End of the World

A belief that the world is not stable or permanent is the norm rather than the exception. Mythologies tell how it has passed through phases that are finite in duration. The Aztecs, for instance, imagine four Suns in succession, with an earthly era corresponding to each. Three cosmic destructions have occurred already, by deluge, earthquake, and hurricane. We are now in a fourth era that will also terminate, probably by fire, and that seems to be the end of everything. The Greek poet Hesiod describes a series of human races going generally downhill, with “golden” people at the beginning and “iron” people (ourselves) at the end. Like the Aztecs, he is silent as to what, if anything, comes afterward. The Hindu program is similar to the Greek. It defines four ages, or yugas, each inferior to the one preceding. The fourth will close when degeneracy is at its worst. Scandinavian mythology lacks the periodic pattern but still prophesies an End and goes into it in rare detail. It will be a cataclysm called Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods, when monsters of chaos will slay the principal deities, the sun will be darkened, the stars will fall, and fire and water will reduce the world to a desolate void.
In Hinduism, while the End is definitely an end, something is envisaged beyond. The Messiah Kalki, an incarnation of the Supreme God Vishnu, will restore the world—wind it up again, so to speak—for a fresh start. Scandinavian myth goes further: after Ragnarök, the world will reappear, transfigured and purified, and the sons of the gods will reign in glory. The Hindu conception seems independent of outside influence,
but the Scandinavian, in the form that has survived, has probably been affected by Christianity. Prophecy that not only forecasts a clear and meaningful End but looks beyond to a qualitatively different sequel—not a mere new cycle or repeat performance—is mainly Christian.
The background is in Jewish literature dating from the last century or two b.c. The biblical book Daniel prophesies that God will destroy earthly powers and set up a divine, everlasting kingdom. The world will not end exactly, but it will be transformed. The dead, or some of them, will return to life. Subsequent Jewish writers carry such hopes further.
The early Christians went further again. There will be a true End when Jesus, the Son of God, returns in power and majesty. All the dead will be raised and judged; the world will be annihilated, probably burnt, and replaced by… something else. Passages in the Gospels quote Jesus as foretelling these events. The last book of the New Testament, the Revelation or Apocalypse ascribed to the apostle John, unfolds the prospect with a wealth of symbolic imagery.
Jesus warned his disciples against guesswork about the time of the End. Only his Heavenly Father knew the day and the hour. For several decades, nevertheless, many Christians expected the Second Coming to occur soon. Revelation leaves the door open for this, though it hints that the truth may be otherwise. It envisages an End in two phases. Christ will return and reign with the resurrected saints for a thousand years. The general resurrection and the Last Judgment will follow. The existing universe will vanish, and there will be “a new heaven and a new earth,” with a glorious New Jerusalem as the abode of the blessed. The word millennium originally stood for the thousand-year reign of Christ. The Church preferred not to take this literally, but the motif inspired attempts to impose thousand-year divisions on the world’s entire history and infer its likely duration.
As the hope of an early End receded, the future came to be pictured in a longer perspective. Christ’s warning against a rash exactitude seems to have been taken to heart for many years. A few Christians indulged in fantasies about events that would lead up to the End, but no one is known to have set a date for it until 960, when a German visionary named Bernard of Thuringia said it would come on a day when the Annunciation of the Virgin coincided with Good Friday. That happened on March 25, 992. The world, however, continued.
That was an exceptional case. A persistent notion that the End was expected in the year 1000 grossly exaggerates whatever scare there was. Specific doomsday forecasts did not really begin until the religious excitements of the sixteenth century. Since then, they have attracted publicity from time to time. Some have been based on astrology, some on biblical periods, some on fancied revelations. The world’s destruction may be imagined as a pure act of God, taking the form of fire or flood, or it may be given a scientific cause, such as a solar explosion or a collision with a comet. Some prophecies retain a traditional Christian scenario; others diverge.
The most committedly scriptural of all heralds of doomsday, and the most influential, was William Miller (1781–1849). A native of Massachusetts, he passed through an anti-Christian phase and then became a Baptist. He worked out a system of scriptural interpretation pointing to the End and the Second Coming about 1843. In popular lectures, he spoke of celestial trumpets sounding, the clouds parting to reveal God’s throne, even “the horrid yells of the damned.” By 1842, he had attracted a mass following. During that year, thirty outdoor gatherings, with attendance in thousands, were held in the eastern United States and the Midwest. Miller settled on October 22, 1844, as the last possible date. Hysteria spread. Merchants gave away their stocks; farmers left their crops to rot in the ground.
When nothing happened, Millerites called the failure “The Disappointment.” Some found ways of coming to terms with it. New religious bodies grew from the wreckage, notably the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Another consequence, though an indirect one, was the sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Its record shows how prophetic motifs can be restated so as not to depend on a specific event or a fixed time. It originated from Charles Taze Russell, who adapted Miller’s calculations. Christ had returned in 1874, but invisibly; he would be visible later. The elect dead were “resurrected” in 1878 but in Heaven, out of human sight. After Russell’s death, the leader (though not all followed him) was Judge Joseph Rutherford. He shifted Christ’s invisible advent to 1914 and said the Kingdom of Jehovah was in preparation. The world would be transfigured rather than physically ended. However, the changes would be fundamental, especially for its human population. Rutherford’s famous slogan was “Millions now living will never die.”
A number of dates that have been announced for the End are given here in chronological order. In the twentieth century, the event foretold is sometimes a natural disaster or a nuclear holocaust rather than the End in the old sense. Such predictions are not included.
1524 (i)



