President Bush and Religious Right

Christian Confusion On End-Times Nonsense

Christianity has never been immune from error in apocalyptic teachings that have continually led Christians astray. These errors of understanding have continually made a fool of Christian expectations, especially in this century.

These errors have become so rooted into much Christian thinking on the End Time as to constitute an effective delusion in the church that undermines the credibility of real biblical Christianity before the world!

Like it or not, the Second coming was a failed first century prophecy and just wont happen. With the events of September 11 the craze is on again. Will they continue to turn Jesus into a joke?

Note: There is some confusion of events starting around 1800. The Western World was deluged with pseudo-science, Eastern religion, prophecy, faith healing, speaking in tongues, and all kinds of other occult nonsense became a craze. The most lasting effects was the creation of scores of new cults, pseudo-Christian cults, New Age cults, and all types of apocalypse nonsense which had invaded many older Protestant denominations. Most of what makes up the religious right and New Age religion today (including Satanism cults) originated in the 19th century.

Below are more places to look into this. All of these kooks from 1800-1900 copied and stole from each other; you the reader can sort it out.

A Chronology of Confusion

220 more examples of prophecy.

1654: Archbishop Ussher of Armagh fixes the date of Creation as 4004 BC (26th October at 9 AM), and the End as 1997 AD (6000 AM of the Great Week) when the Millennium begins. He claimed to know when the earth was created (4004 BC) and is still quoted by fundamentalists today.

1774: Ann Lee (tongues-speaking Quaker) founds the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (Shakers) as the Millennial church in America (promoting celibacy). She declares herself to be the reincarnation of Christ and female aspect of God's dual nature. The Shakers win the admiration of many for their inventiveness (the circular saw, screw propeller, rotary harrow, etc.), model farms and their orderly prosperous communities.

1800: The Millennium does not arrive. New prophecy nuts come out in droves.

1802: Prophetess Joanna Southcott in England begins 'sealing' the '144 000' elect for the End. Her thousands of followers include some Anglican clergy.

1825: Britain's Rev Edward Irving predicts that Christ will return in 1864 (the Irvingites are the origin of the Catholic Apostolic Church, and today's New Apostolic Church. The Old Apostolic Church is a South African break-away from this group).

1826: Edward Irving begins his "school of the prophets" focusing on end time issues.

1829-1833: Edward Irving, Henry Drummond, and John Nelson Darby develop the 'pre-Tribulation Rapture' theory of Christ's Return. Darby (Plymouth Brethren) promotes the idea as part of a dispensational division of history. Through the Bible notes of a lawyer, C.I. Scofield, the Irving-Drummond-Darby 'pre-Tribulation Rapture' theory spreads among Christians to become the dominant End Time view in Christian circles in the 20th century.

1832: Latter Day Saints (Mormonism) founder, Joseph Smith of America, says:
"I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice repeat the following: Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter." (Doctrine & Covenants 130:14-15). 
Joseph Smith declared: "I prophesy in the name of the Lord God, and let it be written--the Son of Man will not come in the clouds of heaven till I am eighty-five years old." (History of the Church, Vol.5, pp.336-37).

1844: Joseph Smith dies without seeing the Lord's Return or his 85th birthday. 
March 21st: William Miller, encouraged by some clergy, calculates this date as Christ's Return. It fails and is recalculated as - 
October 22nd: The Return of Christ predicted by Miller's Adventists (numbering about 100 000) fails again.

1845: The 'Seventh-day' Adventist movement, helped by Mrs Ellen G White as prophetess, develops the doctrine of the 'mark of the Beast' as Sunday-worship by a papal Antichrist in explanation of Christ's so-called 'delayed' Return.

1864: Rev. Edward Irving's predicted Return of Christ fails. (See 1825).

1888: In France, General Boulanger is denounced by an un-named prophet from England as the Antichrist, claiming that his name in Greek has the numeric value of 666, and pedicts that Christ will return at 3 PM on March 5 that year.

