Apocalypse when?

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine" - REM.

Eschatology, end times, apocalypse, the rapture, and Armageddon. It seems people have been forecasting the end of the world ever since people first rocked up on the planet but obviously we're all still here (for now) so why do they keep on doing it? Why do they keep on getting it wrong? What happens when they get it wrong? Do they apologise or do they simply guess another date?

I think we all know the answer to at least that last question but I was at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub on a beautiful, balmy Wednesday evening to hear David V Barrett (author on alternative religions, one of the head honchos at the London Fortean Society, and all round nice guy - he bought me a pint once but he couldn't remember my name - even though it's the same as his) deliver his 'When propechy fails... again' speech about just this very subject and to shed some light on the darkness and some background on the history of apocalyptic predictions.

We all remember the big fuss in 1999 about pre-millennial tension that come to absolutely nothing - and not just because the millennium actually ended on 31st December 2000 (one for the pedants - or simply those who understand how numbers work, miaow) but last month we've had Indiana pastor Paul Begley suggest the recent 'blood moon' marked the end of the world, recently NASA have warned about the chances of the Nibiru cataclysm, a doomsday event first proposed in 1995 by one Nancy Lieder (a 'contactee' who claims to have been in touch with extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli binary star system) that would involve a large object, Planet X, colliding with Earth ending all life, and there were those who felt the Large Hadron Collider being turned on would cause a mass extinction event. Others felt that the Large Hadron Collider being turned OFF would cause a mass extinction event.

A lot of this 'end times' stuff, of course, refers to the second coming of Christ and before getting in to religious debate, Barrett, a former Christian who sees hardcore skeptics as being as rigid as hardcore believers, quoted from the philosopher Karl Popper who claimed that although he personally wasn't for religion he did think we should respect those that are. Nobody has proof. Their beliefs are as valid as ours. In this age of false equivalence I'm not sure I totally buy that but I do agree that it pays to at least listen to 'the other side's point of view.

So let's have a look at some examples. Harold Camping was an American Christian radio broadcaster and evangelist much given to predicting the end of the world/return of Christ. He proposed that Jesus would return on 21st May 1988 but then when that didn't happen he had another go. 6th September 1994 proved an equally bad guess so he knocked it back more than a decade. Camping was due to turn ninety in 2011 so perhaps he felt it was a safe bet to say Jesus would do an encore on 21st May 2011 (like Jacob Rees-Mogg pronouncing we won't see the benefits of Brexit for fifty years it's a good idea to make prophecies/predictions that can't be disproved until you're dead) but, unfortunately, Camping lived to be 92 so he got to see his predictions proved wrong again. Undeterred he had another crack but, again, 21st October 2011 came and went without any divine revelation.

Eventually Camping decided that setting dates itself was 'sinful' and, in that at least, he's backed up by the Bible. Matthew 24:36 reads "but about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." So Camping, like so many before or after him, had been sitting on God's bar stool, drinking from God's pint glass, and this was sure, only, to anger the big G himself.

It was Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, that first posited the idea of a final battle between God and the Devil in which God, of course, is victorious before all the good people celebrate by disappearing off into some kind of heavenly realm. Zoroastrianism, mixed, as ever, syncretically, with a host of other contemporary belief systems, to form Judaism and therefore Christianity and Islam. 

It is, in many ways, the ancestor of all Abrahamic thought which includes the idea that one day Jesus will return and save all us wretched sinners (providing we haven't sinned too badly, no homosexuality or shellfish guys, keep a lid on it) from ourselves. Or does it? As far back as the 4/5c St Augustine of Hippo, along with most other leading theologians of the time, pronounced that Jesus's 'threat' to return was meant allegorically rather than actually.

Some pretty well known names ignored St Augustine of Hippo and over the next couple of thousand years have set dates for Jesus' return. Among them Christopher Columbus, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and supposed man of science Isaac Newton who hedged his bets and said the J man would be back either in 1948 or 2060. At least the second date's not been proved inaccurate yet!

Back in 1814 the sixty-four year old Devon virgin Joanna Southcott claimed she was pregnant with the new messiah - which seems unlikely for at least three very obvious reasons. Alas, instead of giving birth that year she instead died. Her followers refused to be deterred by this unfortunate turn of events and after three days, with rigor mortis setting in and no doubt her body honking a bit, they decided to perform a caesarean on her. SPOILER ALERT:There was no child!

Southcott's acolytes were made of pretty resilient stuff though and instead of admitting they may've been wrong all along came up with a response that is hard to prove wrong. The baby had been born and, as the son of God, had ascended immediately to heaven. Obvs!

Southcott, like that list of more illustrious names, was another who prophecised Christ's return. 2004 was her (incorrect) prediction. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, said JC'd be back in 1840 which was about the time that the minor, but influential, evangelical conservative group the Plymouth Brethren were formed.

