As faithful readers will have noticed, this isn’t the first
apocalypse we’ve seen since I started this blog. I dutifully covered the Harold
Camping Judgment Day of May 2011, and, when that didn’t happen, I covered
the Harold
Camping Rescheduling of Judgment Day for October 2011. I also totally
called it RE:
the apocalypse not actually being today, but as usual, nobody ever listens
to me.
I wasn’t going to do an apocalypse facts post again, becauseI’ve already done one before, to commemorate the last apocalypse. Then I
thought, well, you know, there have been enough apocalypses (is that the proper
term? Should it be apocalypsae?) to do another post, and I’m kind of running
out of Christmas-themed ideas, anyway. One of my friends was all, “Well, we
might not get another apocalypse” and I was all “Oh come on, we totally will,” I
mean, shit, I can personally remember at least five, and that’s not even
counting the ones that happened when I was still too little to notice that the
world was about to end.
 |
| What if it did end, and the government covered it up? |
So I guess I’m risking not having anything to blog about the
next time the world ends, but whatevs. I’ll take that chance.
1) Many Biblical scholars believe that, when Jesus said He was
coming back, he meant soon. Albert
Schweitzer, Johannes
Weiss, Alfred Loisy,
Dale Allison, E.P.Sanders and others
who have studied the Bible pretty hard feel that some of Jesus’s statements
seem to indicate that He expected to be bringing the Kingdom of God a long time
ago. Specifically, Matthew
16:28 and Matthew
24:34, where he seems to indicate the Second Coming will occur within one
generation of his “death”. Early, first-century
Christians, including Paul the
Apostle, would have expected the Second Coming to occur within their
lifetimes.
 |
| How disappointed they must have been. |
Early Christians didn’t give up on the idea of an imminent
Second Coming. A second century sect, the Montanists, believed that
Christ would be back any day now. So did Saint Hilary of Poitiers,
a third century bishop who had the Second Coming slated for 365 AD. A
contemporary, Saint
Martin of Tours, agreed that Christ would return before the year 400 AD.
And on and on and on, with somebody predicting the Second Coming at
least once a century ever since.
2) Cotton
Mather, the Puritan dude from my
last post, predicted the end of the world no less than three times, in
1697, 1716 and 1736. Now, I know he’s not the only person to have predicted the
Apocalypse more than once, but you’d think you’d just give up, you know?
 |
| He also totally backed witch-burning. |
3) The Millerites
were followers of Baptist lay preacher William Miller. In 1822, Miller
predicted the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world “on or before
1843.” Eventually he gave in to pressure from his ever-growing following and
narrowed it down to sometime between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844. When the
entire year passed without apocalyptic events, Miller announced that he had
miscalculated the Apocalypse by using the wrong calendar, and convinced his
followers that new, correct calculations led to a new, correct prediction of
the End of All Things on 18 April 1844.
When, again, the world steadfastly continued to exist, Miller’s
followers became antsy. Many of them had given away everything they owned in
anticipation of the Rapture. Miller managed to hold them off for another few
months by announcing that the Rapture had already begun, and that they were experiencing
the “tarrying,” a period of waiting for things to really kick off. A third and
final calculation, Miller said, placed the real, actual date of the Rapture on
22 October 1844.
When the date came and went without Rapture, Miller’s
followers, and people in general, were so upset that the fallout came to be
known as the Great
Disappointment. Millerites experienced harassment and assault at the hands
of the general public. Their churches were burned, some of them were tarred and
feathered, and, it’s said, even little children taunted them in the streets.
Most of the Millerites abandoned their leaders to return to their previous
churches or join the Shakers. Others continued to wait for the return of
Christ, as did Miller himself until his death in 1849.
 |
| Awwwww. |
Some advanced varying
theories of what had happened – the world had entered a “Great Sabbath” during which
no believer should work for a thousand years (ha ha, nice one); the saved
should behave like children, based on the words
of Jesus, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God
like a child shall not enter it;” Christ was waiting to be “prayed down” to
Earth, because He’s pouty like that. The Advent Christian Church and the
Seventh-day Adventist Church eventually emerged from the chaos.
4) Halley’s
Comet passed by the Earth in 1910 and 1987, and both times, people
predicted dire consequences. In 1910, Camille Flammarion
predicted the end! Of all life! On Earth! Apparently the comet did come
especially close
that year, so I won’t tease him like I was planning to.
 |
| Loser. |
In the 1980s, Leland
Jensen, religious leader and known failed apocalypse predictor, predicted
that Halley’s Comet, the comet that has passed through the inner solar system
every 75-76 years for millennia without bothering anybody, would suddenly up
and collide with the Earth in 1987. It did not.
 |
| It did shout "Fuck you Leland Jensen" as it went by, though. |
5) Seventeenth-century Irish bishop James Ussher predicted the
end of the world would occur on 23 October 1997, because, according to him,
that date would mark 6,000 years since the creation of the world. I’m not sure
why he thought 6,000 years was a good expiration date for the world, but I’m
guessing it’s easy to predict Armageddon when it’s three or four hundred years
away.
 |
| ISN'T IT, USSHER??? |
6) I think most of you will remember the Heaven’s
Gate cult founded by Marshall Applewhite
in the early 1970s. Followers believed that the Earth was about to be “recycled,”
or, you know, wiped clean of all life. Furthermore, they believed that they
were, in fact, extraterrestrial beings who would be saved from the destruction
of Earth when they advanced to the “Next Level” by rejecting all earthly
attachments and shedding their physical “vehicle.” When Comet Hale-Bopp
passed by the Earth in 1997, Applewhite convinced his followers that a space
ship was following the comet and that they all needed to commit suicide so that
their souls could board the ship.
On 26 March 1997, police discovered 39 dead cult
members, including Applewhite himself, in a San Diego mansion. They
committed suicide by swallowing sedatives and vodka, mixed with pudding or
applesauce. Most of the victims were also smothered with plastic bags.
Creepily, the mass suicide took place in three shifts over three days, with the
survivors helping their friends (kill themselves!) and cleaning up after them. Two groups of
fifteen offed themselves on the first two days, and a final group of nine on
the last day. They were all found lying neatly in their bunk beds, dressed in identical
costumes. Each one carried a five dollar bill and three quarters, which is just
the kind of morbid detail I find fascinating.
 |
| Was it for cab fare? |