In June 1523, a group of astrologers in London calculated that the city would be destroyed by a deluge at the beginning of the following February, and this would be the first stage of doomsday. In January, many Londoners climbed on to higher ground in neighboring counties. When there was no deluge, the astrologers shifted the date to 1624.
1524 (ii) and 1528



A well-known German astrologer, Johannes Stoeffler, also fastened on February 1524 and spoke of floods. A nobleman had an ark built on the Rhine, which was forcibly boarded by a crowd of refugees when heavy rain fell. The End, however, did not ensue, and Stoeffler tried 1528 instead, with no better success.
1533 (i)



The Anabaptists, a revolutionary sect, expected that Christ would return in 1533 and most of the world would be destroyed by fire, but their headquarters, in Strasbourg, would survive as the New Jerusalem.
1533 (ii)



A German mathematician, Michael Steifel, calculated on the basis of Revelation that the world would end on October 18, 1533. When it failed to do so, his fellow citizens in Lochau gave him a thrashing.
1665



Solomon Eccles, a Quaker, went about in London proclaiming that the Great Plague was the beginning of the End. He interrupted a church service, carrying a dish full of hot coals on his head, and called for public repentance. The terrifying mortality in the plague encouraged listeners to believe him. Finally, however, he was arrested, and the scare blew over.
1736



William Whiston, a former professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, predicted that London would be destroyed by a deluge on October 13 and the End would follow. This prophecy, like similar ones, caused a flight of refugees.
1761



When two earthquakes shook London, separated by four weeks, a soldier named William Bell predicted the End after the same interval. He drew large audiences. When the interval was safely past, he was locked away as insane.
1881, 1936, 1953



Dates computed by measurements of the Great Pyramid (see Pyramidology) and successively abandoned.
1900



The year set by a Russian sect at Kargopol called the Brothers and Sisters of Red Death. To prepare for the End, 862 of them decided to burn themselves as a sacrifice. Troops were sent to prevent the immolation, but when they arrived, more than a hundred were already dead.
1925 and 1932



A Long Island, New York, house painter named Robert Reidt, impressed by a reported message from the Archangel Gabriel to a girl in Los Angeles, invited the public to await the End with him on a hill at midnight on February 13, 1925. His companions invoked Gabriel. When midnight passed, Reidt said they must wait for midnight Pacific standard time, three hours later. Still nothing happened. He blamed press photographers. Seven years later, after studying the Bible, he tried again with no better results.
1945



In 1938, the Reverend Charles Long woke up in the night and saw a blackboard on which a ghostly hand wrote “1945.” After some reflection, which narrowed down the date to September 21, he predicted that the world would be vaporized and human beings would be turned into ectoplasm. He and his son held meetings at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, recruiting a fair-sized following who, under their leadership, prepared during the final week by giving up food, drink, and sleep. However, they were not turned into ectoplasm. The group disbanded.
1954



When a crack appeared in the Colosseum in Rome, many recalled a prophecy, mentioned by Byron, that its fall would mean the end of the world. A Vatican spokesman calmed the excitement and the building was repaired.
1962



A conjunction of several planets in Capricorn was interpreted by Indian astrologers as portending the world’s destruction on February 2. Millions joined in prayers, rituals, and sacrifices. When the day went by without incident, there was widespread agreement that these measures had averted disaster.
1970



The True Light Church of Christ, in North Carolina, revived a traditional belief that the world would last 6,000 years. They reckoned from a Creation assigned to 4000 b.c. and made an adjustment for what they thought to be an error.
1999



Widespread publicity was given to an alleged prophecy by Nostradamus that the world would end on July 4. Actually, he said no such thing. The “prophecy,” like some other supposed Nostradamus prophecies, was a product of misinterpretation.
Most of the doomsday prophets in modern times have been comparatively obscure figures with few converts. No lasting sects have come into existence because of them. There are, of course, purely natural possibilities for the demise of the planet or, at any rate, the life on its surface. Earth may overheat or freeze, or collide with some other body, or be sucked into a black hole. Or it may be totally sterilized by superweapons. Speculation on such contingencies is science fiction rather than prophecy as considered here.