Their big idea, the rapture, was a variant on the theme of Christ's return. Instead of him coming to us we could go to him. This idea made its way into the very popular Scofield Reference Bible and, from there, into wider public consciousness. The rapture, briefly, is an end time event where all Christian believers, alive or dead, rise into the sky to join Christ.

It was such a popular belief at the time that people discussed the ethics of believers becoming airline pilots. What if the rapture happened when they were flying a plane and left all the non-believing passengers in an unmanned aeroplane to plummet to their death? Although that seems a moot point as according to most versions of the story as soon as the believers have been saved all those remaining will be subjected to God's wrath. And as we know from the Bible God can be one angry, vicious bastard when the mood takes him.

Equally why did people sell their businesses, as some did, when they thought the rapture was imminent? Admittedly their business would serve them no purpose in heaven but would the proceeds of the sale? Camels, eyes of needles, and all that.

The Jehovah's Witnesses were among the most relentless and determined date setters. They've predicted the end of the world would happen in 1874, 1914, 1925, 1941, and 1975 although it seems they've wised up a bit now and no longer set dates. In 1918 prominent Jehovah's Witness Joseph Franklin Rutherford gave a talk in Los Angeles in which he announced "Millions Now Living Will Never Die", a snappy title that Chicagoan post-rockers Tortoise appropriated for the title of their second album seventy-eight years later, and if the number of centenarians left on the planet is anything to go by he's not been proved wrong just yet - but soon will.

Ronald Weinland from the snappily named Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God picked 2008 for the Earth's final year and went so far as publishing a pamphlet in which he claimed if this didn't happen he would be a false prophet. It didn't happen as we all know. So did he 'fess up and admit he was a false prophet?

No, in a manner worthy of arch-bullshitter Donald Trump, he brazened it out, claimed it was an outrage and an insult that people were calling him a false prophet, and announced that the end of the world would actually happen on the 27th May 2012. Then he did it again for 19th May 2013. He's hedging his bets on his current forecast which suggests either Pentecost 2019 or Pentecost 2020. The maths gets tricky, apparently but get both of those dates in your diaries.

So how do these people justify their seemingly firmly held beliefs failing to materialise? Often they say we were saved because people prayed hard and long enough to avert a disaster, that people made God listen. Or they redefine the terminology (end of the world doesn't mean 'end of the world' dummy). Or they set a new date (as we've seen). One thing you never ever do as a 'prophet' is admit you're wrong. There's no profit in being that kind of prophet.

In 1999 (a big year for end of the worlders) one Kabbalah leader proclaimed that a great ball of fire would destroy the Earth unless, and get this, people raised enough money to open up some new Kabbalah centres. It worked though. He got them.

Maitreya represents the second coming in many major religions:- Christianity, Islam, Judaism, parts of Hinduism - and David told us the story of one Benjamin Creme, a Scottish artist and esotericist, who claimed that Maitreya was, at one point, living in Brick Lane in the East End of London where Creme had invited twenty-five journalists to join himself and Maitreya for a curry. When Maitreya didn't show Creme blamed the journalists for their insincerity and lack of belief. I suspect Maitreya just heard they were out of Bangla beer.

That's one of many typical coping strategies. Cognitive dissonance underpins all religion in the first place so it's hardly a surprise that it should underpin apocalyptic predictions and eschatological discussions. Maybe religion should've been held up to higher standards a long time ago. It's only now that politicians are adopting the same tactics that religious leaders have applied for millennia that people are starting to get really worried.

There were diversions into the Raelians (they believe we're the ancestors of aliens and that their leader, Claude Vorilhon, met little green men only to discover he was the half-brother of Jesus), Nostradamus (whose writings are so vague they can be interpreted in so many different ways it's not really worth bothering - not that that stops some), the Branch Daavidians (most of them died in the Waco siege of 1993, David felt they were essentially assassinated by the FBI), the Heaven's Gate cult (all but two of their members committed suicide in 1997 so they could join their 'space brothers'), the Mayan prophecies (people have said 2012 was predicted by the Mayans as the date of the end times but there's no mention of that in any Mayan writing ever and, in fact, plenty of predictions for events that would happen after that date), and the year 1000AD (some kind of belief has gone round that people in the year 999 thought they were coming to the end of the world but in reality most people living back then would've been completely unaware of the concept of years and certainly not any way of numbering them).

Each one of these subjects would make a fascinating talk in its own right so if it sometimes felt there was almost too much to take in that's because the end of the world as we know it is a pretty big subject, isn't it? 

It was an incredibly comprehensive talk and if David was a little too quiet in places (I did miss the odd bit) it was more than overcompensated for by the thoroughness of his research, the enthusiasm of his delivery, and his vast stores of knowledge that underpinned the whole venture. Once again I can only thank Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub for a wonderful, thoughtful, evening.

As Herb Magidson wrote in 1949 for Guy Lombardo:- "Enjoy yourselves, it's later than you think" - but is it? The truth is we don't know any more than Joseph Smith, Joanna Southcott, Harold Camping, or Ronald Weinland. But at least we've got the decency to admit it.