by Curt Kovener 
There probably were some surprised people in church Sunday morning…not surprised at the morning’s message but surprised they were still here.
Maybe you were paying attention but if you weren’t no great loss. There was this California televangelist who had on good authority from the Bible that Christ would return on May 21 and the apocalypse leading to Armageddon would commence this past Saturday. But since my pastor and nearly all the congregation at my church were in their pew Sunday morning I guess there was a slight miscalculation on the end of times prophecy. Much like there was by the same TV-Radio-Internet preacher Harold Camping in 1994. This time Camping had said that the end would begin at 6 p.m. May 21with massive world-wide earthquakes beginning in New Zealand and follow the sun around the world. But when Saturday morning dawned in Indiana, it was already tomorrow in New Zealand and they had a rip-roaring Saturday night.
Hucksters like Harold Camping are nothing new, of course. They tend to adopt the spirit of the age. As the Koran-burning preacher Terry Jones taught us, Americans will grant momentary fame to anyone uncommonly tasteless and repugnant. Now Rapture Salesman Harold Camping followed up with his own lesson: You don’t get famous for being wrong, so be extraordinarily wrong.
I had lost track of time Saturday evening and after doing some maintenance on mechanical equipment and grading the lane, I headed for the house for a chilled adult beverage. And Charley the formerly yellow lab met me covered with pond muck from where he had been frolicking. He was led into the bathroom and we showered together.
I will pause a moment while that image sinks in. I was in my shorts; Charley wasn’t. I’ll pause again.
It was while he was getting lathered when I looked at the clock and realized it was after six and I was still here. But then a tadpole which had apparently gotten lodged or sought refuge between Charley’s front toes, washed out onto the shower floor.
Was this a sign of the end times? Did I miss that important passage of Scripture? I concluded that it was not something as a sign of the end times but a coincidental aberration that happens sometimes in nature.
I guess those end times prognosticators like Californian Camping who claim to read their Bible and have ferreted out some secret conclusions on the second coming overlook the passage that the time of the second coming is not known by any man. Some even overlook the first miracle performed by Jesus, but perhaps that is a column for another time.
And since Camping prophesized the second coming and it didn’t happen, I suppose it fulfils a part of the Scriptures that warns us that in the end times there will be false prophets.
My own personal faith comes from the Old Testament book of Micah. Where the prophet is asked “what is required of the believer?” It is to do justice (be fair), love mercy (be kind), and walk humbly with the Lord (don’t wear your faith on your sleeve).
I believe the world could do with more of that.
