Metaphorical Mephisto

Gnosticism’s prophet:

The beginning of a new heresy or the culmination of an old one?

1994? 2011? 

Introduction

   There is such a thing in this world called “Reverse Speech” that has earned a lot of deserved ridicule and has been the proverbial butt of much hearty sarcasm. This rather unusual theory was begun by an Australian who accidentally dropped his tape recorder into a toilette, and quickly rescuing it, only to discover that his once-treasured source of magnetic music could now only play backwards. Listening to his favorite rock group tapes backwards, he began to imagine he heard secret messages coming over. These, he asserted, were not intentional messages coming over like backmasking. Rather, they were “reverse speech.” He soon developed his theory, namely, that the human mind speaks the truth in reverse speech and this comes out at the same time as our normal forward speech. Under normal circumstances, of course, we are unaware of it and do not detect it. In listening to his tapes backward, he developed his theory that we speak two ways at the same time: truth and falsehood.

   Reverse Speech caused quite a stir in the 1990s. The founder of Reverse Speech, David John Oates, claimed that playing a tape recording backwards of anybody’s speech will reveal what they really intended to say. Lies can be detected this way because the subconscious is speaking in reverse when the conscious is speaking in normal speech. The subconscious, furthermore, is always speaking truth. Politicians were aghast! Not only was there a method to tell that they were lying, this method carried with it a way to determine the truth of what they really wanted kept covered-up!

   Well, many undertook a study of Oates’ claims, including some doctoral students at Columbia University. Oates’ Reverse Speech didn’t stand up because it was all based on Oates’ own arbitrary metaphorizing of what he thought he heard. Indeed, he even declared that Reverse Speech is primarily metaphoric. Words played backwards like “yes” can sound like “say,” that’s true. But entire sentences come out as mostly gibberish. It is for Oates to interpret this gibberish and place upon it the secret meaning— thus it is a metaphor: a secret or ulterior meaning given to a basic word or expressions. In Oates’ case, it was a secret or ulterior meaning placed on largely incoherent gibberish.

   We all know metaphors, like “You better know what side your bread is buttered on” or “Somebody better be careful or he’s going to knock over the apple cart.” Now, we all know that anybody using these is not talking about buttering bread or apple carts. This is because we all know the metaphoric meaning behind these expressions. We know the metaphoric meaning because society has agreed upon a certain meaning to these metaphors. That is the basis of rational language: an agreed upon meaning to words and sounds.

   But for Reverse Speech, truth was all subliminal and ulterior, and Oates alone invented the metaphors to unlock the meaning. When Bill Clinton said: “I try to articulate my position as clearly as possible,” Oates declares that the reverse sound of that is equivalent to saying “She’s a fun girl to kiss.” Not because that’s what those words sound like in reverse, but because the approximation of those sounds can only be interpreted metaphorically as implying that. Most every analysis he gave of a famous person’s speech backwards revealed only a vague bunch of backward words.  None of them bore any resemblance to what the person actually said.

   Reverse Speech went into the toilette where Oates first discovered it for this simple reason: it was shown to be based solely on his own arbitrary invention of metaphors to explain gibberish and incoherent sounds. Then he himself applied the meanings to these metaphors, applied by the imagination of one man. Everybody got a good laugh, and Reverse Speech and its inventor went back to Australia.

   Well, you may wonder why I use such a convoluted introduction in an article on a religious radio show host. The fact is that Harold Camping’s methods are closely related to Reverse Speech. In fact, Camping’s Biblical exegesis is derived by the identical method. Not near identical: identical. He may not have retrieved it from a toilette, but many long hours were spent somewhere studying the Bible until it dawned on him that it was a massive metaphor of secret and ulterior communication. The only reason he has captured the attention of tens of thousands, and was once even considered the most intuitive conservative teacher of God’s word, was that he called his method “spiritualizing.” He got away with this because the picturesque and poetic language of some of scripture obviously cannot be taken literally, and it is indeed commonplace in much of Christian exegesis (especially the fundamentalists) not to take things literally. Camping, however, inculcates into his listeners that the opposite of the literal must therefore be his spiritual interpretation. However, there is a great difference between symbolic meaning and what Camping promotes as his “spiritual” meaning. Despite using the word “spiritual,” what Camping really does is self-invent an entire glossary of metaphors based on words and illustrations in the Bible. From this he not only derives doctrines, but he also convinced himself that he found a number code revealing to him that the second coming of Christ would happen in 1994. Obviously, he was wrong.

   What then is the point of a long article on a failed false prophet? The point is that Camping is “dumb like a fox;” that is, he is “dumb enough to get caught in the first place, but he is smart enough to elude the hounds,” as the old saying goes. That is the one major gift he possesses. With his massive outreach on radio he continues to inspire the many thousands of very conservative Christians that the end of the world is at hand and that all churches are corrupt and under Satan’s control. All of his developing “Campingism,” as it is now being called by those opposing him, is based on the same metaphorizing of Scripture which led him to believe he could pinpoint a date for the Second Coming which, according to the Bible he adulates, even his master said he did not know.

   It is this methodology which must be attacked. And in no other place is Camping’s weak heel revealed than in his primitive use of biblical numbers and his sloppy collation of them with selective historical dates. There is no allegory or metaphoric meaning to fall back on and dispute when a mathematic error is committed; no spiritualizing in order to throw out the overt meaning. The unbelievable number of his mathematic mistakes shows his clumsy lack of concentration on the simplest things of arithmetic. This same clumsy lack of concentration has been the method of his metaphysical approach to “Biblical truth” for decades, and with this same brush he has slapped over the Bible a strange graffiti of falsehood.

   The rise and fall of Harold Camping is a fascinating journey through living Gnosticism, a “Salvation by Knowledge” pursuit based on the allegorization of Scripture by human wisdom, desire or expedience. This allegorical and metaphorical methodology gave rise in the late 1st century and throughout the 2nd century to a host of bizarre teachings and doctrines, and won for its chief exponents a massive heretical following. Their names are well-known: Cerinthus, Basilides, Valentinus and the most famous: Marcion. Each one followed the same progression: total belief in the divinity of their own inventive allegories; rejection of church organization, and the establishment of a new Christianity with themselves at the head; and, of course, the condemnation of established Christianity as complete falsehood. 

   In like manner, the allegories of Harold Camping have grown until they have taken on the authority of Scripture, and he has grown to cult status as the most intuitive conservative teacher of the Bible. This caused him to spin off his own church from an established Calvinist denomination, and then eventually years later to tell all Christians to leave their churches since all are false. He disbanded his prosperous church, with all but one Elder willfully resigning. When in 2001 Camping announced over the radio for all Christians to get out of the churches, thousands left. Camping has one talent: in attracting and holding similar Gnostics who have little education or knowledge of Christian history. Therefore they do not know, or even suspect, that Gnosticism is not found in the theories it derives but in the methodology it uses. Campingnites do not believe in classic Gnostic Docetism and Dualism. They seem like very conservative Christians. But they are an apocalyptic, knowledge cult that has now hatched very obvious anti-Christian doctrines. And through this methodology for decades Camping has been slowly leeching into the Christian conservative circles subversive doctrines and teachings under the guise of “deeper spiritual truths.” 

   This article will hopefully place everything in context to show the reader how fake the knowledge of Gnostics really is, in particular Campingism. It is a cyclical knowledge that stems from their own desires. They then place a metaphoric meaning on Scripture to ordain their own conceit as the words of God. Some Gnostics reject written revelation completely and rely solely on philosophical arguments or appeal to general spiritual wisdom. Others, like Camping, are more dangerous because they hide their own rationalizing behind the mask of the Bible. This article will surgically remove them. But no article can stifle the re-emergence of Gnosticism better than the sum total of Harold Camping’s life. God has let such a false teacher continue to a very ripe old age, so that Ezekiel 14: 2-3 is revealed once again. Camping has come before the prophets (by reading them), with his own preconceived judgment in hand,  and God has let him find his own mental idols therein— this will become plain as the article unfolds: Camping conceived his ideas first, and then made them fit in the Bible. So self-deceived is he that he is unaware of his own presumptions, when he in essence declares he knows what Christ claimed he himself could not know.

   Like Mephisto, much of Camping’s allegorical extrapolations have been unceremoniously dropped and “poof” vanish, leaving behind doctrines that no longer have any foundation, and 20 or more years of prelude with no fulfillment. This article will conjure them back into existence so that the reader can see how Camping’s allegories have never predicted the future, but rather he has had to constantly tailor and adjust them to fit what happens after-the-fact.

