Lots of people had quite a few chuckles over the last few weeks at the expense of Harold Camping and his followers. Jokes were flying and tweets making fun of Camping were plentiful. I intentionally didn't blog anything about Camping. His error and spiritual deceit were obvious and didn't really warrant piling on. I did make a few snide tweets regarding his false prophecy and frankly I feel kind of bad about that.
Being deceived by a false prophet and cultist is no laughing matter. It is of deadly serious eternal significance.
First, Jesus is coming back and while we don't know the details and are not intended to, we do know that Christ will return. Engaging in mockery of Camping alongside those that deny that Christ arose or that He will return is counterproductive.
Second, having once been involved in a cult group I can tell you that what Camping and his followers need is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and mockery of them is about the worst and least God honoring way to evangelize them. Mocking Muslims or Buddhists for their beliefs is unlikely to win any of them to Christ. The same holds true with Camping's followers. I would hate to think that we are setting aside the command to love others and proclaim the Gospel for the sake of a few chortles and retweets.
Harold Camping and his followers are lost, deceived people just like those caught up in mormonism or the Jehovah's Witnesses or those deluded people who died following Jim Jones and David Koresh. We need to refute such false prophets and compare what they say to the truth of the Gospel, in love but without compromise. What we don't need to do is use their lostness to get a laugh or drive blog hits. I sincerely hope that God's people will reach out to Camping's followers with the Gospel of Christ and that God will call as many of them to His Son as He has decreed.
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