Harold Camping, an 89-year-old man who is called a Christian evangelist, guarantees that today is Judgment Day. I don’t call him a “Christian” anything because he doesn’t follow Christ; rather, he contradicts the teaching of Christ.
Jesus plainly says about the last day, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:26).
If you still want to call Camping a Christian, go ahead. But I call him a false teacher.
1 Timothy 4:1-2 says, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”
False teachers are always in the news. From Rob Bell, the preacher who disagrees with what Jesus taught about hell, to the scientist Stephen Hawking, who recently asserted that heaven is a “fairy story”, there are all kinds of people who teach falsehood.
Sometimes we tend to think that false teachers are limited to televangelists who twist the Scripture to acquire a following. When Paul warned Timothy to be on guard against false teachers, he no doubt meant anyone who denied the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Most of the false teachers I have encountered have been ordinary members of the community. Some have been respected members of a local church.
Watch out for false teachers; the ones you read about in the newspaper and the ones who live down the street from you. They are all dangerous!
