A Short History of Predicting the End
A Date That Kept Being Set
Again and again in the history of the church, someone has worked out the date of the Lord's return or the end of the world, persuaded others to believe it, and watched the day pass like any other. The reckonings have come from dreams, from the days of creation, from the numbers in Daniel and Revelation, and from the turn of a round year. They have come from humble men and from learned ones, and the people who trusted them were often sincere believers who loved the Lord's appearing. Every one of those dates was wrong.
The reason was given long ago. The Lord Jesus answered the question of the date himself, on the Mount of Olives, a few days before the cross. His disciples had asked him when these things would be and what would be the sign of his coming, and after he had told them of the signs, he said plainly that the day itself was not given to anyone to know.
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Matthew 24:36
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Christians hold different readings of how the last things unfold, and those readings are set out in The Second Coming of Christ, The Rapture: Views and Interpretations and The Millennium: Views and Interpretations. None of that disagreement touches the question of the date, because every one of those views agrees on the verse above.
What the Lord Said About the Day and the Hour
Mark records the same saying with one more phrase: no man knows the day, nor the angels in heaven, "neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13:32). The Lord then drew the lesson at once. Because the time is not known, his disciples are to take heed, watch and pray (Mark 13:33). The uncertainty is part of the Lord's care for them. Matthew Henry, commenting on this passage, says of the Lord that "he has very wisely kept us at uncertainty, that we might all be always ready."
The disciples asked once more after the resurrection, on the day of the ascension, whether the kingdom would be restored to Israel at that time. The answer is the plainest word on the subject anywhere in Scripture.
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
Acts 1:7
KJV
The verse names two kinds of time. The first word, translated "times," is chronos1, a span or interval of time. The second, translated "seasons," is kairos2, a set or proper time, an occasion. Between them they cover both the length of the waiting and the moment it ends, and the Lord kept both in the Father's hand. He then gave the disciples their work instead: they would receive power when the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they would be his witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
Matthew Henry reads the rebuke as a caution meant for the church in every age. He writes: "It is folly to covet to be wise above what is written, and wisdom to be content to be no wiser." Hilary of Poitiers, writing in the fourth century on the saying in Matthew, saw the same mercy in it: "When Christ taught us that no one knows the day on which the end of time will come, not the angels and not even himself, he removed from us any need to be concerned about its date."
The First False Alarm Was in Thessalonica
The first recorded case of believers being told that the end had arrived is in the New Testament itself. Paul had taught the church at Thessalonica about the Lord's return, and in his first letter he reminded them that they had no need for him to write about the times and the seasons, because they knew perfectly well that the day of the Lord would come as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2). The same two words for time appear in that verse as in the Lord's answer in Acts.
Within a short time, someone had unsettled the church, whether by a claimed revelation, by a spoken word, or by a letter falsely carrying Paul's name. They were saying that the day of Christ was already at hand. Paul wrote again to steady them.
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
The word Paul uses for the Lord's "coming" in this passage is parousia3, a being near, an arrival or presence. Paul answered the alarm by reminding the church of what must come first, and of what he had already taught them in person. For the wider setting of the letter, see An Introduction to 2 Thessalonians.
Matthew Henry's commentary, whose notes on this letter were finished after his death by the ministers who completed his work, draws out why Paul took the error so seriously. The danger, it says, was that the Thessalonians, "upon finding that they, or others whom they too much regarded, were mistaken as to the time, should thereupon question the truth or certainty of the thing itself." It holds the two things apart with care: "Whatever uncertainty we are at, or whatever mistakes may arise about the time of his coming, his coming itself is certain."
The Same Mistake Through the Centuries
Two churches in the early third century
A commentary on Daniel written at Rome early in the third century gives two recent accounts of what date-setting did to ordinary congregations. In Syria, the leader of a church who had not carefully read the Scriptures persuaded many of the brethren, with their wives and children, to go out into the desert to meet Christ. They wandered in the mountains and on the roads until the local governor nearly had them all arrested and put to death as robbers. In Pontus, the leader of another church, a reverent and humble man who trusted his dreams more than the Scriptures, told his people that the judgment would come within a year. They prayed with weeping night and day. Farmers left their fields untilled and the wealthy got rid of their possessions. When the year passed and nothing happened, the leader was shamed, many of his people were scandalised, and some who had sold everything were later found begging.
The commentator's own conclusion was that these things happen to people who do not attend closely to the Scriptures. The Syrian brethren had gone looking for Christ in the desert, though the Lord had told his disciples in advance not to go out when anyone said he was there (Matthew 24:26).
Six days and six thousand years
A more learned kind of reckoning took hold in the same centuries. Several Christian writers of the second, third and fourth centuries reasoned from the six days of creation and from the saying, found in the Psalms and in Peter, that a thousand years are with the Lord as one day. They concluded that the world would run for six thousand years and that the seventh thousand would be a Sabbath rest. Some went on to place the birth of Christ about five and a half thousand years after creation, which left about five hundred years to go.
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
2 Peter 3:8
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Peter wrote that verse to explain why the Lord had not yet come, and to show that he is longsuffering and not willing that any should perish. Its purpose is to answer impatience, and it gives no key for counting the years. Augustine of Hippo said as much in his exposition of the ninetieth Psalm, which uses the same image of a thousand years as one day. He wrote that "men have ventured to assert their knowledge of times," and that "they allege that this period may be defined six thousand years, as of six days." The same Psalm, he pointed out, also likens a thousand years to a watch in the night, an expression that "ought to have warned them that they might not be deceived by the uncertainty of the seasons." And the date that this reckoning pointed to came and went fifteen centuries ago.