   It all began in 1958 when Harold Camping, who was an Oakland, California, contractor and engineer was motivated to buy his own radio station, co-founding it with 2 other gentlemen. With time this station, KEAR Family Radio, grew to be a network of 39 stations, Family Network, Inc., plus to enjoy syndication on about 150 stations, and to own its own shortwave instillation. Altogether they proclaim the teachings of Harold Camping to the whole world on the

   With time, however, Camping became the central piece of Family Radio. Thousands enjoyed the old time Christian music during the day, Bible reading and various shows, but the frosting on the cake was always Camping’s evening Open Forum. With time, he also inspired unusual veneration as an apt and in-depth bible teacher, attracting a core group of supporters and listeners who believed that Camping mastered the true method of biblical interpretation, giving him an edge at understanding the “deeper spiritual truths” in the Bible.  Camping is a master of inference. Although he makes little direct references to himself, Camping has aided this adulation of himself by inculcating the idea he alone relies solely on the Bible, and that he comes to his conclusions only after careful study and “comparing all the scriptures to the scriptures.” By his interpretation of this method he “allows the bible to interpret the bible,” in essence by application or precedence to allow biblical words to be given ulterior meanings that point to deeper truths. Not only do words and phrases mean something more, so do numbers and time spans mentioned in the Bible.  The number 40 means a period of testing, the number 13 means super-completeness, etc.  In a similar vein he has applied metaphoric meanings to time spans between certain Biblical events, finding deeper revelation in such spans as 1100 years, 2100 years, etc.

   He constantly refers to the “Bible only” as the source of all truth, and thus developed his following amongst conservative circles of “Bible believing Christians” because of his complete reliance upon and devotion to the Bible. He has a subtle way of garrulously reiterating points that have by effect inculcated into his listeners for decades that most preachers (if not all) are very shallow and limited in their knowledge of the Bible’s “deeper spiritual truths.” 

   Starting in the 1960s, Camping was preaching the gospel to a world fraught with change, a world that he believed would end in his lifetime. It was up to him to get gospel out, considering what he saw forthcoming. His conservative, if un-dynamic, presentation appealed to the hundreds of thousands who felt that the world was “shot to hell” in the 1970s, and nothing could get more evil than the liberalism of women’s lib, New Age teachings, and “love-ins.” In the 1980s, his popularity grew and with this so did Family Radio, its income, and his subtle inferences to a near Parousia. 

   His numerological use of numbers mentioned in the Bible, and interpretation of time spans also mentioned therein, bothered some— but it seemed harmless and generic enough considering his stance on salvation by grace alone. The correct theories and doctrines were being expounded; and compared to all the bizarre teachings in the 1970s, Camping still seemed the “elder man of letters” of the traditional reformed Calvinist faith, a sole wick of doctrinal correctness in an age of “free will,” “works righteousness” and bra-burning.

   It would not become obvious to his listeners until 1992 that his numbers and methodology tended to something very tangible and definite: that he knew when the second coming of Jesus Christ would happen. Indeed, Camping’s instigating motive to begin Family Radio was that he actually believed from studying the Bible that he had stumbled across a complex mathematical code revealing both the year, month and day of the second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of the world. Believing this, he naturally had to believe that he had a definite unction to proclaim the gospel in these the last decades of the Earth. As Family Radio grew, and as society according to his view got worse, he saw himself and Family Radio as an instrumental tool in God’s hand to give the final warning to mankind. This gave him the courage in 1992 to finally go public with his calculations in his book 1994? in which he presented his case that Christ would return in the year 1994 during September in the Jewish feast of Sukkoth.

   Although Camping had believed this since the 1950s, he never preached a word of it during Open Forum before 1992. Instead he mixed his teaching of doctrine, based on the conservative Calvinist perspective, with promoting the idea that “I would be very surprised to see the Earth reach the year 2000” whenever he received an apocalyptic

     When his audacity was challenged by callers who used Acts 1: 7 against his assertions, he would have a ready answer. Indeed 1994? had a long dissertation on it, and he would quote the verse often on Open Forum and his morning TV Bible study hour: “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power . . .” or “. . .But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not even the Son or the angels of God.”  He would blithely counter: “But it doesn’t say year and month.” He would also quickly quote Amos: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants the prophets.” (Actually it’s secret in the singular). He would often stress secrets in his inculcating tone. This was his method of “comparing scripture with scripture.” More plainly put: letting one verse cancel another; and also presuming the greatest audacity: that he was in fact a bona fide prophet of the Most High.

   So enraptured was Camping by his numerological code that he didn’t realize he was essentially saying that Jesus was an idiot, for if the end of the world could be determined by a careful study of the Bible then Jesus knew very little of the good book. Such things do not dawn on Gnostics: they are obsessed with their extractions from the Bible to such an extent that the plain language and real logic is rendered impotent. 

   But Acts 1:7 was nevertheless a bulwark, and both in 1994? and on his Open Forum he took it to task. “When Acts 1:7 is correctly translated from the Greek it should read ‘it is not of you to know the times. . .’ ” Camping knows no Greek or Hebrew, however, and his answer proved it comically. Camping comes to his “correct reading” merely by reading an interlinear NT, where the English is placed under the Greek text by the translators to facilitate comparison. Unfortunately, they try and make English follow a close enough and understandable word order like the Greek over it. Here the sentence reads “It is not of you to know the times or seasons which has put the father in own hands his.” The Greek word is umon, which is merely the second person pronoun possessive— in other words “yours.” It is not “yours to know.” “Of” is possessive in English. Therefore the translators thought justified in writing it as “of you” in order to maintain the flow.

   Camping makes much of “of you,” not understanding this is merely an attempt by a translator to make the English flow like the Greek language in which the pronouns come cart before the horse (the brother yours, for instance— the “brother of you”). He applies a metaphysical meaning to “of you” and wrote in 1994? and preached over TV and the airwaves that this means “in and of yourself you cannot know it . . . but you can find it in the Bible.”

   While this should have been regarded as instantly ludicrous, listeners were sure he must be right, considering he was a conservative believer in the Doctrine of Grace.

   We, of course, know nothing in and of ourselves. We must all be taught. No language develops irrational concepts for any word. To say that that is the meaning of a mere second person pronoun in the genitive or possessive case is like saying that “it is not for you to go to Mexico.” That means “in and of yourself it is not for you to go” before tritely adding “. . .but you can take a bus.” Regrettably, for Camping’s sake, Acts 1:7 means what it is translated to mean: “It is not for you to know.”

   When September 1994 failed miserably, the mask of being the conservative voice of evangelical faith was ripped off. Even worse, the notion that Camping was a careful studier of the Bible and knew the sure method by which to extract its deeper, ulterior messages was ripped off. Twenty five years of inference was shattered in a moment.Camping was visibly shaken at his failure, and attempted with some obviously improvised illogic to assert that the Parousia would be by Christmas, since it is a time of gift giving. In doing so he gave up any pretense of using biblical numbers and “spiritual” meanings to words, Jewish feasts and Mosaic commandments. At this moment his listeners and his TV audience saw Camping clearly for the first time: as a man who had simply improvised most of his “spiritual truths” for decades.

   Yet though many fell away, others were added to Family Radio’s faithful listeners. Through equally ill-found logic as above, Camping wriggled out of his failure and continued to preach the conservative doctrines. He had always allowed himself an “out”: that if the “final tribulation” was not a literal “2300 evening and mornings” then it was 23 years. Thus if 1994 failed, the next date would be 2011 AD.  He could not be a false prophet, he claimed, lamely citing that he put a question mark on 1994? . . .?  Camping had thus proved he was a genius at inculcation.

   Regardless of the spin, his manner and his inflections between 1992 and 1994 had clearly left no doubt. In private he asserted he knew the actual day and it was to have been on September 6, 1994. But just as before 1994, afterward over TV and radio, Camping’s droning style of inculcation held sway. He was simply helping to get the gospel out, and if 1994? made some people stop and consider and reexamine themselves, then it was for the better. 

   The core group of Campingnites were satisfied, for most had never even read 1994? anyway, not seeing any reason since they listened to him expound it between 1992, and had previously absorbed booklets where Camping came to a date of creation and proposed a biblical timetable for world events based on the “bible alone.” And, frankly, they were of an equally Gnostic bent as Camping, using the scripture to fit their own Gnostic outlooks.  They had the book, of course, but referred to it only when Camping made reference to it.