1889: Rev. Michael Baxter, editor of the Christian Herald, announces in his book The End of This Age about the End of This Century that 1896 would witness the Rapture of 144 000 devout Christians, and that the world would end in 1901.

1896: Baxter's Rapture does not happen. (See 1889).

1901: Baxter's Millennium does not come. (See 1889).

1914: Jehovah's Witnesses' predicted return of Christ fails, but they now change their teaching to an invisible Coming known only to true believers.

1917: May 13th: Three small children claim to have seen the Virgin Mary standing in an oak tree. On the 13th of each subsequent month until October crowds gather to see the vision but only the children claim to see her. They also claim that three prophecies are given, two revealed and a third kept secret in the Vatican.

1959 April 22nd: hundreds of 'Davidians' (a break-away Seventh-day Adventist sect) at their 77 acre compound at Waco, Texas, await the Return of Christ, watched by a large crowd and the media. The expectation is broadcast across the United States - and fails. (See 1993, February 28th).

1965 July: self-styled prophet, William Branham, declares in response to California earthquake: "The Scripture reader or even a--a believer knows that we are now at the end of the history of the world. There will be no use of writing it, because there won't be anybody to read it. It's at the end of the time. ..."

1973: Hal Lindsey publishes in his best-selling book 'Late Great Planet Earth' that there will be only one generation between Israel's new statehood and the End Time. Although he does not state the date he provides many of the arguments upon which the date 1988 is based.

April: Rev. David Wilkerson claims a supernatural vision of imminent world-wide disaster of unprecedented proportions, economic collapse, famine, earthquakes, etc., in 'this generation', leading to Christ's sudden evacuation of Christians and the rise of Antichrist. 'More than one-third of the United States will be designated a disaster area within the next few years'. 

Roman Catholic Sister Agnes Katsuko at Akito, Japan, receives a message from the Virgin Mary, saying 'Father God will inflict a punishment greater than the Deluge ... Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, sparing neither priests nor the faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.' In anticipation of the year 2000. (TW Petrisko, Call of the Ages, Queenship, 1995, p.xxi)

1978 November 18th: 'Disciple's of Christ' church, 'Peoples Temple', Jonestown, Guyana, conducts a mass suicide of its 900 members (one third were under 18 years and so some probably murdered) because of a Federal investigation (they practiced suicide procedures several times over the years as a sign of loyalty to the church). Pastor Jim Jones had warned his followers that a disastrous period of fascism, race war, and nuclear holocaust was coming. In the year of the suicide 'Peoples Temple' was the highest contributing church to their denomination.

Edgar Whisenant 1980s (former NASA engineer) publishes his book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. 
Hal Lindsey (of 'The Late Great Planet Earth') writes concerning the so-called 'Jupiter Effect' - 'what we can expect in 1982 is the largest outbreak of killer quakes ever seen in the history of planet earth along with radical changes in climate'.

Hal Lindsey's 'Jupiter Effect' prediction fails. Should have seen Pat Robertson quoting this nut on TV!

1988 Charles Taylor, American prophecy teacher, advertises a Holy Land tour with the incentive that by staying in a hotel on the Mount of Olives, 'if this is the year of our Lord's return, as we anticipate, you may even ascend to Glory from within a few feet of His ascension.' 
September 11/12 is expected as the date of the Rapture by Trinity Broadcasting Network, who cancel their regular programs and run videotapes instructing non-believers what to do if their families suddenly shoot up into the sky. 
September 29/30 is published by Hart Armstrong (chairman of 'Christian Communications') as a Rapture Alert date in his publications. 

October: Return of Christ as predicted by many Christian evangelicals fails (40 years (a 'generation') + 1948 (Israel's statehood) = 1988). 

Christian evangelist George Curle predicts God's judgement on Antichrist in 1999, the Tribulation in 2002, and Christ's Return and the millennium of Israel in 2005: 'the third Exodus for Israel and believing Gentiles will be accomplished in 2005 AD'.