Predicting the End of the World - One More Time
Answering the Question - Are We Living in the End Times?
Feb 26, 2009
Strange though it may seem, the question ‘when that’s will the world end?’ is one that’s been around almost as long as human beings have been writing things down. Wondering when the world will no longer exist has probably been a question since people first began to think like humans.
Many people have tried to answer the question, ‘when will the world end?’ by referring to peoples’ wickedness and to some form of, usually apocalyptic, spiritually-inspired destruction of the earth. Here are some predictions that we now know didn’t come true.
The First Prediction of the End of the World
Almost 5,000 years ago, an Assyrian clay tablet was inscribed with the following. "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common." While it’s tempting to wonder what the writer would have made of the world’s current economic woes, many people have believed that a degenerate and corrupt world is a sure sign that the destruction of the earth is close.
Montanists Waiting Patiently for the End of the World
In the mid second century AD, a Christian cult led by Montanus decided that Christ’s return was imminent and settled down in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey to await the end. Several hundred years later, members of the Montanist cult were still waiting. Eventually they got the message that the end was not nigh and the cult died.
Millenarianism Takes Root
The approach of both the first and the second millennia (1000 AD and 2000 AD) stimulated a growth of end-times thinking.
Cracking the Biblical Code: the Case of the Lotharingian Computists
For example, in 970, a group known as the Lotharingian computists thought they had cracked the Bible’s Code and identified the date as the first time after the millennium when Annunciation fell on Good Friday. When that day passed, again without the world coming to an end, the group did what many cults do and reinterpreted their ‘evidence’, suggesting that instead of ‘after the millennium’, it would be a 1000 years ‘after the crucifixion’. Again, the world continued much as before.
A Plague on All Your Houses: the Great Fire of London
With a date like 1666 approaching and plague engulfing England, many took the Great Fire of London which occurred in that ‘Year of the Beast’ as incontrovertible proof of the imminent end of the world. Fortunately they were wrong.
Charles and John Wesley: the Beginning of the End Times
Predicting the end of the world is often thought of as the preserve of small, tightly knit cults. However, this is not the case. For example, the founder of Methodism, Charles Wesley, believed that the world would end in 1794. The French Revolution would doubtless has encouraged him min that belief. Wesley’s brother, John, believed in a different, predicting that the end times would begin in 1836, again a period of significant social upheaval in Europe.
The Jehovah's Witnesses: Waiting for the End
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have long predicted the end of the world and continue to do so. The first date was 1874 and, when nothing had happened by the end of that year, another date, this time 1881, was selected. Amongst the other dates selected by the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been 1914, 1918, 1941, 1975 and 1994. Each time a date fails to materialise (or rather, does materialise) a recalculation is undertaken and the mistake explained and a new date identified.
The New Millenium
The dawn of the new millennium in 2000 was predicted as being the date for the Revelation of St John to come to pass by none other than Sir Isaac Newton.
Want to Bet on the End of the World?
Finally, Ladbrokes bookmakers have revealed that one gambler bet £10 with them that the world would end on Friday 13th April 2007. He was given odds of 10,000 to 1. The bookmakers were onto a fairly safe bet as collecting his winnings would have been somewhat difficult if his prediction had come true.
