Christianity

There have been thousands of end-of-the-world predictions. They have been the products of many great minds and have had many devoted believers from various religions and cults. For example in Christian England alone, during the reformation, "eighty books were published on the subject of the world's end"₁. All have put a lot of time and effort in to each and every prediction, building up supporting evidence from religious texts, historical trends and numerology. What do all these predictions have in common about the end of the world? They have all been wrong.

1. Types of Apocalyptism and Common Features
2. The World Will Definitely End on a Nice Round Number
3. The Year 2000 Millennium Bug: An Expensive Panic Created by an Irresponsible Popular Press
4. 2012 and the Mayan Calendar: A Panic Born From Advertising
5. When Predictions Fail: What Next?
6. Destructive Suicide Cults
   1. Jim Jones' Peoples Temple: 276 Child Murders and Over 600 Adult Suicides
   2. The Sarin Gas Attacks in Japan, by Aum
   3. The Branch Davidians - 80 Died in the Waco Siege
   4. The Order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate

1. Types of Apocalyptism and Common Features

• Bible-based Christianity: Apocalyptism based on the Book of Revelation from the New Testament is by far the most common kind. The date of Judgement-Day has been proclaimed on countless occasions by Christians over 2000 years, and nearly every new Christian sect has had as its motivation a belief in the imminent end of the world.
• UFO and aliens: The belief that aliens are going to rescue believers whilst everyone else burns is a common feature of suicide-cults and dangerous cults.
• Technology-based doomsday prophecies: The nuclear arms race led many to declare that we, as a species, was only a generation away from total self-annihilation. Since the evaporation of the cold war this instinct has been consistently been replaced with warnings that artificially intelligent robots would emerge to suppress humankind although few consider this anything more than science fiction. (i.e.: The Terminator, The Matrix, "I, Robot"). See "General Neophobia in Everyday Life: Humankind's Fear of Progress and Change" by Vexen Crabtree (2009) for more. Secular scenarios have always proven to be much less prevalent than religious ones, as the drama requires a certain irrationality in order to become viral.
• World-rejectionism is a commonly used category of religion, used by prominent sociologists such as Bryan Wilson (1959), J. Milton Yinger (1957)₂ and Roy Wallis (1984)₃. The world is deemed bad, even evil, and believers must distance themselves from it as much as possible, sometimes to the extent of denying themselves any pleasure, indulging in any desires, or enjoying anything except essential food and religious study. Such withdrawal has often been a hallmark of suicide cults although it is also present to an extent in otherwise peaceful groups such as the Amish.

Ironic though it seems, end-of-the-world cults have fostered a kind of common set of beliefs and writings and it is easy to imagine new prophets of doom being inspired by their (wrong) predecessors' writings.

• People with the correct beliefs, and/or, members of the correct cult, will somehow survive either in body (being zipped away by a spaceship just in time, for example), or will survive in spirit (attaining heaven after death).
• "The general opinion among doomsday cults is that the southern hemisphere is likely to be less badly affected than the north in the event of Armageddon"₄.

End-of-the-world-mania is dependent upon certain properties of human ego. We want to witness important historical times, and we want to be at the fore and center of tumultuous and attention-grabbing events. See:

• "The Importance of Current Events is Amplified by our Egos" by Vexen Crabtree (2005)

2. The World Will Definitely End on a Nice Round Number₅

There was a massive media interest in the apparent number of people who expected the end of the world at the turn of year 2000. They didn't only expect it - but many people acted on the belief. Schroëder writes that "prior to the millennium there was an explosion of interest in cults particularly among younger, more impressionable members of society; few regions of the world escaped notice"₆. Some people sold all of their possessions and literally head for the hills₇. It was worldwide. In China, the Zhushen Jiao (a 1993 offshoot of The Shouters) numbered in excess of 10,000 followers in 1998 and aimed to establish a Kingdom of God, as the world was soon to end, however, the leaders were arrested and the founder attracted the death sentence for rape and fraud₈. Another group, Dami Xuanjiao, was suspected of being on the verge of mass suicide. It had spread from South Korea to China and by 1992 had gained 100,000 followers.

