Family Radio Dooms Day Confessions! - 1994

September 6, 1994 came and went just like May 21, 2011 came and went.

I'd gotten up and went to work. I worked in a group home with developmentally disabled adults and we'd taken the residents to the city of Rochester's annual Labor day parade. I sat on the curb sandwiched between several of the guys praying that when Jesus did return - he'd take me. I prayed this fervently; even though I didn't feel in the least bit worthy of going to heaven.

No one at work had said anything to me about this failed prediction; at least not that day they hadn't. Only one of my co-workers had pointed it out a few days later. To which I'd just responded that no-one had ever said for certain that it was going to happen; but just that it was a possibility.

Later that evening I'd gone over to a friend's house. Several of us 1994 'adherents' were gathered up in this family's home wondering what happened. The mood was somber, as all us adults tried to figure out why we were still here. The friend's father had come to the door for something. They lived in a duplex and the parents of the mother of this family lived in the other side. When the husband had closed the door, after his wife had gone over to give her elderly parents their dinner; I distinctly remember what was on the back of the front door. It was a construction paper writing that had been done by one of their children. It said:

"Let God be True and every man a liar."

The husband closed the door and suddenly stopped and read the verse out loud. There was silence in the room for the next several minutes.

Had Harold Camping lied? Was he mistaken? Was there just something we missed and the prediction really was about to come to pass? Maybe our calender was miscalculated or something? Why had God not done what I was convinced He'd said He was going to do? After all, had he not reveled it to us 'his servants the prophets'? Even though I certainly didn't feel worthy of redemption, I was sure I'd found the truth; Jesus was suppose to return that day. Finally we'd closed the evening conceding that apparently there was something we'd missed.

The days, weeks and eventually months passed. Many of the 1994 prediction followers had concluded that God was being merciful and spared us from judgement so that more people could be saved. God wasn't done gathering His elect and that's why we were still here. Well OK, yeah. I remember thinking. I understand that intellectually and I guess I can say that's a good thing; (really it is) but it still didn't stop the crushing disappointment I felt that the world hadn't ended.

A few days later I was over these friends house again, when the wife had repeated to me something she'd heard Harold Camping say on the radio. If we're looking for Jesus to return just to rescue us from our current life circumstances; our hearts aren't in the right place. We're looking for the wrong reason. To this she'd told me that she and her husband just looked at each other and said "Uhhh!"

"Uhhh!" So yeah, months and even years later I'd finally be able to come to confess that was the reason I really wanted Jesus to return. I wanted Him to rescue me from my life circumstances. Rescue me from my depression, my nightmares, and all the trauma I'd gone through. Seventeen years later now, I can see how in so many ways He's done just that. I'm still on this earth though, still having the sanctification factor worked out in my life; but none the less, God has rescued me from my depression, my nightmares and the devastating consequences the trauma I'd faced in life, had on my state of mental health. Now of course God didn't use any particular 'miraclous' means to do so. No, He used therapists, hospital psychiatric wards and some books written by men whom God Himself had gifted to be able to help people like me.

Through all this I can look back and see how He loved me.

And this was the one most single factor that helped me get through the 1994 failed prediction. It took a while to come out from under the Harold Camping / Family Radio teaching. I continued to listen to Family Radio for probably up to about 18 months after September of 1994 had passed. I still held out for some shred of hope that maybe Harold wasn't that far off his rocker. Maybe there was some bit of truth to his predictions and the subsequent teaching that came out of the 1994 event.

I was finally able to let Family Radio go when at one point I came to the revelation that God did actually love me. It was a sunny afternoon and I was laying in bed trying to get some sleep before I had to get up and head to work. I was now on the graveyard shift at the group home and going to school during my morning hours after work. I was laying there thinking about the stories of prostitutes coming to Jesus looking for forgiveness. Than I started to wonder what kinds of tragedies had these people who's stories I'd read about in the Bible endured in their lives? If Jesus would show compassion upon them even in all their messed up existence; than why wouldn't he show it to me? I'm not better than they were; but I wasn't any worse either! What a revelation that was! A few more weeks passed before I'd finally come to the conclusion that because God really did love me - the end of the world didn't matter any more.