According to prophets of all persuasions and readers of signs, a great many ends of the world are yet to come, some of them even within our own lifetime.
All things that have a beginning must have an end – the intuition has urged people from time immemorial to look for signs of all things coming to a still, believing in them, and getting ready for Armageddon.
Romans and Popes had it wrong
British daily the Independent writes that the ancient Romans believed the end of the world would come in around 389 BC. When he founded Rome, Romulus allegedly saw 12 eagles fly above his head, which meant 120 years of existence for the city. The Roman Empire, however, lasted for about two millennia.
With the spread of Christianity, reflections on the end of the world became an inseparable part of a believer's life. Pursuing different interpretations of the Bible, the Apocalypse was expected upon the death of Jesus Christ, 33 AD, or one thousand years afterwards, 1033. Years with combinations of “diabolic” figures also received their fair share of attention: 666 AD, 999, 1013, 1666, etc.
Church officials readily joined the ranks of prophets of doom. St Martin claimed the Apocalypse would come before year 400, while several Popes predicted – wrongly – that we should wait for Armageddon in year 500. St Beatus, however, beat them all in precision – he said the end of the world would come on 6 April 793.
Pope Innocent III must have nurtured a deep grudge for Muslims – he announced that the world would perish in 1284, i.e., exactly 666 years after the emergence of Islam. The Pope himself, unfortunately, did not live to check his prophesies.
Dominican monk and astrologist Tommaso Campanella also gave in to the temptation of spelling doom. He predicted that Earth would collide into the Sun in 1603. Unsurprisingly, the catastrophe did not happen, yet Campanella was revered as a highly authoritative prophet until his death in 1638.
Turns of millennia also inspired people with fearful awe. Pope Sylvester II was convinced that God would only let the world exist until 1000 AD. The Pope lived three years past the date and died without having witnessed Armageddon. Contemporary chronicles indicate, however, that his prophesies were quite popular at the time. As the new millennium approached, Europe went into a veritable panic – people would give away all their wealth, flock to monasteries, and otherwise make arrangements for their meeting with the maker.
Scientists as well as religious leaders indulged in prophesying doom. In 1910, Western countries had a serious fit of panic after French astronomer Camille Flammarion had announced that, on 18 May of that year, a comet was colliding into Earth. Meteorologist and seismologist Albert Porta, in his turn, said the end of the world would come on 17 December 1919, with a collision of six planets. The twentieth century felt no shortage of similar “scientific” predictions.
The year 2000, too, was expected to bring an Apocalypse. This time, however, it was not the Catholic Church that indulged in scaremongering but rather various religious sects and even scientists who, with no little encouragement from the media, voiced fears that all computers would break down bringing civilization to a standstill.
Tragic prophesies of spiritual leaders
Ever since the 19th century, numerous religious movements and their leaders have been using doom prophesies to inspire awe among their followers. William Miller, founder of Adventism, preached that Jesus Christ would descend to Earth for the second time in 1843, effectively ending the reign of Satan. The prophesy fascinated the US media, yet it failed to materialize. Then Miller “moved” the end of the world to 1844. Alas, he was wrong again.
Joseph Smith, author of the Book of Mormon, also treated his followers with an apocalyptic prophesy. The world was to end some fifty years after his death, in 1981.
Jehovah's Witnesses were waiting for God's kingdom to come in 1914 and, after that failed, in 1975. The known American TV preacher Pat Robertson was convinced that the judgement day would dawn in 1982; when that failed, he set another date for doomsday on 29 April 2007. Wrong again.
In 1900, about a hundred followers of the Brothers and Sisters of Red Death, a Russian Orthodox sect, set themselves on fire in the belief that the world was ending. This might have started the bloody tradition of group suicide before each doomsday.
Say, on the occasion of another Armageddon, 39 Americans of Heaven's Gate religious group committed suicide on 26 March 1997. Over 800 followers of another religious group in Uganda took their own lives or were killed by their leaders, because they believed the world would end on 1 January 2000.
Annual Armageddon
These are but a few of numerous doomsday prophesies that have failed to materialize. Looking forward, there should not be any shortage of those in the future either.
The year 2013 contains, in its notation, the unfortunate devil's dozen, which will doubtlessly inspire the imaginative. Some astrophysicists claim that a cloud of space dust will reach Earth in 2014, sweeping everything in its way. 2015 will see the end of a 9,576-year cycle which allegedly marks an end of civilizations. Interpreters of Nostradamus, that cryptic seer whose name has been associated with so many false prophesies, claim the the world will be destroyed in a nuclear war in 2018.
The Jewish Talmud allegedly puts the end of the world at 2240, yet the Muslim Quran speaks of Armageddon in 2280.
Who's right? When should we prepare for the end of all things?
And old Lithuanian fable tells a story about the times when people knew the date of their death. Once God went out for a walk on Earth and came across a neglected farm. God asked the master why he did not clean up his house, mend fences. The man replied that there was no point as his life would end soon. The sloppiness enraged God and he took away the gift of knowing one's day of death.