“[Jesus would return again] in 1999 to judge survivors, and the end of history would occur in 2000. A unique feature of this group was periods of intense worship from midnight until 3am. 'Most followers simply felt disappointed or cheated when the prophecies failed' and local governments kept a close eye on Dami Xuanjiao communities for fear of an outbreak of mass suicide.”

"Encyclopedia of New Religions" by Christopher Partridge (2004)₈

It was difficult to work out at the time what actual theory underpinned this fear and what the genuine cause was for the massive increase in doomsday prophecies centered on that year during the 1990s. Clearly, most people over-estimate the significance of humankind's invented Gregorian calendar.
One of the causes of superstitious thinking involving dates comes from modern ignorance about dating systems: there have been many, used at various times by humankind. They have come and gone. All dating systems are arbitrary - you have to pick a year to use as 'year 0', you have to pick a base for the numbering system (nowadays: base 10). The resultant numbers from all of that are meaningless in any cosmic sense. But because most people never analyze the foundations of dates, it is easy to consider the system to be more important and more significant than it really is. Especially when you start measuring things like the movement of planets and stars - things that can fire the imagination - then you end up with a recipe for all kinds of crazy beliefs grounded in nothing but hollow numbers and coincidences. If you take into account enough factors, then, it is possible to make almost any series of stellar events sound ominous and portentous. The method of crunching numbers until amazing patterns emerge is called numerology, and the Human inclination to see patterns in random data is called pareidolia, and is one the most common causes of human thinking errors₉.

“The Earth's rotation, angle of inclination, and passage around the sun result in astronomical and meteorological regularities. These regularities allow us to use a variety of relatively arbitrary mathematical systems to provide dates for all sorts of useful things, such as the proper seasons for agriculture. In view of the arbitrary nature of these systems, however, it is reasonably obvious that specific dates within any given system have no particular significance.”

Skeptical Inquirer (2013)₇

Links:

• "Errors in Thinking: Cognitive Errors, Wishful Thinking and Sacred Truths: 1.1. Pareidolia: Seeing Patterns in Random, Complex or Ambiguous Data" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)
• "International Date Format (ISO 8601) and Time Measurements" by Vexen Crabtree (2005)
• "Numerology and Religion: How Special Numbers Such as 7 and 12 Gain Spiritual Significance" by Vexen Crabtree

3. The Year 2000 Millennium Bug: An Expensive Panic Created by an Irresponsible Popular Press

Techno-phobia is a predictable element in end-of-the-world predictions. The news scare of the "millennium bug" led to predictions that, not only would some computers and the like stop working, but that it would result in an accidental nuclear war destroying humanity. Eager Christians shouted loudly about a 2,000-year reign of Satan, after which Judgement Day would come, as predicted by the New Testament.

Full article:

"The Worst of the Modern Mass Media: 1.6. The Millennium Bug" by Vexen Crabtree (2009)

A concerned researcher, Peter de Jager, attempted to warn industry experts that come year 2000, there might be an issue with the system clocks on Windows computers. This was particularly important for servers and networks. As these underlie much business, as well as national infrastructures in general, the problem certainly needed looking into. Jager received little attention, so, he hyped it up a bit. Then, the world's media took note of his warning, and propelled it into a massive story of worldwide doom and gloom way beyond the scale of the 'possible' risk initially pondered by the computer expert.The press didn't examine the claim and investigate it. It is a simple procedure to set your system clock forward a few years to see what would happen. They didn't ask Microsoft or Intel about it. If the press had engaged with this kind of journalism - the kind that created the press in the first place - they would have discovered that not much happens when a computer's clock reaches the year 2000 and beyond. They could have then reported that some computer software firms are making outlandish claims in order to sell expensive yet pointless bug-finding software. But that's not what happened and even if they did know the truth, the papers wouldn't have ran it.

“By the late 1990s, a final wave of sources joined in as all kinds of maniacs and religious groups cranked up the anxiety to the point of apocalypse. They were led by Gary North of Christian Reconstruction who declared that 'We need times so hard that men will turn to God.' Mr North had got in early, explaining in 1997 [...] 'Month by month, fear will spread. Doom and gloom will sell, as it has never sold before. I have positioned my name, my site, and Christian Reconstruction in the center of this fear. All I have to do now is to report bad news.”