   Camping, in fact, had found it easy to save face with many of the old and to acquire many new who were attracted to someone with the appearance of having a deep inside knowledge of a code. Family Radio has grown more, and there are tens of thousands of listeners firmly enchanted with Camping’s “knowledge.” Many old listeners remained because of the old Christian music or because Camping teaches the “Doctrine of Grace,” which to them is the true gospel.

   There is really no excuse for them. His treatment of Act 1:7 should have been enough to convey that his method of bible study was to stew over a biblical statement so he could come up with an alternative meaning. That the Bible is only an excuse for thinly veiled metaphorizing of extra-biblical doctrines should have become obvious to any reader of his 1994?, any who bothered to actually wade through the massive volume of illogic, poor arithmetic, and secret-society-like allegories, instead of accepting the veneer reenforced by some of his followers that all he comes up with is Biblical because he uses no other book than “the bible alone.”

 A Steady Inference

Although in general his listeners may have been surprised that he was predicting an actual date, in violation of Acts 1:7 and the gospels, those in the closer group of “Campingnites” from his Alameda, California, CRC church (and in Bible study groups in other churches with links) had known since the 1970s that Camping believed the “final tribulation” would begin in 1988.

   Because of Family Radio’s ministry, the CRC and also many Presbyterian churches had many, many “Campingnites,” a name applied to those who were the more conservative in the congregations. Many of Camping’s figures simply got around between the churches. Also, once a year Family Radio listeners could meet at Mission Springs, California, for a week-long camp-out at the Christian conference center and study the bible with Camping and meet the other Family Radio personalities. If anything, it was all very innocent and devoted to the study of the Bible and to discussions that were clearly timed and primed by the general apocalyptic attitude dominant in the last few decades of the millennium. . .with which Camping’s brilliance at inculcation that the time was “close at hand” fit perfectly.  

   During this time, Camping’s position as a man who studied the bible more deeply than others was held in place by one of his many booklets published through Family Radio. This booklet, Adam When?, was first published in 1974, and it contained an intimidating use of correlating the Bible and its numbers and time spans with historical dates. This statement, however, must be in all honesty modified somewhat by the fact that Campingnites were not even disposed to challenge any of Camping’s assertions. Despite using historical cross-references, Camping’s Adam When? was a hodgepodge of biblical re-writes in order to get his numerology to fit. 

   Thus after 3 decades of Camping’s inculcations, “spiritualizing” and pamphlets, in 1992 when he went public with an exact year, his Gnostic listeners were sure he was just too knowledgeable in the Bible not to be right. After all, he was conservative. He believed in the doctrine of grace, and that no women should be teaching in churches or should be elders— the Camping gospel. All his numbers and time spans were clearly in the Bible. Everything pointed to 1994.

   It is time that we go over his 1994? thesis here to highlight not only why it failed but also why calculations springboarding off of it will fail for 2011 AD. Moreover, it will show what is the method behind even more insidious teachings that Camping has expounded for decades, the culmination of which are his recent “Depart Out” teachings.

1994?

As previously noted, Harold Camping first published much of his calculation in Adam When?, 1974, but stopped short of referring how it could possibly give us a code to decipher the coming of Jesus Christ. Since the Bible mentions all the ages of the patriarchs, plus other time periods off-hand, Camping was able to dogmatically assert an Earth that would be 13,000 years old in 1988. In 1994? he started to give his Gnostic meanings to these numbers and spans of time. The number 13 held special “spiritual” significance, meaning super-completeness. Thus 1988 was a sign of the super completeness of God’s plan for the Earth. The number 40, he said, meant a testing period. Modern Israel was 40 years old in 1988. They had been given their last testing period to see if they would turn to Christ. Now the final tribulation had begun in 1988. It was too late.

   Camping was unique in asserting the final tribulation was a purely metaphysical one in which no person could be saved. He taught that for over two decades on his Open Forum, preparing listeners for a time when even the wombs of believers would be closed so that no unsaved children could be born to saved people in this period. This will be dealt with later. But obviously it was derived by his own metaphoric use of scripture.

   Much of Camping’s “spiritual” interpretations of numbers surrounded time spans between significant events in the history of Israel. However, not only was Camping’s method of metaphoric interpretations of numbers not based on scripture, his use of historical date collation was not based on the “bible alone.” He used the inspiration of Dr. Merrill F. Unger (among others) to interpret the patriarchal genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11, assuming that these were not direct father and son. Unger’s early works themselves reflected an ongoing desire to reconcile the Genesis and biblical chronology with historical dates in the Gregorian Calendar. This was difficult because there were many different ways in which ancients kept time. The great W.F. Albright had once stated that ancient Near Eastern peoples “had dated long periods by life time, not by generations.” Much of the attempts to correlate and hash out how genealogies were to be reckoned can be found in major articles in the mid 50s before finally coming to form in the early 60s in several admirable books, including The Handbook of Biblical Chronology by Dr. Jack Finegan and The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings by Dr E.R. Thiele, both of which would virtually underpin Camping’s chronologies. The earliest works, however, of the 1950s no doubt made the greatest influence on Camping by providing a subtle clue on interpreting genealogies quite differently than the staid old method of Archbishop Ussher (1650-1654), which could still be found at that time in the margins of several editions of the Bible. To summarize: many agreed that the Genesis patriarch listed as succeeding the previous patriarch in the genealogy was mentioned because he was born in the year the previous one died, or approximately; that this genealogy was therefore a patriarchal calendar and not a direct father and son relationship.

   Camping would usurp these ideas in Adam When? without giving credit to the non-biblical origin of the theory, a penchant of assimilating the inspiration of others and later promoting it as from the “Bible only” he would become well known for. Only in the case of Adam and Seth did he accept true father and sonship because the Bible said “He called his name Seth” which is the prerogative of the father. Some of the historians above did not consider Seth a direct son. Camping’s motivation to differ from standard opinion was no doubt in order to achieve a perfect 13,000 year Earth in 1988. However, in most else Camping parroted the others, proposing that the requirement to be listed in the genealogy was that the succeeding name was a male descendent of the aforementioned patriarch and was born in the year he died. He could be a grandson, great-grandson or whatever. Although it says that, for instance, “Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years and begat Jared: and Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters,” Camping interprets “begat” to not imply direct son but male descendent. He opted for a complex solution: that when Mahalaleel was 65 he begat the son who would be the unnamed ancestor of Jared. When it says Mahalaleel “begat” at 65 it means a son who would be the progenitor of Jared was born. Jared qualifies to be listed as a “reference patriarch” because he was born in the year that Mahalaleel died. To be explicit: 895 years separated Mahalaleel and Jared.

   Why not just say Jared was born to Mahalaleel in the year he died in order to maintain an unbroken chain of ages? Why even mention the 65 years since it does not figure in a calculation of all the total life spans?

   This logic is not addressed because Camping found a key to infer that this was the way to calculate. From this “key” Camping was certain that the ages of the patriarchs should just simply be added together. This is the key that he stumbled on that began everything. It came in Exodus 6 where the generations of Moses and Aaron are listed. The generations are: Levi, who lived 137 years; his son Kohath (133); his son Amram (137), and Aaron’s age is later given as 83 at the Exodus. Thus:

Levi =       137 years        
Kohath = 133
Amram =  137
Aaron =    83 at Exodus

Total = 490 years. What does that prove? Nothing. Now minus 60 years old because Levi did not live his entire life span in Egypt.

The total is now

490 –
  60 =
430

—The precise amount of time they were in Egypt.

   Thus Camping concluded that the reason why certain genealogies are listed was for the specific purpose of calculating periods of time. Furthermore, in this instance, it proved that these were not direct father and son but male descendants born in the year the previous one died. One thus adds the total years and comes to the precise time.

   This does, in fact, seem impressive, if one assumes that Levi was 60 years old when he entered Egypt. But Camping has precise calculations that indicate just that age. This seems incontestable to Campingnites and many of the others who were impressed with Adam When? because in that book it didn’t lead to anything bizarre as in 1994?  

   Yet the lengths to which Harold Camping went in order to make Levi 60 years old is bizarre. This was Camping’s key— the discovery of this “secret” code in Exodus 6. This is where we must start, precisely where he did.

