Summary

It is unfortunate that non-Jews do not know what Phariseeism is. They only regard New Testament Pharisees as contemptible because of Christ’s words against them. They do not know, however, that those words were directed against the Pharisees for an underlying practice and methodology that they used against Scripture, one that Christianity has essentially appropriated in the Post-Reformation era. The Pharisees are looked upon as scheming and legalistic, and yet there is no knowledge today in some traditionalist circles what methodology inspired their legalism. It wasn’t just the outcome of their method that was repugnant to Christ, it was the methodology.

   The upshot of this ignorance for many is to have fallen prey to a new cult in which a very mediocre lay bible teacher named Harold Camping has combined the Pharisaical method with classic Gnosticism’s methodology to present the appearance that he has found deeper and special “spiritual” or, more accurately, esoteric gnosis (knowledge) behind bible statements, including a mathematical code from key historical events mentioned in the Bible that reveals the second coming of Christ.

   This site obviously has a great interest in Gnosticism, both ancient and living. This is because so much of Gnosticism, both in its Greek and Syrian (Palmyran) and Anatolian origins, is responsible for the corruption in classic Christianity. These errors are obviously fundamental to causing the Jews’ basic revulsion at some of Christianity’s tenets, which, unfortunately, they interpret as being sanctified by apostolic instruction.

   Harold Camping’s Gnostic method of biblical interpretation is hardly unique or even modern except to him and his followers. But by giving esoteric gnosis the new handle of “spiritualizing,” and by making the Bible the object of all this “spiritualizing,” Camping has become the wick for many undesirable “knowledge seekers” who do not know they are carbon copies of 2nd century heretics. Rather they are sure they are pure traditional, bible-believing Christianity. Though they shun any other book but the Bible, paradoxically, through Camping, they spill into society today enormous amounts of new doctrine through allegorizing and metaphorizing its contents. Therefore none of them know they are modern examples of the 1st and 2nd century heretics condemned therein for their “knowledge falsely so called” which they in like manner achieved through the same method of allegory and metaphor.

     Despite Camping and his “Campingnites” assertion that they are traditional, true “bible believing” Christianity,  they really only seek to glorify the cultural status quo of, say, 75 years ago; and there isn’t one of them that has any real knowledge of Christian or biblical history since none of that “comes from the Bible.”  But because they maintain a worshipful regard for the Bible as an object of faith, they think they walk in the same steps as the Reformers and the great preachers of the Victorian era. Because the Bible is an idol to them, they have absolutely no knowledge of Jewish, Christian or church history, and therefore are ignorant to what the backdrops were to biblical statements. Thus they have made their 20th century minds the ultimate authority for interpreting Biblical statements rather than the actual meaning that was given and outright understood by those who first heard them.

   Not surprisingly, this ignorance leads Camping to brash statements. The Bible is, in Camping’s estimation, a “legal document” which the churches for 2000 years have never fully understood. This comment itself exposes him as having no knowledge of church history. So ignorant is Camping of any church history, he does not know that his worshipful adulation of the modern Canon entails “extra Biblical books” by the standard of the Reformers. And Camping’s methodology is purely Pharisaic, as one should expect from the view that the Bible is in its entirety a legal document.

   Armed with this Pharisaical approach, his 20th century outlook has not only uncovered a host of unauthorized gezeirah and given biblical sanction to numerous Christian minhags in order to justify 1930s Calvinism, he has made the Bible into a giant metaphor strewn with hidden “spiritual” truths which he unlocks by talmudism; and, of course, in typical Gnostic fashion, the knowledge of these allegories is proof one is “saved.” Agreeing with him and embracing these “truths” is evidence “for a true believer” because it all “comes from the Bible.” Therefore in true pesher mentality, it is equal. By not believing Camping, one is not believing in the Bible.

   Camping is, however, a genius at inculcation and inference. Make no mistake, he would never come outright and state that. But his own words and inferences leave no doubt: he impresses subtly upon his listening audience of hundreds of thousands that one is not saved if they don’t see these deeper spiritual “truths” because you are not believing in the Bible, “God’s holy word.” This he revealed in the culmination of his methodology, 1994?, in which he presented his numerology to show that Christ would return in September 1994. In the Introduction he plainly declared: “God divides the peoples of the world into two groups insofar as the knowledge of Christ’s return is concerned: the unsaved, for whom Christ will come as a thief in the night. . .and the saved, those who have trusted in Christ, whose knowledge of Christ’s return in altogether different.” Translating this down, means believing in his 1994 thesis.

     Because the Parousia is the greatest day of the future, Camping has slowly let himself believe that his precognosis of this day means he is a specially favoured tool in God’s hand. After his 1994 failure it took him 7 years to finally conceive another codicil to his “last days” thesis. In 2001 he was emboldened to preach that he is the last preacher of the true gospel— and he has even published another pamphlet showing how radio technology has developed to reveal God’s definite plan to bring Family Radio into existence as the only means by which the true gospel can still be preached in this “final tribulation” of the earth. This final tribulation is so terrible in Camping’s doctrines because the Bible says no one can be saved in churches. The “church age,” which is purely his concoction, has come to an end. Family Radio is the last true voice. All sermons coming from church pastors were banned from the network. Even Gabriel Otero, head of Family Radio’s School of the Bible, was dismissed because he is a pastor of a church in Morgan Hill, California. Church automatically equals “Satan’s Reign.” Family Radio is God’s last voice. In 2001 he told all Christians to leave their churches, worship in their homes, and do not baptize, engage in communion, or practice any other signs of a vanished age. If you do, you are under Satan’s control automatically.

