With so much doom and gloom all around us lately, I feel like none of us would be the least bit surprised if frogs started raining from the sky and the news started talking about alien invasions. With the recent end of the presidential election—finally!—we seem to be torn between being sure of impending doom and being positive that the worst is behind us. To cheer myself up a little, I started digging around for past and future world’s-end scenarios. What I found was whole lot of failed Armageddon and second coming predictions. Yes, there are many. Yes, they are quite hilarious, but maybe more importantly, they’re a good reminder that this, too—whatever we think of the newest president and state of our nation—shall pass.
1. The First Second Coming: 30 CE
The Bible’s New Testament has many predictions by Jeshua of Nazareth (a.k.a Jesus Christ) claiming that God’s kingdom would arrive very soon after Jesus’s crucifixion, or that it was already in the process of arriving. For example, the book of Matthew states, “There shall be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” This is followed by: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” Being the first century, life expectancy was around thirty years, so this means JC was expected to reunite with his old friends within a few decades. Good news for the sinners, bad news for his followers: looks like they got stood up.
2. First Round-Numbered-Year Panic: 500
We were trying to do the math on the world’s expiration well over a thousand years ago. For the first big numerical transition, a theologian named Hippolytus predicted that the anti-Christ would make its appearance this year, which would be followed by the second coming of Christ—and subsequent end of the world. What did he base this on? He calculated that the world would last about 6,000 years and, since Adam, the first man according to the Bible, was born 5,500 years before Christ (you knew that, right?), this had to be the big day.
3. Y1K Hysteria: 1000
The approaching end of the first millennium caused mass hysteria (hmmm, sounds familiar) across the medieval Christian world. Folks believed that Christ’s return would happen on this monumental day—that Jesus would be the guest of honor at all their New Year’s Eve bashes. According to historians, during the year 999, there was a huge burst of religious fervor as believers prepared to be taken up to heaven. They began selling belongings, donating possessions to the church (though I have to wonder, what use would the church have for them if the world was about to implode?), releasing people from prison, and neglecting earthly duties like planting crops. When the predictions turned out to be a bust, the church didn’t give back the gifts, which caused some criticism of the church to follow. This was quickly silenced with the execution of the heretics, which settled down the critiques right quickly.
4. You Can’t Blame Her for Trying: 1814
Hey, at least there was one woman who got in on all these predictions. Joanna Southcott, an English mystic, preached that she had supernatural powers, declaring herself the woman spoken of in the King James version of Revelations: “There appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” She told followers that she would give birth to the second coming of Christ, marking the world’s end on October 19, 1814. She wasn’t as lucky as the Virgin Mary, failing to give birth to anyone on that date. Followers held on for a while, though—even though she died two months later, they kept her body hoping she’d return from the dead. (Hey, maybe her biblical events were mixed up—if not a virgin birth, perhaps a resurrection.) Once she started to decay, however, they handed her over to authorities.