   Harold Camping must make Levi 60 years old when he entered Egypt. Without it, his whole key is useless. Without it there is no proof of a patriarch calendar system of just-add-the-ages-together. There is therefore no 13,000 year old Earth in 1988, etc.

   True facts are simply impassible, and they were, in detail: Joseph was 39 years old when Jacob and his brothers entered Egypt. Genesis 41:46 says Joseph was 30 years old at the time he stood before Pharaoh to interpret the dream. Seven years of plenty followed. Joseph was thus 37 years. In Genesis 45:6 Joseph makes himself known unto his brothers and says: “For these two years hath the famine been in the land.” Joseph was thus 39 years old. He told them there were yet five years more of famine. In this same year, Jacob stood before Pharaoh, and he said that he was 130 years old. We know this was the year in which they entered Egypt because the chapter (Genesis 47) begins with Joseph telling Pharaoh that his family was now in the land of Goshen. Joseph then took five of them to present them to Pharaoh, Jacob his father being one of them. We thus know that Joseph was 39 and Jacob was 130.

   This is perplexing to Camping, since if Levi was 60 years old he had to be 21 years older than Joseph. How can that be? Joseph was born to Jacob after Jacob had lived in Haran 14 years. Levi was born sometime within that 7 year period prior to Joseph, after Jacob had worked 7 years to obtain Leah. Therefore Levi had to be less than 7 years older than Joseph. Camping must make Levi 21 years older. There is no other way for his key to work. Levi must be made to be 60 years old when entering Egypt.

   In order to do so, Camping makes Jacob spend not 20 years in Haran, as the Bible says . . .but with his novel intuition gives Jacob a 40 year sojourn. He inserts an unnamed 20 years between Jacob contracting for Leah and Rachel, and then the herds and flocks! Biblically, there was 7 years each for Leah and Rachel. Despite the clear language of Genesis 31 when Jacob tells Laban (verse 41) “Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle. . .” Camping must place another 20 years between the 14 years for Rachel and Leah and the 6 years for the cattle.

   Camping starts with this assumption and fabricates an extra 20 years. Camping openly declares:

   “Since Jacob left Haran immediately after he had obtained his flocks, the only time during his Haran sojourn when he could have added to the twenty years named in Genesis 31:41 is the time between his contract to obtain Rachel and Leah and his contract to obtain his flocks. In other words, he must have worked for wages of some kind for a period of time following the expiration of his second seven year agreement to obtain Rachel. During this wage-earning period his family continued to grow until Joseph was born. Then he wished to leave but was induced to stay in Haran in return for all the oddly marked sheep.”

   In essence, this is saying Jacob worked for a 20 years span not mentioned in the Bible, according to a contract not mentioned in the Bible, for no pay of any kind, and then was induced to work an additional 6 years for pay (the flocks). Jacob says something else:

Genesis 31:36 -

“And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? What is my sin that thou hast so hotly pursued after me? (37) Whereas thou hast searched all my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set it here before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us both. (38) This twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten. (39) That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or by night. (40) Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. (41) Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle: and thou hast changed my wages ten times. . .”

“This” 20 years— not “those 20 years” sometime between the last 6 years and after the first 14 years. The Hebrew does mean “this.” Jacob is speaking of the time period which immediately ended. Yet because 20 years is mentioned twice Camping decides to divide the time into two separate 20 year periods, coming up with the 40 years he desperately needs rather than look at the context.

   Why would a man, cheated all the way by Laban for 14 years, foolishly contract for another 20 years, and then again for another 6 years? The reality is, he didn’t. The Bible is clear.

   But Camping still has another bulwark before him to maintain his Exodus 6 “key.” Not only does he have to insist on his 20 years of added time above, he must add metaphysical meanings to other passages to convince people that Levi’s son Kohath was not an direct son of Levi but rather that he was a remote descendent born in the year Levi died. Without this, too, he has no key.

   In Genesis 46 Jacob and his descendants are preparing to enter Egypt now that he knows Joseph is alive. All of Jacob’s house came with him. In verse 8 we clearly read: “And these are the NAMES of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons. . .” From the eldest to the youngest the names of Jacob’s sons and their sons are mentioned. Rueben and his sons are named, from eldest to youngest, so likewise are Simeon’s. Then Levi’s three sons are named: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, etc down through the line.

   Adding up all the names given in Genesis 46 as entering Egypt and we come to 66, the number of males mentioned, this is including Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. All three were alive and counted as entering Egypt with their father Levi and his father Jacob! Kohath was not born in the year of Levi’s death, but was alive even before they entered Egypt. Camping’s “key” is being undermined again by Scripture!

   To keep his key intact, Camping must have Kohath born in the year Levi died. Therefore Camping claims that Kohath only entered in the loins of Jacob symbolically because it says all Jacob’s sons came from Jacob’s “loins.” In case one should really believe this and say that Levi entered Egypt with the unnamed male progenitor of Kohath but only Kohath was named because he was significant for a number system, it should be noted that no ages are given here at all and a “calendar patriarch” system is not in view. It is only significant to mention a direct son. The Bible clearly says “These are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt.” If these three names— Gershon, Kohath and Merari— were remote decedents, Levi would still have to have three unknown and unnamed sons in order to make the figure 66 tally. They would be sons whose names were never to be known in history, even though from them come all the priests and Levites.

   Camping’s bizarre metaphysics is ruled out by the very next verse which lists Judah’s sons: “And the sons of Judah; Er and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan.” These we know are the direct sons of Judah, Pharez and Zarah being conceived by Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. It also qualifies that Er and Onan died in Canaan— not unknown, unnamed progenitors but Er and Onan’s name.

   Another verse also qualifies that Gershon, Kohath and Merari were alive when they entered Egypt. Verse 26 “All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six.” The word soul is a breathing individual, not the name of a descendant that would come hundreds of years later. All those named are those breathing persons who came with Jacob.

   It is also interesting that all the Jews after the Exodus, even to David’s time, were divided by the names of the sons of Jacob’s sons. Compare the names of Genesis 46 with the names in Numbers 26. You will note that the children of Israel are divided by the name of Jacob’s sons, and their sons. Many of which we know are direct children. For example verse 5: “Rueben, the eldest son of Israel: the children of Rueben; Hanoch, of whom cometh the family of the Hanochites: of Pallu, the family of the Palluites: (6) Of Hezron, the family of the Hezronites: of Carmi, the family of the Carmites.” Verse 19: “The sons of Judah were Er and Onan: and Er and Onan died in the land of Caanan. (20) And the sons of Judah after their families were; of Shelah, the family of the Shelanites: of Pharez, the family of the Pharezites: of Zarah, the family of the Zarhites.” Verse 57: “And these are they that were numbered amongst the Levites after their families: of Gershon, the family of the Gershonites: of Kohath, the family of the Kohathites: of Merari, the family of the Merarites.”

   In fact, all the Levites were divided by these three names to serve God in the temple at Jerusalem. Read 1 Chronicles chapter 6 where it speaks of the Levites. Read 1 Chronicles 23 where David divides all the Levites according to the three sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath and Merari, verse 6: “And David divided them into courses among the sons of Levi, namely, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.”

   To reiterate: in Numbers 26 the children of Israel are divided into families according to the names of Rueben’s direct sons and their direct sons (Pharezites, Zarites etc.). But if Camping’s metaphysics for Kohath are true then Levi’s true direct sons are never known if Gershon, Kohath, and Merari are more distant descendants, with Kohath born in the year of Levi’s death. To assume that these three men, of whom the entire priesthood and Levites were divided, were not the direct sons of Levi is in complete contradiction with Genesis 46 where it plainly states their names with those who came into Egypt with Jacob. Both Levi and Kohath were alive at the same time. These three men’s names appear in the same manner in which all the other grandsons of Jacob appear.

   It is obvious— Camping has no key. Nor it is possible that his personal study methods could ever find one.  One of his “key” arguments for 40 years in Haran proves that. Camping wrote:

“Also, if Jacob’s time with Laban in Haran had been restricted to twenty years, the events related in Genesis 38 concerning Judah’s family would have been well nigh impossible. Genesis 38 records events that lead up to the birth of twin sons to Judah by his daughter-in-law Tamar. Genesis 46:11 indicates that the sons of Judah, Perez and Zerah, went into Egypt with Jacob. On the presumption of a twenty year Haran sojourn, Jacob could not have been less than 88 or 89 when Judah was born. Since Jacob was 130 when he entered Egypt, Judah could not have been older than 31 or 32 years when he entered Egypt. During this thirty-one or thirty-two years Judah would have had to grow from baby to manhood, and additionally, all of the events of Genesis 38 would need to have taken place.”   

