Rector's Rambling - May 22, 2011 - End of the world?

If you are reading this on Sunday, May 22nd, then Jesus didn’t come back yesterday!
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, the folks at Family Radio predicted that yesterday would be Judgment Day for the world.
How did they come to that date? Taking the statement from the Second Letter of St. Peter, Chapter 3, Verse 8, that one day is as a thousand years in God’s sight, and combining it with Genesis 7:4, about the warning to Noah that the beginning of the Flood was coming in seven days, they claimed it was a reference to the Judgment Day at the end of the world. They took 7000 years (remember, one day is as a thousand to God, so the seven days are a reference to 7000 years), plus their belief that the Flood happened in the year 4990 B.C. resulting in the interpretation that this year is the year (if you are doing the math in your head, remember there is no year zero, so it works out to 2011).

From their Web site they state,
“Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment. Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.”

One great gift of the Reformation has been the Bible in the language of the people, but it has also been a Pandora’s Box, which, once opened, has also allowed gross misinterpretation of Scripture and much division in the Body of Christ because of it. The great grace of Anglicanism, properly used, has been the prominence of Scripture in the light of reason and tradition. The Scriptures are the Word of God and contain all things necessary to salvation. But it does not allow us to read into it something “new”, or worse, contradictory. See Matthew 24:36.