeping and gnashing begins on May 21st. This is going on on the earth, because we have learned that there will still be five months of time; and so the people are here crying, “Lord, Lord!” It is here on this earth that they will be weeping.
We can just imagine the sorrow that will be going on. The word “torment” that is associated with this is a word that actually points to intense sorrow that people have because they missed the greatest opportunity ever and did not go into the Kingdom of Heaven; they are left here.
There is also anger, and this is what the gnashing of teeth has to do with. In Acts 7, it also speaks of this. This is after Stephen was witnessing to a Jewish council and was basically being charged with heresy. Let us look at why it uses this phrase, because this is important. God is moving Stephen to say these words that are very direct. We read in Acts 7:51-54:
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard these things…
God convicts and admonishes the church from His Word, and He is speaking to the church today. He is very directly finding the errors and the falsehoods of the church and their hypocrisy. This is what God’s Word does. It does this. God’s Word judges, not us. His Word points the finger at the churches and congregations and at their failure to be obedient to His Word, and this brings about anger.
So in Acts 7:54, we read:
When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
Then finally, we read in Acts 7:57:
Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
They did not want to hear it anymore. They did not want to hear the truth of the Word of God. They “stopped their ears.” They put their hands over their ears so that they would not hear; then they just blindly and madly ran towards Stephen and killed him.
The gnashing of teeth is a fury. It is a great anger that people will have. They may start out trying to plead with God, like Esau who cried, “Hast thou but one blessing, my father?” This is what will happen after the blessing has been given to all of the “Jacobs,” to God’s elect, and they have been raptured out of here. It will be as Esau cried, “Hast thou but one blessing? Bless me, even me also.” But there will be no more blessings, not even the temporal blessings, because the world at that point will be one gigantic graveyard. They realize that there is no blessing, and this soon turns into anger. It will turn into mankind being furious with God that He would dare do this to them.
This also plays in with them crying, “Lord, Lord!” In essence, they will be saying to God, “Look at what I did for You! Look at the time I spent and the money I gave. I got the Gospel out!” This is what will lead to the gnashing of teeth, and this is what happens beginning on May 21st and throughout the five months to the people who are left behind. On October 21st, that will be it.
Question #4 is from the fellowship: Mr. Camping was talking about when the men who were trying to tear down Lot’s door to get to the men inside, Lot offered to them his daughters. The men are then blinded.
Chris: I heard a good commentary on this from a caller to Family Radio’s “Open Forum” program. Mr. Camping also thought about it and agreed with it.
We draw back at the idea that Lot was willing to give up his daughters, but we need to understand that these men were God. This is related to the idea that God goes first in our lives. He comes before marriage. He comes before children. He comes before all family. We put Him first, and so I think that this is one point that we can take from this.
Let us read this in Genesis 19:9-11:
And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
Jesus is the door. Christ says in John 10, “I am the door.” The spiritual meaning of this is that He is the door. There is great blindness today in the churches and congregations. There is “strong delusion” that God has sent them. Just as He struck these men with blindness, He has struck the churches of our day with spiritual blindness. Their watchmen are blind; this is for sure because they do not see anything coming.
It this was not so tragic, it could almost be funny. They send the watchmen up into the tower. Following Christ’s instructions, they say, “Watch therefore.” They are told to be in the tower watching; and so the watchman goes into the watchtower and they give him his trumpet, and yet they also give the following instructions, “Go ahead up into the watchtower, but remember that you can never see anything. You can never find the enemy approaching. Keep this in mind, but go ahead and keep watch. The second thing is here is your trumpet; but whatever you do, never blow it. If you do blow it, make sure that it makes an uncertain sound. Make sure that the sound is something that people cannot identify and that no one would respond to.” But God says in 1 Corinthians 14:8:
For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?
This is referring to the battle of Armageddon; of course God is going to blow the trumpet very clearly and definitely so that people can prepare for the battle. This is why God tells His people this information in advance from the Bible so that we can then share this with everyone else. This is blowing the trumpet.
The churches say that Christ could come today. He could come tomorrow. He could come next year. He could come in one hundred years.
Is there is anything more uncertain than this? What kind of trumpet blast is this? What type of warning call is this?
Some people really believe this, but I do not think that they know what they are talking about. They say, “I live each day as if Christ could come today. If He comes tomorrow, I will be ready. I live this way every day.”
Well, they live this way just like all of us live knowing we could die today or tomorrow, or within the next two and a half months. They say that they live this way, but what is the real truth? If one of us holds to the idea that we could die today, we could be hit by a car or something, or if, instead, we were to go to the doctor and the doctor told us that we only had so long to live, this would be way different than thinking that I “might” die today or tomorrow. This knowledge of the certainty of the end impacts our lives in a way that the knowledge of it just happening at “any time” or “any day” could ever do.
It is the same thing with the church as they say that they live like Christ is coming today, and so forth. But we can attest that when we know that there is a set time, an appointed Day of Judgment, which God, in His mercy, has given us knowledge of, we then realize that this is it; this then impacts our lives in a big way.
Is anyone making plans for summer vacation? How about how we live with the money we have? This impacts everything. Someone who does not hear this certain, clear, definitive sound of the trumpet can never know what it is like to live with this expectation of Christ coming.
Question #4 continued: The reason that I raised this is because this passage deals with Family Radio’s latest booklet, “Gay Pride.” These men wanted to have homosexual relationships with these men in Sodom.
Chris: The big clue here is that this is at a time of judgment, because Jesus likens His coming to the days before the flood and to the destruction of Sodom, and so God is indicating that homosexuality will be prevalent at the time of judgment. Romans 1 teaches this, too, and this is what we are seeing out in the world. This is another sign, another indicator of the end.
We will stop here.