   Of course, 130 years minus 88 = 42, not thirty-two years for Judah, old enough even by today’s standards to be a grandfather. This was not a typo. Camping didn’t pay attention to his calculations, here or most anywhere. With a 20 year sojourn in Haran, as Genesis says, there is still more than enough time for Judah to be a grandfather. Camping also didn’t notice that if Joseph was only 39 when Jacob entered Egypt at 130 years of age, how could his older brother Judah be younger at 32? Also, Benjamin his younger bother entered Egypt already having 10 sons. All that Camping had on his mind was prove his “key”— make Levi 60 years old. If something didn’t fit, have the numbers represent the counting of Jacob’s sperm. A headlong dash that ended up in failure and the ludicrous.

Procrustean Prophet

It’s been said many times for those who treat the scriptures crudely that they are engaging in “procrustean hermeneutics.” Procrustus was a Greek god of myth who captured his victims and took them back to his iron bed and stretched them out until they fit. Where they overlapped, he cut hunks off. In other word, he made them fit a ready made frame. Such is a good analogy of many who approach scripture to justify their preconceived ideas, whether they be numbers, hidden knowledge, or fancy new doctrines.

   This is Camping’s method throughout 1994? and Adam When? The upshot was that he was essentially 100% wrong on every number and date and therefore without any number pattern whatsoever. It would literally take a volume as thick as 1994? to highlight each one. However, just the above illustrates his methodology with his special key. It was this “key” which so enraptured him that he tore away at the Bible back in the 1950s, through long hours, to conceive his 1994? and all his other “spiritualizing” to make today’s events fit the “last days” scenario his numerology demanded. All this required he spiritualize an apostasy and the reigning of Satan today.  

   Camping’s desire to conform his genealogies to his Codex Leningradis reading of “430 years in Egypt” is a prime example of his unschooled foundation. Historically, and biblically, “430 years in Egypt” cannot be regarded as being the original and unchallenged reading. The Septuagint, the bible of the New Testament era, read and still reads “430 years were they in the land of Canaan and Egypt.” This reading appears to be the accepted reading even by Paul, for in Galatians he says: “That the law which came 430 after cannot disannul . . .” He regarded Horeb as coming 430 years after the promise given to Abraham upon entering Canaan. Camping is aware of this Galatians reading, of course, but it confounds him only briefly. He assumes there must have been a reiteration of the promise to Abraham before entering Egypt. Pure imagination.

   This is only one example of where a modern Christian Bible (based only on the Codex Leningradis) differs from the ancient transcriptions, transcriptions that the NT clearly reflects were the dominant reading in ancient times. Another discrepancy is the 70 souls mentioned entering Egypt in Exodus 1 but that Stephen in the NT says 75. The Septuagint, of course, the translation of Hebrew texts of some 2300 years ago, reads 75, precisely where Stephen read it.  

   Camping, however, doesn’t know that. He assumes God is giving separate revelation to Stephen to justify his assumption that more Israelites came in than mentioned in Exodus (in his bible). Therefore he believes he is justified in metaphysically counting sperm and applying the name of the unborn Kohath to his unnamed male ancestor who was the one actually alive and entering Egypt with Jacob (though he admits all the others named are actual grandsons of Jacob).

   It is from this kind of selective method, inspired by a predetermined need to convince everybody that Exodus 6 was a bona fide key to unraveling a timetable of the Earth from creation, that made Camping believe he could just tally the patriarchal lifespans mentioned in his Bible.

 Expanding on Presumption

   We see from just the example above that Camping’s method tends to a twofold purpose: make the Bible justify his ideas about it being an infallible metaphor strewn with secrets and ulterior laws; and make the Bible justify whatever traditional text he was raised with.

   The upshot of this upbringing is that Camping is incapable of appreciating what “compare scripture with scripture” means. Nor would he be disposed to even think it necessary. This attitude is not unique to him only. This ignorance is compounded by the assumption there is only one Hebrew text as well. “Compare scripture with scripture,” the apostolic Jewish instruction, means only one thing: compare the texts with the texts so that every word may be established. This is something Camping has never done. He has built up blind faith in his version of the bible. This has caused him to drone on about discrepancies, building them up as extra divine revelation because he doesn’t realize one is merely a scribal mistake, as in the case of his bible saying 70 in Exodus 1 instead of 75 (as in the Septuagint). But because Camping knows nothing of the Septuagint, it is not the ordained and preserved version, though it is older than his bible and the Hebrew text he fancies as the “original.” The Septuagint, the Hebrew Scriptures (Bible) translated into Greek, has been in constant use since it was first translated hundreds of years before Christ. It was the daily bible of Christ’s time.

   This has also caused him to rely on patently incorrect numbers and later scribal mistakes. We have already touched upon the “430 years in Egypt” and the 75 souls entering Egypt with Jacob. However, it goes far beyond that— and Camping’s Gnostic mind stretching becomes humorous when he tries to reconcile his current “Old Testament” with his New Testament, where apostles cite different time periods than that which is now contained in his Codex Leningradis of 1008 AD.  These time spans include the span of time between the Exodus and the temple foundation, the time span of the Judges and those of the patriarchs. In order to reconcile them, Camping reveals a greater contempt for scripture by blatantly rewriting passages. 

The Scripture Only. . .

It is time to challenge not the Scripture, but Camping’s Bible. One is not the same as the other. Clearly put, it is time to make a clear differentia between the Scripture, which is the word of God, and the Bible as a composite of books or edition. That is to say, it is time to do what is written therein rather than engaging in long winded attempts to protect one’s favorite version. This method is “compare scripture with scripture.” It is very tangible method, and it is the method long taught in Jewry, and by the Apostles, to make sure that one has every word from God to live by.

   Abiding by this maxim reveals a host of crude and avoidable mistakes Camping would never have made had it not been for his gross addiction to a recent tradition.  He simply has some wrong numbers and time spans in his version.

   A good example is the patriarch Cainan, the son of Arphaxad. He does not exist in the King James Bible in Genesis at all, being not contained in the transcription of that Hebrew precursor text which that English bible depends exclusively upon. Yet in the Gospel of Luke the name Cainan appears in the genealogies and is given as the son of Arphaxad and the father of Shelah. Camping uses this as proof that Genesis 11 is not implying direct father and son relationships because here is a name inserted between patriarchs that cannot be found in Genesis.  Listing Cainan in Luke’s gospel was thus extra divine revelation God gave Luke (as if God cares so much for human genealogy) that reveals this patriarchal calendar. Instead of assuming Luke was reading a better version 2000 years ago, Camping uses this as proof that his calendar is right to assume that one should merely add the total ages together in these genealogies. Doing this was fundamental in coming to a 13,000 year age for the Earth in 1988 (given a lot of pulling and pushing here and there, of course). This number, as we are now aware, is spiritually significant in Camping’s arsenal, meaning super-completeness. . .and this super completeness in 1988 plus the 2300 for judgment days came to 1994 and, now, 23 years comes to 2011 AD.

       Regrettably, for his calculation, Cainan existed in ancient Hebrew texts and the reading is still preserved in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the 3rd century BC, which Luke was reading.

“And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Cainan, four hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Cainan lived 130 years and begot Shelah, and Cainan lived after he had begotten Shelah 330 years, and begot sons and daughters.”

   That’s where Luke got it. That’s where it is in the Septuagint (Genesis 11:13), but not in the Codex Leningradis of 1008 AD. I’m not sure if it is in the marginal notes of that text, but the KJ translators didn’t pay too much attention to those.

   Just with this, Camping’s calendar is off by 460 years. There is no 1988, 1994, 2011, and no 13,000 year old Earth.

   You see now the difference between the Scripture and the Bible, as it is popularly proffered. How wonderful is the word and wisdom of God! The word of God is found true, the Scripture is right: compare the text to the text that every word may be established. The word of God is found true . . .but the KJV Bible is found to have an error. Why? —because those who compiled it did not hearken unto it. You see how one can divide between the two. And the accuracy and beauty of God’s word cannot be found and achieved by those who, like Camping, merely assume and promote that their versions must have been divinely protected because these are the ones they deigned to read. The King James and its Hebrew predecessors are not the oldest versions around. And there is no logic other than the “gift sanctifies the altar” which allows the other texts to be ignored. The only sanctity on the King James is the one that Camping believes exists because that is the one he was brought up to read.

