He is coming but no one knows when
Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
Jesus is returning on May 21, 2011. A series of billboards in several US cities proclaim the message.
The billboards picture three wise men on camels with the words, “The wise men knew,” and the website, wecanknow.com, is promoted. There’s also a Bible text: “a wise man’s heart discerneth both times and judgment, Ecclesiastes 8:5.”
On the website, you discover the Secret Rapture (Jesus secretly coming for His people) is listed for May 21, with the destruction of the planet five months later on October 21.
The predictions are “100 per cent accurate and beyond dispute,” reassures the site. Harold Camping, the now elderly founder of Christian radio station Family Radio, is behind the predictions.
“This is not a joke,” says Family Radio’s Tom Evans.
Unfortunately, for Camping’s credibility, he published a book in 1992 called 1994?. In it, he predicted Jesus’s return in September 1994.
“That was obviously wrong,” says Evans.
Obviously.
But doesn’t the Bible say no one knows the time of Jesus’s coming? Well, yes it does. However, says Camping, the wise can “discern both times and judgment” (Ecclesiastes 8:5, KJV—other translations disagree with this emphasis). About 35 years ago, that wisdom was given—to him.
Those of us who are Seventh-day Adventists will be skeptical. We splintered off a group that wrongly predicted the return of Jesus. Lesson learned. Hopefully.
Jesus is plain in Matthew 24: no one knows when these things will happen (verse 36); it will happen just like Noah’s flood, unexpectedly (verse 39); “be prepared, because you don’t know what day your Lord is coming” (verse 42); be ready at all times, He is coming “when least expected” (verse 44, quotes from NLT).
Jesus is coming. That’s His promise. He also promises it will be unexpected.
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