"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₁₀

Gary North of Christian Reconstruction sounds rather like a modern newspaper editor! If the news services checked their facts, his claims would not have made the news.
When the Millennium Bug's big day came, nothing happened.
I continue the story on The Worst of the Modern Mass Media: 1.6. The Millennium Bug, pointing out that some countries and large companies spent billions on anti-millennium-bug software; whilst some entire countries completely ignored the issue and done nothing about it. No matter: in both cases, absolutely nothing newsworthy happened. The entire scare was hollow. Yet everyone wanted to believe it!

4. 2012 and the Mayan Calendar: A Panic Born From Advertising

2012 was a good year for drama-loving end of the world theorists. The end of the world was to occur on Dec 21st 2012, and the main impetus for this mild mania was public-relations promotional material for a film and a suite of books published in 2007.

“We are currently being told by some media sources that the world will end on December 21 [2012]. It is suggested that this was predicted by the Maya, given that this date coincides with the end of a specific calendric cycle, a baktun, within their 'long count'.[...] There is at least one Maya document that mentions this date without affording it any apocalyptic significance whatsoever (Bower 2012). [...] We are currently inundated with cable-television programs on the forthcoming end of the world. The authors, together with the rest of the world, have seen numerous documentaries 'proving' the apocalyptic significance of December 21, 2012. These programs have roped in everything from the Maya and the Hopi to the predictions of Nostradamus.”

Skeptical Inquirer (2013)₇

So, what's it all about? Mayan star-gazers noticed a cycle in the movement of stars in the sky. It is caused, we now know, by a slow wobbling of the Earth as it spins and orbits the sun: in this observation, the Mayans were correct: however, any symbolic and mythical conclusions borne from that long cycle are religious fantasy. Of all the various wobbles, tilts, irregularities and oddities of the Earth's orbit, none of them have caused any trouble for life on Earth. Not only that, but as all these things change incredibly slowly there are no moments when the Earth suddenly finds itself in a new condition. Changes are very small as they are spread out over periods of years, or thousands of years.
The Mayans were finalizing their calendars 2300 years ago in an era before we truly understood calendar events and cosmology. I am completely sure that the Mayans simply did not have detailed scientific information about the solar system, the Milky Way and cosmology, so could not make any sensible predictions about the end of the world. For example, their calculation of the length of a year was wrong, meaning that by today their calendar would have been 7 months off. In addition, historians well-versed in Mayan texts note that the Mayans themselves do not speak of an end of the world in 2012, or at any other points in the Earth's cycles.
NASA has been asked so many questions about 2012 that they have published an FAQ on the subject. They point out that the significance of the cycle period in the Mayan calendar is very mundane:

“Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.”

NASA Website

The Mayans thought that the world was created in 3114BCE. They definitely could not predict the end of the world on a specific date thousands of years in the future given such a flawed starting-point, nor could such a prediction be correctly made if it was based on some mystical religious-cultural reasons that stemmed from amateur stargazing. The Mayans could not even predict their own demise.
This story is now history but we must remind the public about the mass gullibility of their kin if ever we are to escape from the slow sequence of similar panics that emerge with disheartening frequently even in the modern age where people should know better than to trust in media-touted prophecies and unscientific twaddle.
Links:

• NASA's FAQ on threats to the Earth in 2012 including notes on the Mayan calendar.
• Telegraph (2009 Oct 11) article "2012 is not the end of the world, Mayan elder insists".
• The Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance have a useful page briefly reviewing many books about 2012 as part of their pages on 2012 predictions.

5. When Predictions Fail: What Next?₅

Rather than disappear when such dates pass without any sign of lava flowing around New York, many of the same people simply move their focus to whatever else looms large on the near horizon. All too frequently, when predictions fail, the voices of doom merely adjust their dates, and try again. It seems that the important thing is more the sense of drama, even though in all cases predictions are presented with an aura of complete certainty.

“From the oracles at Delphi and Cumae [...] people have always sought accurate knowledge of the specifics of the future. Human beings have repeatedly failed and these failures have occasionally been horrendously consequential. During the Greco/Persian wars, for example, the Delphic Oracle's prediction that the Athenians would be safe behind their 'wooden wall' did not work out so well for the Athenians, who built such walls around the Acropolis. [... The prophecy] was immediately fine-tuned to refer to his ships at Salamis (Herodotus 2006) [which was] something of a stretch.”