   It is not hard to check other texts. It is required. And nowhere is it written that one has the power to sanctify their version merely because they have deigned to read it. Mistakes are man’s fault. We are put on this Earth to be tested by God. We are not put here to test him. As it is written, when Hilkiah found a book of the law in cleaning out the temple he brought it to good king Josiah and said “look at what we found.” None had known what was written in it because it had been lost so long. When Josiah heard what was written in it, he rent is clothes and did what was written therein.

   Now, was it the will of God that that book of the law was lost or found? Obviously, that it was found. Josiah was righteous, and did not say, “Well, it was the will of God that it was lost, so throw it back.” No, he listened and did what was written therein. He judged according to content. Let us continue comparing scripture with scripture to see the wonderful things of God.

   The Septuagint is the Greek translation of a different ancient Hebrew textual tradition. Since the days of St. Jerome, Christianity became enamored of the idea that there was a sole Hebrew text. Jerome even unfortunately said “correct toward the Hebrew,” not knowing the Hebrew of the time was a Pharisaical recension that was compiled shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by Hillelian and the other Babylonian Jews who favored, on the whole, their traditional text as opposed to the varying texts in Palestine and Egypt. The result was an evolution of unusual denigration for the Septuagint, the bible of the New Testament times for all Greek speaking Jews. The more Christians compared the scriptures in Greek to the scriptures in Hebrew, the more they saw thousands of differences. These many differences were attributed to Jewish scholars “paraphrasing” at Alexandria in the 3rd century BC when they translated the scriptures into Greek at the great Library of Alexandria at King Ptolemy’s request. (It is called the Septuagint because tradition says 70 scholars worked on it— the work of the 70). The view is still held by many traditionalists today. Even Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton’s introduction in his translation of the Septuagint in the 19th century carries a disparaging outlook for the Septuagint when compared to the Masoretic Text. There was just some inordinate attempt to magnify Jewish scribes of the Masoretic tradition and condemn the Jewish scribes who translated the Holy Scriptures into Greek. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has changed that dramatically.

   The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls shocked many Christian scholars who were unfamiliar with the variant readings of Hebrew texts. There they found many biblical books of scripture written in Hebrew, of course, and Aramaic that did not match the Codex Leningradis’ Masoretic reading of 1008 AD. Surprisingly, they matched the readings in the Septuagint! They had, in fact, found the type of Hebrew text from which the Septuagint was translated— a text which must have been regarded as more accurate by the ancients, or one that simply proved there were 2 major textual traditions that the Jews compared between.

   Today, many scholars now classify the Masoretic’s precursor as the Babylonian Text and the Septuagint’s precursor as the Egyptian Text or the Palestinian Conflated Text. The readings of different texts at Qumran showed that there were not so many differences between the two as there are today. However, many variants are significant, and the good Jewish sect there made sure that they had all versions and compared between the them habitually. Also, the texts clearly corrected ambiguous readings that both the Septuagint (LXX) and Masoretic Texts (MT) perpetuate, such as can be found in the Great Isaiah Scroll. Isaiah was the only book found complete in the caves of Qumran, though many of the other books have large portions preserved. Unfortunately, some passages with historical numbers in them did not survive, so that it is not known if they differed.  The sojourn in Egypt remains controversial, as to which is more correct: 430 in Canaan and Egypt or just 430 years in Egypt. Both readings exist, and it seems the LXX reading is correct, not the reading in the current KJV    

   Let us continue with key differences in numbers between the two and how the NT justifies the LXX reading and not Camping’s current Masoretic Text.   

   Adam When? revealed to what lengths Camping would go to make NT historical statements fit the numbers in his current Old Testament. He is stumped by a quotation from Paul in the New Testament. In Acts 13 Paul says that after the Exodus: “about the time of 40 years suffered He their manners in the wilderness. And when He had destroyed seven nations in Canaan, He divided their land to them by lot. And after that He gave unto them judges about the space of 450 years, until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king, and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of 40 years.”

   Camping must have been terribly confused in his timeline. In 1 Kings 6:1 it reads “And in the 480^th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the 4th year of Solomon’s reign over Israel. . .” the temple foundation was laid. Since the Bible is the infallible word of God, every word inspired directly by God and perfectly preserved in Hebrew and guided by the Spirit, how can this be reconciled with St. Paul saying there were 450 years for the Judges alone, then 40 for the wilderness sojourn and another 40 for Saul? That’s 530 years right there. This doesn’t even include David’s reign of 40 years. That would make it 570 years. Plus now one must add time for Solomon’s reign— that makes if 574 years! How can one squeeze all this into 1 King’s 6:1 and its 480 years between the Exodus and Solomon’s time? This is indeed a discrepancy. Answer: Camping created Paul into a wild estimator of time. Showing his respect for what he declares to be the inerrant word of God, he had the gall to rewrite Acts 13 verses 18-20. In Adam When? he quotes it as: 

         “And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance, for about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.”

   This is not a misquote; it is a total Camping fabrication and rewrite. This makes it look, as Camping now continues: “From this notice we would gather that a period of about 450 years had transpired from the time that Canaan was subdued until Solomon’s reign ended, for it was at the end of Solomon’s reign that Israel was shattered into two nations and the land was no longer an inheritance enjoyed by the whole nation of Israel as a cohesive unit.”

   Obviously, Paul is not even talking about Solomon’s time. Camping is merely commenting on his own rewrite of scripture: error leaping from error.   Camping does not even follow a germ of logical progression. He simply has to have Paul justify his current MT reading, though frankly he falls far short, for after Solomon’s time God did not institute the period of Judges. Camping is merely trying to make Paul’s estimate a time from the Exodus to Samuel sound like it extends to Solomon’s time some 84 years beyond Samuel. Camping continues: “We will see that Paul’s estimate of ‘about 450 years’ was a valid approximation.” Then more ludicrous interpretation is done.

   The fact is that calculating all the individual reigns for each judge listed in the book of Judges comes to 450 years, plus the Ark of the Covenant was 7 months in the hands of the Philistines. Camping’s mistake was calculating the times of the Judges and crudely coming to 471 years, not realizing two things: that Sampson’s judgeship is implied to be overlapping with the Philistine oppression (“he judged Israel 20 years during the times of the Philistines”), and that in the Septuagint’s text, the standard Bible of Paul’s time, Eli judged only 20 years. Either way one wishes to read it (with Sampson’s time not overlapping and Eli judging 20 years or Sampson’s time overlapping and Eli judging 40 years), 450 years is about the time of the Judges.

   Paul did not give a duration for time for the conquest of Canaan and Joshua’s period because it was not known with precision. We don’t know how old Joshua was when he entered Canaan; we only know he was 110 when he died. Thus Paul said “and when He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he divided their land to them by lot.” But it was easy to calculate the period of the Judges. Paul was merely revealing standard Jewish education of the time.

   Thus Paul’s time period actually matches scripture: 40 years in the wilderness; an unspecified time for Joshua’s judgeship, and about 450 years for Judges. Adding both Saul and David’s reigns at  40 years each, there is another 80 years unto Solomon’s time. Then there would possibly be 4 more years until the foundation of the temple was laid. The total is 574 years without even calculating Joshua’s time.

   In calculating Joshua’s time, some scholars have deduced it was around 16 to 18 years without knowing that ancient Jewish scribes and rabbis also believed the same thing. This was believed because 592 years must have been the original reading in 1 Kings 6:1. Josephus states this same time period in his Histories of the Jews: that there was 592 years between the Exodus and the 4th year of Solomon when the temple foundation was laid. Since the text of 1 Kings 6:1 does not survive from Qumran, we must make the assumption that Josephus is reflecting the original reading of 1 Kings 6:1 when he says 592 years, for Paul too clearly concedes that there was a longer period of time between the Exodus and Solomon’s time than 480 years, since he attributed 450 years to the period of the Judges alone.

   But for Camping, who has no knowledge of this and will not even cross-reference, it must have been alarming. How can Paul be right and there still be 480 years between the Exodus and the temple foundation in the 4th year of Solomon as the Codex Leningradis of 1008 AD says? The truth is that Paul did not have any such scripture that said 480 years in 1 Kings 6:1. That is a notoriously erroneous date that obviously does not exist in the most ancient texts. In the Septuagint, thanks to Jerome’s feckless standard of consulting the Pharisaic Recension he thought the sole Hebrew version, it now reads 440 years. All Israel at the time of Paul, in fact, knew no such thing that 480 years was the number in that verse. If it existed, it was one of others that existed alongside it in other texts.

