Doomsday Predictions When I was deciding what I would write about today, I came across an article about somebody predicting the end of the world in 2021. I bet if someone did enough research they probably could find somebody who predicted the end of the world in every year since the death of Christ. If somebody actually knew anything nobody would believe them, and I can’t say I wouldn’t blame them. It turns out a pastor of a church who has since had been predicting not only the end of the world but also the beginning of the end of the world. I wish he would make up his mind. I certainly don’t know what that means, and I doubt anyone could tell me but there are plenty of people out there making guesses. The same pastor said Christ would reappear in 2028 so I guess the world will completely end in 2028. The news media loves these kinds of stories and many politicians lately have been saying we only have two generations left on this planet. This is the junk they fill the newspapers with. There is no doubt the planet will end someday and hopefully we will get off of it before that, but as far as knowing when and if life will end on this planet, that is quite impossible... One of the predictions which scared people the most was a prediction of the world ending in the year 1000. Some say even the pope believed it. There was said to be riots in the streets. For the life of me I can’t see how rioting is going to stop the world from ending. Wouldn’t you think it would be better to spend your last moments with your family if you actually believed the world was going to end? There were many instances when predictions were made before this about the world ending and there was many since. It seems ancient people thought there was some significance in nice round numbers like 1000 or 500 for example. Some powerful important ancient people predicted Jesus would return in the year 500. One of these predictions was somehow based on the biblical size of Noah’s Ark. An ancient sect who revolted against the Romans in the mid-60s to the early 70s AD had predicted their revolt would end the world or the world will end when their revolt ends. They said their revolt would bring the Messiah to earth. Well guess what they were wrong, as wrong as the people are today who make these predictions. They do succeed in scaring a lot of people and I think in ancient times since many people were totally uneducated, they looked up to these people believing they knew things they really didn’t know. There is an old story about repeating something many times. Supposedly if you repeated enough people will believe it. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not as long as you keep repeating it. I think anyone in those days who would have predicted the end of the world would’ve been believed if they said it enough. I could talk a lot more about ancient times, but I what think I should talk about more recent predictions. In the 1700s a Cardinal named Nicholas of Cusa predicted the world would end sometime between 1700 and 1734. Nicholas was predicting a date 300 years into his future. This is the safe way to make a prediction because no one will survive long enough to see if you were right. Guess what? He was wrong too. Let’s move along to the 19th century. A preacher who was famous in his time was extremely sure he knew the day of the end of the world and told this to his congregation, his name was Jonas Wendell. He added a caveat to his prediction by saying he not only knew the date, but he was completely sure it was correct. He even published everything he said in a book and said he did this so there would be no misunderstanding. The magic date was said to be, drumroll please, 1873. When it didn’t happen Wendel said he was off by one year and it happened in 1874, but the world didn’t end with Jesus appearing because he was invisible. Talk about having a great excuse, Wendell had one. When people talk about the second coming it is almost like code. The second coming is said to happen when the world is going to end, so even though people might say this is only a prediction of a second coming of Christ, it is really also a prediction of the end of the world. It was a church called the Catholic Apostolic Church which was founded in 1831. It had no relationship to the Catholic Church in Rome. The founding members made a prediction. There were twelve of them and they said when the last one of these members died Jesus would return and thus, we would have the end of the world. The last member died in 1901 and nobody saw the second coming and the world was still here. You have to wonder did these people think they were so important when they died God would have to destroy the world? If that was true their opinions of their importance must have been incredible. A man named David Brandt Berg started a religious movement in California. He became known as King David and other names including Dad and Grandpa. He had decided in 1968 when he founded his religious movement that it was a great way to incorporate sex and he was accused of all sorts of sexual misconduct. You wouldn’t think a man like this would be listened to if he made a prediction about the end of the world, would you? I know I wouldn’t listen to him. There were so many crazy movements in California during this time and many of them were based on drugs. The first thought which would come to my mind would be this man might have been in a crazy drug stupor believing he had found out the date of the Earth’s destruction. He had predicted a doomsday event caused by the comet Kohoutek. The name of his organization was Children of God. One thing all of us should remember is there are probably thousands of these predictions which have been made over time and obviously not even one was correct. I say what are the odds of somebody really knowing the date, but I would think they are zero. I’m not saying someday someone might throw out a date be correct, because of enough people keep throwing out dates it seems to me someday somebody will just be, shall I say lucky? It could happen a million years from now or it could happen tomorrow who knows?
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