   It is clear by this that Camping is not only so Pharisaical that he sees only appearances, but he is so Pharisaical that he believes that appearances— in this case, ceasing rituals and memorials— will automatically guarantee safety from Satan.

   All of these bizarre teachings are only a horn grown out of a head of failure. And for this reason they appear all the more bold— because Harold Camping’s code to the Parousia was set to 1994. He goosed hundreds of thousands of people with the idea, and even landed on Larry King Live. This was something for the very undynamic, conservative Camping. Campingnites were thrilled. For the first time a true Christian conservative was presenting the only true warning of the last times as contained in the “Bible only.” Yet when it failed, neither Camping or his followers saw fault or even madness in his method. He had reserved a secondary date in case he had made a mistake with interpretation. If the final tribulation wasn’t 6.4 years (2300 days in Daniel 8) then it was 23 years. This alone has kept him from acknowledging that he is a false prophet using a very heretical methodology against the Bible. This alone continues to persuade him the end is coming soon and that the “final tribulation” is presently ongoing; and this method of “spiritualizing” is what makes him interpret all others as corrupt. This has also allowed his radio ministry to thrive and to rake in donations per year equally 12,000,000 dollars. The preaching of the end of the world is now mixed with how only Family Radio is the true voice of God.

   Camping’s spiritualizing is really nothing more than prosaic assumptions based on historical dates gleaned from a couple of old historical books published in the 1960s. It is with their content that he interprets Biblical events in order to achieve his calendar for the ending of the world. It is with their help he came to 1994, and it is with his firm belief in a “last days” apostasy that he therefore deduces the churches have to be corrupt.

   The entire premise of his Biblical chronology timetables that led many to believe him so impressive with biblical study and historical date collation was entirely gleaned from devouring two pivotal books in Biblical archeology: Dr. Jack Finegan’s 1964 book Handbook of Biblical Chronology; and Dr. E.R. Thiele’s 1962 Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Camping’s little pamphlet The 70 Weeks of Daniel 9 also appeared a triumph of showing his ability to decipher a cryptic Messianic timetable prophecy. Yet this too was actually inspired by Dr. Finegan’s 1964 book and also lifted from the work of D. Guthrie, as can be shown from any old Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible antedating Camping’s pamphlet. Unfortunately, his followers regard this as daunting historical knowledge, for they have an equal lack of communion with other books and peoples outside of other “Campingnites” and Camping’s peshers. They are therefore incapable of discovering that Camping’s daunting “knowledge” and how he correlates historical dates to key Biblical events was quite borrowed and tailored. From his early days of radio broadcasting, Camping had a reputation behind-the-scenes of “lifting,” to put it politely, “the ideas of others and promoting them as his own inspiration.” To be more explicit: he was regarded as a notorious thief of other men’s works. And his lack of original inspiration can be seen in retrospect. Camping’s cannibalized thesis of these respected professors’ works looks almost like a primitive or mischievous child trying to understand or imitate the workings of a steam engine. Yet when his predictions for the Second Coming of Christ in 1994 failed, one would think his childish bungling would be exposed. Yet he wasn’t.

   None of his followers knew he was an insatiable “borrower” of other’s ideas. Therefore they were ready to believe that Camping had simply made a slight miscalculation or misinterpretation of his unique Bible-derived thesis. Beneath the appearances, however, Camping was left without any educated sources to borrow from. His teachings and “spiritualizing” became more improvised and impoverished to explain the nonevent. All of these entailed gross intertwining heresies which mimic the progression of classic Gnosticism. Camping had been an allegorizer for decades, but after the failure of his invented 1994 Parousia, he finally began teaching the above “Depart out” from the churches— a classic Gnostic tenet of opposition to any form of church organization which classic Gnostics also posited after the “failure” of the expected Parousia in 70 AD. This is his only basis for teaching them to stop communion, baptism, and any such relics of the “church age.”

   Amazingly, Camping has been able to maintain the façade that he gets all of his evolving teachings from studying the “Bible alone.” And since his base of listeners, including the 40,000 enrolled in his Family Radio School of the Bible, shun others books but the King James they are unaware that the very theories, methods and calculations that made them raise him onto a pedestal were all unbiblical. They have gullibly believed a cancerous growth of Gnostically derived heretical dogmas coming from him for decades, not knowing they emanate from a man whose most brilliant inspiration was hardly original in biblical/historical assertions; and from a man who is incapable of original and sound inspiration. For 40 years Camping had geared himself to September 1994, and his belief in 1994 was the greatest common denominator with which he subtly interpreted everything in the Bible. Its failure and his expectation of 2011 AD as the end is now the interpretative force for all his teachings.  . . .and behind all this is his thesis for 1994, relying now only on an extension of  time from 2300 days to 23 years.

   This article is intended to help those coming out of that cult and to prevent others from succumbing to like-minded Gnostic cults. Only now, as he is stripped of the mask sewn by the educated inspiration of others, can people really appreciate Harold Camping’s own mean level of contribution to biblical exegesis— a comical host of contradictory metaphors he owns all himself.

                                                   Article: Metaphorical Mephisto