   Camping’s foibles are really attempts to make something rhyme that doesn’t. And these are based on his unusual addiction to one text of scripture. Despite his “bible only” assertions, the above “quotation”— to put it politely— gymnastically distorts what Paul said, and it proves Camping is a man who does not believe what the bible says, but rewrites scripture to fit numbers. Instead of doing a little cross-checking and assuming Paul was reading a better version than he, he misquotes several verses, changes their meanings, but leaves the precious numbers alone.

   Even without referring to the Septuagint, his precious calendar is wrong; for not once did Camping ever calculate Joshua’s judgeship. Because he had that 480 year notation it must have seemed unnecessary. He had a definite time period between the Exodus and the 4th year of Solomon. But nowhere in all his subsequent numerical aerobics can a time be found for Joshua. He divides up the 480 years and believes he found the precise time for Judges— 360 years— but Joshua still doesn’t fit. 

   He has no choice but to rewrite scripture again. Amazingly, he includes Joshua in the second period of time mentioned in Judges— the 40 years when the land had rest under Othniel, Caleb’s nephew. After Joshua died, it reads that Israel served “Cushan of the double wickedness” 8 years until Othniel defeated him and freed Israel. The land had rest for 40 years and then Othniel died.

   Somehow Camping turned those times around (just like with Acts 13) and had Joshua’s time, Cushan’s time, and Othniel’s time all lumped into that 40 years of rest. It is hard to imagine how the conquering of Canaan could be regarded as the land having rest, the statement of peace.                         

   Camping is more interested in making the numbers fit than the context. The truth is that Camping’s minute calendar to 1994, and from there to 2011 AD, never calculated a time for Joshua. Rather, he relied on a completely bogus reading of 1 Kings 6:1. Paul’s “estimation” should not have been butchered, but guided him to check to see what other texts of the Hebrew Testament said.    

   There are also a couple of differences in the ages of the Patriarchs in Genesis that amount to only a few differences in years that are not worth going into here. The MT or the LXX may be right. In any case, it is not possible to come to a precise year.

     Therefore, so far, we have seen he is sans 460 years for Cainan, or 130 years more likely since these patriarchs are no doubt direct fathers and sons. With this, he is actually short thousands of years since the totaling of patriarchal ages prior to the time of their begetting the next son comes to around 1657 years for a pre-flood civilization, not 6,023.  He is short another 18 years for Joshua. 480 is not the sole reading of the ancient texts, and Paul reveals he is unaware of that number or does not regard it as reliable. Moreover, 430 years should no doubt be applied to the sojourn in Canaan and Egypt.

   A major confusing point for Camping is that God tells Abraham that 400 years his children will be oppressed in a land not theirs. Isn’t this a broad estimate of 430 years?  The assumption should merely be made that Abraham had lived in Canaan about 30 years when God told him that, and this makes sense in light of the Septuagint’s reading of “430 years were they in the land of Canaan and Egypt,” and then they came out. This is most likely the correct and original reading. A couple of chapters in Genesis concerning Abraham are sometimes apparently not chronological, and this may account for why the story of Abimalech comes after Sarah is clearly described as old and past bearing.

   Are these numbers so important?  I doubt it. The meaning of the scripture is important, not Harold Camping’s strange and hypocritical idolatry of his Bible. The extent he goes to thoughtless rewriting of scripture does not show any fear of God if he believes every word is inspired in his current version.

   Another good example of this can be found in the extent that Camping took to applying an actual date to Christ’s baptism. He says it was on September 28, 29 AD, in order to make it fit a Jewish feast day, the Feast of Trumpets, a sign of proclaiming the gospel and the coming of the Lord— a parallel to the rapture that would take place sometime between September 6 through 28, 1994.

   The gospels are clear, however, that the first feast Jesus went to after being baptized, after being in the desert 40 days, then after choosing his disciples, was Passover. This feast is in the spring of each year; that first Passover where his disciples tell him that the temple was 46 years in the building (26 or 27 AD). Camping uses September 28 and the 1335 days of Daniel 12 laboriously to calculated Christ’s ministry to the day from September 28 (29 AD, of all things) and pin the crucifixion to 33 AD.  Yet he forgets that the Feast of Tabernacles falls in October, one of the most important feasts, one which John 7 says Jesus attended. If Christ was was baptized on September 28 and then being in the wilderness 40 days thereafter, he totally missed the feast. 

     Because so many non-Jews are unfamiliar with textual variations, Camping was thus (long before 1994?) believed to be able to calculate how old the Earth was, much of it based on what has been given above. His Calendar presented how long it was from creation to the flood and then to other events. To summarize: from Adam to the Flood there was 6,023 years. The year of the Flood was in 4990 BC. He came to this date in the Gregorian Calendar by calculating the age of the patriarchs after the flood unto Abraham’s time (which he regarded as the direct son of Terah). He invented numerous time spans based on his “key” in Exodus 6. His reliance on the timeline of the Judges was based solely  on 1 Kings 6:1, a number of rewrites, and much pulling and pushing with Othniel’s 40 years. From there he must rely on the regnal years of the Kings of Israel, as compiled by Thiele (whom he does not credit except in early editions of his Adam When?), which brings the calculation to a known historical date like 587 BC for the carrying away of Judah into Babylon (actually 586 BC; Thiele was off). Historical dates are easily obtainable after this time to the period of Christ’s birth about 4 BC (Camping actually says it was 7 BC) and from there obviously to our own era. The result was that in 1988 the Earth was 13,000 years old.   

     None of these time spans Camping discovers are significant without his code, which we must give here. This is his numerological key— i.e. what these numbers signify. It must be noted first that he finds significance with most numbers between 1-100 so that it is hard not to find a number that does not hold “spiritual” meaning.  His most important numbers are, however:

Number                         Represents

2                                    The Church
3                                    The purpose of God
4                                    Universality
5                                    Grace and Judgment
7                                    Perfection
10, 100, 1000                Completion
11                                 The Certainly of Salvation Coming
12                                 Fullness
13                                 Super fullness
21 (3 x 7)                       Signifies the perfection of God’s purpose.
23                                 Judgment
40                                 Testing
 

He applies other meanings to 14, 39, 50, 68, etc, and then to extrapolations of the above: 2000 = double completion, for instance. 1,290 days is made of 430 x 3. If that can be done then 1,290 x 3 can be done and this = 3870 years, which coincidentally is the amount of time (he says) from 1876 BC— which he says is the year Jacob and his children entered into Egypt— (based only on his bible saying 430 years in Egypt) to 1994 (always providing in this case – 1). It’s actually 1877. Camping believes that 3 is a spiritual number, and therefore any multiplication of 3 or number by 3 must have equally spiritual significance.

   The year 1994 is linked significantly with the entry of the Israelites into Egypt because, as Camping notes, Canaan was a representation of “the homeland of the residents of the kingdom of God” (Page 464). The entrance into Egypt would signify the entrance into bondage —i.e. the church becoming apostate (1988)— and then 1994 would be 3870 years after Israel entered bondage in Egypt, or 1,290 x 3 which is a multiplication of the time since the daily sacrifice is taken away in Daniel 12 and the 45 day extension to the 1335 days begins— the final tribulation period. Coming into Canaan signifies entering the kingdom of God— the rapture. 1994 is reached because the 1,290 days is not complete without the 45 day extension on it— the final tribulation (45 days is 6.4 weeks). If that were so, his 1,290 calculation should have come to 1988 when he believed the final tribulation began and not 1994. Otherwise his symbolism is off and his numbers do not balance with his spiritual symbolizing of entering Egypt.

   Harold Camping, however, doesn’t seem to notice this. His symbolism contradicts frequently. He also used the children of Israel entering into Egypt as a symbol of people becoming saved, using Joseph as a symbol of Christ. Thus entrance into Egypt is both used to represent coming into salvation and apostia: Two opposite meanings from the same event! It is also interesting to note that even the NT uses the wandering in the desert for 40 years and the coming into Canaan as an allegory of salvation. That being the case, Camping’s allegory has the apostia coming first.