From the year 1000 to the year 1666
Round numbers have drawn the same hopes. Some in the churches of the West looked for the end as the thousandth year from Christ's birth approached, and again near the thousandth year from his passion, in 1033. Historians still disagree over how widespread that fear was, and for a long time many treated it as a later exaggeration, so it is fairest to say that some were stirred and leave it there.
In the thirteenth century many who followed the teaching of an Italian abbot reckoned that a new age would begin in 1260, taking the number from the 1,260 days of Revelation (Revelation 12:6). Processions of people whipping themselves in penance spread through the cities of Italy that year. In 1533 a pastor in Germany announced the day and the hour of the judgment, and some who believed him sold their goods and gathered to wait for a morning that passed like any other. In England more than a century later, some looked to 1666 because its last three digits matched the number of the beast; on that number, see The Meaning of 666 in Revelation.
America in 1843 and 1844
The best-documented case came in the nineteenth century. A movement in America read the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14 as years and concluded that Christ would return between March 1843 and March 1844. When that year passed, the date was moved to 22 October 1844. Tens of thousands believed it, and many more waited to see. When the day passed, most of those who had believed were left bitterly disillusioned, and the episode has been known ever since as the Great Disappointment.
| When | What was expected | What followed |
|---|---|---|
| The first century | Some at Thessalonica said the day of Christ was at hand | Paul wrote to correct them (2 Thessalonians 2:2) |
| Early third century | A church leader in Pontus foretold the judgment within a year | Fields left untilled; some who sold all were later begging |
| Second to fourth centuries | Six thousand years from creation, then the end | Augustine wrote against fixing the time from it |
| About 1000 and 1033 | Some looked for the end at a thousand years from Christ's birth or passion | Historians still debate how widely it was held |
| 1260 | A new age, reckoned from the 1,260 days of Revelation | Penitent processions across Italy; the age did not come |
| 1533 | A pastor in Germany named the day and the hour | Some of his hearers sold their goods, and the hour passed |
| 1666 | Some in England fixed on the year's three sixes | The year passed |
| 1843 and 1844 | Christ's return, reckoned from the 2,300 days of Daniel | The Great Disappointment of 22 October 1844 |
What the Failed Dates Left Behind
The harm followed the same course each time. Believers who had arranged their lives around a day were left embarrassed, poorer, and sometimes in doubt. The world outside the church saw a promise fail and concluded that the whole hope was foolish. Peter had foreseen exactly that response.
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2 Peter 3:3-4
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A failed date gives the scoffer his argument ready made, though the Lord never set the date that failed. Peter's answer to the scoffers is that the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, and that the delay is his longsuffering, giving time for repentance (2 Peter 3:9). On that chapter, see 2 Peter 3: The Day of the Lord Will Come Like a Thief.
In every one of these episodes the error lay in the date. The coming of Christ was never in question, and what failed each time was a human calculation of something the Lord had said would not be known.
Watch, Be Ready, and Occupy Till He Come
Scripture gives the waiting church work to do, and none of it requires knowing the date. The Lord's first instruction was to watch, and he gave the reason in the same breath: the hour is not known.
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
Matthew 24:42-44
KJV
The word translated "watch" is gregoreuo4, to keep awake, to be vigilant. A watchman does not need to know when the thief will come. His readiness is meant for every hour, which is exactly why the hour is withheld. Theophylact, a bishop who wrote on the Gospels around the year 1100, put it simply: "For it is never to our benefit to know the time of the end, lest we become lazy. Not knowing, we remain alert." One of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, the Didache, gave the churches the same charge: "be ye ready, for ye know not the hour in which our Lord cometh."
The parable of the ten virgins makes the same point from the other side. All ten slept while the bridegroom tarried, and the difference between the wise and the foolish was whether they had oil when the cry came at midnight. The Lord closed it by saying again that no one knows the day nor the hour (Matthew 25:13); see The Parable of the Ten Virgins.
Luke records that the Lord told another parable for exactly this reason. As he drew near to Jerusalem, his hearers thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear (Luke 19:11). So he told of a nobleman who went into a far country to receive a kingdom and return, and who left his servants money to trade with while he was away.
And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.
Luke 19:13
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The word "occupy" is pragmateuomai5, to busy oneself with, to trade. It occurs only in this verse of the New Testament. The servants were given work to do with what their master had left them, and no word of when he would return. The same lesson runs through the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, on which see The Parable of the Talents (or Minas).
The Hope That Purifies and Comforts
The true hope of Christ's return does what a date never could. A date excites people for a season and then leaves them empty, while the hope of seeing him changes how a believer lives in the meantime. John writes that we shall be like him when he appears, for we shall see him as he is.
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.
1 John 3:3
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The same hope comforts the grieving. After telling the Thessalonians that the dead in Christ will rise first and that the living will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord, Paul told them to comfort one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:18). And it keeps believers at work. At the end of his great chapter on the resurrection, Paul tells the church to be stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that their labour is not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58). The reading of last things set out in What the Bible Says About the End Times ends on the same three duties: holiness, watchfulness and the spreading of the gospel.
Even So, Come, Lord Jesus
The certainty of the Lord's coming and the hiddenness of its hour belong together, and Scripture gives both with the same authority. The angels at the ascension told the disciples that this same Jesus would come again in like manner as they had seen him go (Acts 1:11), and the Lord who said that no man knows the day is the same Lord who promised that he would come. A believer who trusts the promise has no need to know the date, and a believer who watches for him every day will never be caught by a day that someone else has set.
The last promise in the Bible is his, and the last prayer is the church's answer to it.
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22:20
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