Where is the promise of His coming?

I am scheduling a dentist appointment for my daughter next week. I think I know how Jeremiah felt when purchasing a plot of land from cousin Hanamel in his hometown of Anathoth around 586 B.C. Normally, neither of these would constitute unusual acts, but in the weeping prophet's case the drums of war were at the very gate, and there was nothing in the phenomenal world to warrant hope of a return from exile in Babylon. In the case of Dr. Frank's office, the daring pushback is against the much publicized May 21st End of the World.

On Sunday I was on the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes, where I kept losing and finding the signal for Harold Camping's radio program, the man who has been (rather matter-of-factly) announcing the Second Coming now that his former Second Coming of 1994 did not materialize. The call-ins seemed by and large on board, though one less certain inquirer raised the familiar "No man knows the hour" question from Matthew 24:36. Camping's response: Well, that was true when it was written, but we have more revelation now.

I had no intention to give this localized theological agitation much thought until I realized it was not localized but had spread like apocalyptic wildfire to the four corners. My daughter (the one who needs a six-month checkup) came home from school with reports of student parties planned for this Sunday. I knew what the tone of those would be, and I remembered Peter's words:

"[S]coffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, 'Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation'" (2 Peter 3:3-4).

I knew also that God does not take well to his Name being mocked. "For as it is written, 'The Name of the Lord is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you'" (Romans 2:24; see also 2 Samuel 12:14).

Then on Wednesday evening I got a call from an inmate in a correctional facility in Somerset, Pa., who was concerned about my safety because he heard there were earthquakes in Glenside. His cell block was up on May 21. I told him not to worry. I should have added more information:

"Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion come first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god of object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4).

No one knows the hour, but we do know something. When Jesus' contemporaries failed to recognize Him, He considered them culpably ignorant of the times. He thought that since they had bothered to study the sky enough to know when it was auspicious weather for fishing, they should have bothered to know Scripture enough to tell the Messiah from a charlatan. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Who is adequate for these things? We who have the Spirit inside us: "[T]he anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you . . ." (1 John 2:27). The prophets of old searched, prayed, and meditated on the words channeling through them to us (1 Peter 1:10-11), that they might better understand the height, depth, length, and breadth of our salvation. That privilege was reserved for us.

We need to pray hard that those who were excited by a false prophecy will not stumble so as to fall. But at least Camping's flash in the pan gets the subject of the Second Coming on the table. Which is right where it should be about now.

Listen to commentaries by Andrée Seu.