The sequences from entering Egypt (assuming 1877 BC minus – 1) are:

1877 – 1447 (Exodus)   = 430 years
   3 x 430                         = 1,290 years
1877 to 587                    = 1,290 years
(destruction of Jerusalem)
 3 x 1,290                       = 3870 years
1877 BC to 1994 AD     = 3870 years (3871-1)

   “3870 years appears to point to the end of the final tribulation, which will coincide with Christ’s return.” (Page 470). As noted, his symbolism is off. If entering Egypt is representative of going into apostasy, the calculations should stop at 1988 when he believes the tribulation began and nobody could be saved thereafter. Then his 2300 days or years should be tacked on representing a judgment extension of the “final tribulation.” However, since 1994 failed, this entire calculation and its meaning is proven false, for 2011 AD has no meaning— 1877 BC to 2011 AD is not 3870 years or anything close.

   Despite his constant falling back on turning “2300 evening and mornings” into years to justify his 1994 failure, to do so is actually to expose every calculation and time span to 1994 as false. His numbers simply had no significance. He is left with nothing but his assertion of a 13,000 year old earth in 1988 and a 23 year extension on that. Nothing else mathematically is left him. Yet he still clings to 2011 AD as the Parousia, teaching people as a result that the final tribulation is still underway from 1988. Get out of the churches!         

   We, however, in all fairness cannot stop with the above summarization and examples. As the above statement concludes, 1994?’s failure erases any pretense that Camping’s laborious date gathering and time span interpretations hinging on that year were accurate. How then can any rational mind simply and lamely fall back on 2011 AD, merely by proffering that the final tribulation must now actually be 23 years and not a literal 2300 evening and mornings? What we must do is delve more into Camping’s mathematics in order to reveal just what kind of mind was truly behind 1994?

   Let us continue with other Camping assertions so that we can underscore his methodology. Since Camping believed he can calculate when the Law of Moses was given and other such key laws, he can calculate what year the Jubilee will occur. Every 7 years is a Sabbath year, and after 7 x 7 years (49 years), there was to be a Jubilee year in which all things return to their original owners, and debt was forgiven. This is correct. He asserts Thiele’s date for the Exodus as  1447 BC. Based on Camping’s calendar, 1994 would be the 50th Jubilee from that date when “all returns back to its original owner,” meaning all the world returns to the LORD. It is the 50 x 50 Jubilee. Yet another example of how 1994 is a complete fulfillment. Camping is obviously wrong here, since nothing happened in 1994. This is where Camping now falls back on extending the “2300 evening and mornings days” in Daniel 8 to mean 23 years. Thus 1988 to 23 years later is 2011 AD, his present assertion for the Parousia. However, this ruins his entire Jubilee countdown, since neither 1988 or  2011 fit into any Jubilee pattern. By his calculation 1994 alone did.

   Here are others:

   Camping’s calendar causes him to assert that the nation of Israel (meaning God first speaking to Abraham about Isaac’s coming birth) was founded in 2,068 BC. Thus 2100 years later is 33 AD, the crucifixion. 2100 is a significant number according to Camping.

     It must also be injected here before continuing that Camping must be one of the few men remaining who believe that Christ was crucified in 33 AD. It is universally accepted today that Christ was crucified in 30 AD, and there is much information confirming this, including the gospels. When Christ comes to Jerusalem for Passover, his disciples tell him “This temple was in building forty and six years . . .”  Herod began rebuilding the temple in 20 BC, which makes it certain that Christ began his ministry in 26/27 AD. Moreover, it is known that Herod the Great died in 4 BC, and yet we know this was soon after Christ’s birth. 4 BC + 26 AD equals 30, the age that the gospel of Luke says Jesus was about. These years, however, tie into no significant time spans in Camping’s calendar. This must be the reason he rejects them.

     That Camping is that selective is proven by what he does next.

     His calendar declares that Isaac was born in 2067 BC. Thus 2100 years later is also 33 AD.

     How’s that? Camping achieves the same significant span of time to the Cross between the promise being given to Abraham and for Isaac’s birth despite they did not happen in the same year. He does this because he divides “actual” years and “calendar” years. This is one of the most confusing things that he did. It is inspired from the discussion on page 88 of Dr. Finegan’s classic Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Camping is, however, regurgitating it in, frankly, a comical way. Dr. Finegan cautions that ancient methods of time keeping may have included parts of regnal years as being counted as a “year.” Thus when a king reigned 13 years, it may not be 13 actual calendar years but 13 regnal years. Dr. Finegan calls these “Factual Year” and “Calendar Year.” Dr. Finegan: “Is the regnal year counted from the actual accession to the annual anniversary of the same? If so, it may be called a factual year. Is the regnal year counted as equivalent to the calendar year? The latter is probably much more often the case, and therewith additional questions arise.” Dr. Finegan went on to question: “Which of the methods just outlined were those employed by the Jews is a question which must necessarily be raised in connection with the many biblical dates.”  Finegan then shows how difficult the problem is.  Part of a calendar year could be termed the 1st year, even if the king came to reign in the last month of that calendar year. Thus 13 years could be 12 years and 1 month in actual years.

   Camping, however, decides to apply this concept to a real and a fictitious period of time, using the similar designation of “Actual Year” and “Calendar Year.”  He firmly believes that God gave extra Biblical revelation in the Gregorian Calendar by causing those who computed it under Pope Gregory to have made a mistake. There is no 0 year in the Gregorian, Camping declares. There should have been a 0 AD, ostensibly, to make all the numbers fit when adding years BC and years AD together. Therefore “actual” years in Camping’s mind denotes the actual amount of time between events BC and AD whereas “calendar” years merely reflect the usual way we have always calculated; and they are always 1 year in excess of the actual amount of time that has elapsed due to the mistake in not having our modern calendars start at a 0 year. To attain actual years in a calculation one automatically and arbitrarily subtracts 1. Simple as that. For calendar years one does not. One just totals the numbers BC and AD, as we’ve always been doing. One subtracts 1 because of the mistake in not placing a 0 year, which nobody until Camping detected wasn’t in the calendar and supposedly should have been. Had our calendar done that, actual and calendar years would be the same and there would be no adjustment to make. But Pope Gregory’s people didn’t, so for the first time Camping is revealing to all that all computations hitherto done between BC and AD years have been off by 1 year, one whole year in excess of the actual time that has elapsed.

   Camping is clear in 1994? that this mistake was divinely inspired. “We thus see that this error that was built into our calendar was not accidental or incidental. It was part of God’s plan by which he demonstrates His truths.  There is one other error in our calendar that is also there so that certain Biblical truths can be highlighted. It is the fact that there is no year 0. The impact of this error is such that we are enabled to have two methods by which the passage of time between an Old Testament event and New Testament event can be calculated.”

   Although it was pointed out already how Camping comically cannibalized Finegan’s work, one must pause at such a ludicrous comment and note that Camping must have convinced himself of this because some of his calculations straightway came to 33 AD or 1988 or 1994 whereas some came just a year over. Thus he says one must subtract 1 year when crossing BC into AD on any tabulation of years BC and AD.  However, other calculations came right to the precise year he wanted. Therefore he did not want to subtract and ruin his neat calendar. The result: he ends up promoting both calculations! Thus he concludes that God gave two methods of calculating time: one that covers actual years and one that, though it covers fictitious years, these also reveal a neat time pattern to 1994. . .but only in the Gregorian Calendar.

   In order to underscore this concept, Camping gives as an example a mythical figure called Nathaniel that he invents to show how a Jew in BC times could have calculated the crucifixion had he bothered to study the numbers in the Bible and apply the same metaphoric meanings to the time spans as Camping does. Inventing the Gregorian mistake and insisting it means subtract 1 for 0, Camping’s fictional Nathaniel is allowed to present many sequences to 34 AD – 1 in order to bolster Camping’s point and calendar method. Let us highlight these.

     The number 1100 is significant. He calculates that the Ark of the Covenant was taken by the Philistines in 1068 BC. Thus 1068 + 1100 = 33 AD (actual years)

   Ark restored to Israel in 1067 BC. Thus 1067 + 1100 (Calendar) years later also = 33 AD.

       Ezra reestablished the law of God in 458 BC. 490 years later (the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 according to him) equals 32 AD. (He says 33 AD for some reason). Even without the minus 1 for 0 we find Nathaniel is sloppy with math.

   Then he says that the middle of Daniel’s 70^th week is 33 AD, which is a contradiction. How can 33 AD be the end of the 70