Skeptical Inquirer (2013)₇

The believers themselves are often unphased by failed prophecies. Although in many cases disappointment results in some leaving the movement, it seems that many believers are freely manipulated by their charismatic and confident leader. If they move on, they often find new dramas to engage themselves with - thankfully - some move in to embrace more rationalist and truthful dangers.
Miller (1843) and Julia Smith: There was a massive furore emanating from William Miller and his followers, that the world would end on 1843 Jan 01. His expert and lifelong study of the scriptures was convincing, and one of the families that followed him were The Smith family. Julia Smith kept a diary, in French, for 32 years and her last entry is on 1842 Dec 31 amidst expectation of the cataclysm on the following day. However, nothing happened (as usual). She discontinued her diary entries and embarked on a new adventure: Disappointed with the incorrect calculation of the date by Miller, she set out to translate the Bible herself, starting by learning its languages. Her translation was published 33 years later in 1876 by the American Publishing Company, of Hartford.₁₁
Unfortunately, rather than turn around or admit their mistakes, some groups take to mass suicide in order to protect themselves against the embarrassments and confusion of failure - and, I think that subconsciously they all know that they are wrong, because all too often, these mass-suicide events are planned somewhat in advance.

6. Destructive Suicide Cults

6.1. Jim Jones' Peoples Temple: 276 Child Murders and Over 600 Adult Suicides

In 1978 over 900 people died when the People's Temple (frequently known as Jonestown) murdered their (276)₁₃ own children with poison. The rest of the community then followed suit, 200 of them killing themselves and shooting the others. The dead included 383 Americans₁₄. They had previously practised the suicide routine. Their leader shot himself. He was American Rev. James (Jim) Warren Jones, an ordained priest in the mainstream Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He had previously left the Methodist Church because they did not allow African-Americans to be members. Jones preached "an apocalyptic end of the world through race war, genocide and nuclear war. He maintained that he was the manifestation of the Christ principle and that he had the power to heal"₁₅. The sectarianism and religious extremism of the Christian community brought about its own isolation. Its religious ideals were not compatible with the demands of the practicalities of real life, and the group was fixated by a Bible-based fear of the end of civilisation. Conflicts led Jones to move the community to a remote part of Guyana in 1977, but a Congressman soon followed with two investigators, worried by the concerns of relatives of members of the cult, and the stories of defectors. The community murdered them in 1978, and the same night put their suicide plan into action.

6.2. The Sarin Gas Attacks in Japan, by Aum

The Aum cult were responsible for two sarin gas attacks in Japan. The cult believed that humanity was doomed from an imminent eruption of Mount Fuji, and that only their leader could save us all. Oh, and a UFO would save the members of the cult and take them to a different planet.

“Shoko Asahara based his teachings on a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism, Egyptian mysticism and New Age philosophies. [...] In 1989, he moved the main commune of cult members to Kamikuishiki in a remote country district near Mount Fuji. The following year he [...] issued a warning that Mount Fuji was about to erupt. He alone, he asserted, was in a position to save at least some of humanity and he prophesied that Aum members would be delivered by spaceship to a new civilization in some far-off galaxy before the day of Armageddon came in 1997. [...]
In June 1994, seven people died in the coastal city of Matsumoto after Sarin gas was released in the vicinity of an apartment building where three judges lived. These same judges were poised to rule on a lawsuit brought against Aum. From that moment it seems clear that Shoko Asahara intended to launch a full-scale guerrilla war on the Japanese civilian population. There was another Sarin gas attack, this time again the Tokyo subway system, on 20 March 1995. [...] In February 2004, Shoko Asahara was finally convicted and sentenced to death.”

"Cults: Secret Sects and Radical Religions" by Robert Schroëder (2007)₁₆

6.3. The Branch Davidians - 80 Died in the Waco Siege

Another American group, the Branch Davidians, also took on an increasingly them-and-us attitude. They started out with Biblical ideas about the cataclysms of judgement day, and ended up stockpiling weapons. It culminated with the Waco siege where over 80 of the religionists died during a shoot-out with authorities₁₇ in 1993. In 1935 they relocated to Waco, near Texas, under their leader Houteff's instructions.

