Harold Camping - "Leave the Churches"

I listened to Family Radio years ago and really liked it. It had nice music when I felt like traditional hymns, it seemed to have great teaching, I liked the open forums, and had even enrolled in a correspondence course with them. But, it seemed like Harold Camping started going beyond a strict adherence to scripture, to almost an extreme interpretation. I'd let this all leave my mind until I was reminded of it all the other day.

Well, I'd met a new friend and we met on a non-Christian pretense and were excited to discover we were both believers. In discussion though, I discovered he left his church at the urging of Harold Camping, although he had another initial reason for wanting to leave.

I was totally amazed that this guy is actually urging (commanding?) his listeners to leave churches. In addition, Baptists are among some of his specific denominations he specifically targets due to "free will".

So I started thinking about this. At first I thought "well, they are gathering in groups on Sunday to listen to the radio which includes singing hymns, and hearing preaching." But, something hit me... if they leave a Church, they are no longer tithing or offering gifts, where do these money and resources go? Do you starting tithing to Family Radio?

The more I think about this situation, the more uneasy I feel that Camping is getting so powerful and progressing past teaching. It's almost like an assault on the Church, with a specific campaign against certain denominations. Does anyone have anymore insight/feelings on this situation?

 

Does anyone know if he requests people to still tithe after leaving their churches? More specifically, tithe to Family Radio.

 

I couldn't find any reference to tithing on his website, but there were plenty of donation buttons for a variety of methods.

But, I did find this tidbit on leaving churches:

I would take that Jerusalem analogy to mean that you should not stay in ANY church. Wow!

 

I'd seen something like this before. There was an aging preacher of a church I attended. While I subscribe to the possibility of Jesus returning "any day", I don't subscribe to centering everything around it being today or tomorrow and living like "the end is near, so I'm not doing anything for the future." It got really strange, and the guy was so obsessed that he was making strange demands on people (yep, I said demands.) He wanted to add additional services throughout the week as he wanted everyone to be in the church when Jesus returned.

My theory was that he knew that he was nearing the end of his time on earth. But, I think he was afraid of physical death and the hope that Jesus would return and save him from a physical death was consuming him. He no longer talked about preaching to the lost, or anything other then the "any day now". Of course, that was just my theory based on my personal impressions.

I wonder if the same thing could apply to Mr. Camping. Maybe since he's up there in years, he's afraid of a physical death so he is consumed with the return of Christ in hope he can avoid it.

Slight change in gears here... I have discovered a wealth of critiques of HC on the net, all with very strong scriptual based arguments. The guy just hadn't come to my mind in years, but it appears he obviously hasn't slipped the minds of many others.

 

After a little reading, I've come to a couple conclusions:

First being that since his failed 1994 prophesy, he is using the "end of the church" to rectify that. "Oh, the timeline didn't end, it was just the timeline of the church... yeah, that's the ticket."

Second, while I don't personally beleive he's telling people to leave the church strictly for financial reasons, I do think he is after money based on the following taken from an "Open Forum" answer on tithing:

And how, Harold, do we send out the gospel since we aren't supposed to support churches and or church organizations? Well... give all that money to Family Stations, Inc. of course!