Wise words on an upcoming tragedy

If you and the people around you have missed all the apocalyptic speculations raised by Harold Camping, you're fortunate.  Don't read any further.  It's not worth your time.  Continue with your normal life.


But if the "impending rapture" is the talk of your town (even Ohio State sports blogs are commenting on this one!), I encourage you to read the WHI article, "Cleaning up after Harold," in order to prepare yourself to serve the broken-hearted.  Surely, this will be yet another reason to mock the faith, but what we may miss is the hurt and pain this will cause those that believed the predictions.

History teaches us that previous generations caught up in eschatological fervor often fell away from Christ when their deeply held beliefs about the end of the world didn’t pan out. While Camping must answer for his false teaching at the end of the age, Reformational Christians are facing a pastoral problem come Sunday morning: how can we apply the salve of the Gospel to the wounded sheep who will be wandering aimlessly, having discovered that what they thought was true (so true they were willing to upend their lives over it) was not? If this isn’t true, they might reason, then what other deeply held beliefs and convictions and doctrines and hopes might not be true?