“Florence Houteff then predicted that the beginning of the end was scheduled to commence in the spring of 1959. [...] When the apocalypse did not descend, many members became disillusioned and left. [...] In 1986, David Koresh - as Howell [a convert] came to be known - gained control of the commune and ruled it until the disastrous conflagration of April 1993. He introduced ideas of [...] violent resistance to outside authorities. [...] By 1993, the federal authorities were looking for justification to get inside the heavily armed camp of Mount Carmel after tip-offs that the cult possessed illegal firearms. On 28 February, 76 armed agents of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to storm the complex. [...] The assault was repelled and a stand-off ensued that lasted for 51 days and provided abundant and often lurid media fodder. During that time, the inhabitants of the commune appear to have remained steadfast in the belief that 150 years of Adventist history could not let them down - they truly believed they were God's chosen people.
[The siege was ended by two M60 tanks who allowed CS gas to be deployed by punching holes into the compound's walls.]
The remnant of the cult concluded that Koresh would return to earth on 13 December 1996 in some sort of apocalyptic event. [...] They relied on interpretation of a somewhat obscure prophecy contained in Daniel 8:14 that speaks of 2,300 days after which 'the sanctuary shall be cleansed'. When no cleansing actually took place, they re-calculated the dates and decided that matters would to a climax on 6 August 1999. Again, their world did not undergo a shattering transfiguration but undaunted they continue to meet in the expectation that on a date yet to be determined Koresh will reincarnate and lead them to some new Branch Davidian utopia.”

"Cults: Secret Sects and Radical Religions" by Robert Schroëder (2007)₁₈

The most confusing thing about these cults, and about religious leaders who continually predict the end of the world, is the way that their followers continue to have faith in them. It seems that the human spirit becomes almost infinitely malleable once a leader claims to have divinity on his side!

6.4. The Order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate

This section is taken from "Religion, Violence, Crime and Mass Suicide: 4.3. Rejection of the World and Mass Suicides: Order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate" by Vexen Crabtree (2009)

Mass suicide frequently punctuates the progression of self-isolating religious communities. They are nearly always associated with belief in another world that they can travel to after death - be it heaven or a paradise on Earth. They often do not see themselves as belonging to this world, and consider the whole world evil, and often think that there is about to be a great war, worldwide cataclysm, or, judgement day. These beliefs were strongly apparent in Jonestown, where Jim Jones led the Peoples Temple to murder their own children before mostly committing suicide themselves. They believed in an imminent apocalypse and Jim Jones had previously predicted when it would happen (it didn't). The Branch Davidians had similar, urgent beliefs, which is why they stockpiled weapons. The sources of strong life-denying beliefs have varied sources: one French New Age group, the Solar Temple, was steeped in new age beliefs and practices, complete with Rosicrucian, Knights Templar and other esoteric interests. 74 of them died, mostly by suicide in Switzerland and France, then Quebec, in 1994, 1995 and 1997₁₉. They believed that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent, and that they had to prepare for this. As with all such groups, they had issues with the real world, and in their farewell letters, they spoke of the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world"₂₀.
Heaven's Gate committed their final act of self-destruction when all 39 members killed themselves in San Diego, USA, in 1997. The leaders, Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, believed that "they were the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11"₂₁, and combined weird New Age beliefs with UFO theories and were committed to detaching themselves from this world through physical training and suppressing all emotions. Over time, they became more and more isolated, and in keeping with other religious groups discussed on this page, also embraced the idea of a final departure from this world and they sold all of their possessions. In the case of Heaven's Gate, when the Hale-Bopp comet approached, they decided it hid a spacecraft that they could enter by committing suicide. They would be reborn, according to New Testament lore, into physically perfect bodies₂₁. Clearly the group had little grasp of cosmology or physics and their spiritualist beliefs about travelling souls and an idealistic life overrode their common sense. The Skeptical Inquirer describes it in this entertaining manner:
“[They] committed mass suicide [so] their souls could travel to Heaven, Nirvana, or somewhere else, flying to this indefinable infinity in the company of hypothetical aliens in their physics-proof starship.”