Slightly Delayed Apocalypses
Every time the calendar rolls over to a nice round number people start to worry that the end of the world is coming. The theory is that God is getting old, and is ready to end it all, and if there's one thing God likes, it the double zero. (And we thought sure he'd go for the triple zero. What is he waiting for?)
These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.
And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
Selections from Revelation 11
And then, every century, like clockwork, the world doesn't end. We're all sorry for a few days, but we quickly get back into the dull routine of daily living. By the time Gaia gets her act together and creates the disaster we've all been waiting for, we've forgotten what's going on, and are surprised by the completely unexpected chaos we'de all been talking about just 15 years before.
If we can learn anything concerning what is before us, from the language of prophecy, great calamities, such as the world has never yet experienced, will precede that happy state of things, in which the "kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ."
That the second coming of Christ will be coincident with the millennium... is evident from what Peter said, in his address to the Jews, on the occasion of his healing the lame man at the gate of the temple, Acts 3:19.
Joseph Priestley, 1794
There was a lot going on. The Reign of Terror in France, unrest in Britain, the Papal dominions were divided into ten parts, moral decrepitude in all quarters... We could be forgiven for thinking the world was going to end. But on January 1st, 1800, nothing much happened. Well, that is to say that everything kept happening, but that was all. No four horsemen, no flaming swords, no nothing. Just the same old milling mass of violent and immoral humanity we've always had to deal with.
Of course, if we really wanted a sign of the apocalypse, we couldn't have found one much better than the eruption of Tambora. The biggest volcanic eruption of the last 10,000 years, it killed at least 100,000 people with its explosion and the resulting tsunamis. Unfortunately, the volcano was late, not exploding until 1815, and far away, way out in Indonesia. It barely made the papers in Britain and America. But 1816 didn't have a summer. The particles the volcano had spewed into the air caused a year-long winter (the year of Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death). Crops couldn't grow, animals couldn't eat, and many people couldn't eat either. Unusually harsh storms caused flooding, and there was an unfortunately timed typhoid epidemic. Thankfully, the spring and summer of 1817 came as scheduled, and the world recovered. (Although the typhoid epidemic was still going strong through 1917).
NOV. 13, 1900
In czarist Russia, a district called Kargopol (about 400 mi. from St. Petersburg) contained a 200-year-old secret sect which called itself the Brothers and Sisters of Red Death. Believing the end of the world was to be Nov. 13 (Nov. 1 Old Style), 862 members of the cult thought it would please God if they all sacrificed their lives by locking themselves in their homes and setting them on fire. When news of the threatened suicides reached St. Petersburg, troops were rushed out to Kargopol, but by the time they arrived, more than 100 members had already perished. The rest were prevented from committing suicide, and when the appointed day passed without catastrophe, the sect disbanded.
The People's Almanac
America actually got their disaster -- the Great Galveston Hurricane smashed into Galveston, Texas killing over 10,000 people. China had fun too -- the Boxer Rebellion took off and then collapsed. Not a bad start, but the rest of the world was pretty quiet, and overall things seemed okay.
But the six years from 1914 to 1920 were some of the busiest years in world history. World War I killed 10 million people, and wounded another 20 million, and was surely the biggest war one could ever imagine (right?). And then, when we all thought things could get no worse, the Spanish Flu killed at least 40 million people, and maybe as many as 100 million people. How is that for war and plague? Had anyone thought to predict 1918 as the end of the world, they would have gained a good bit of credibility, even without The Rapture.
In the year 2000, a disturbing number of people were predicting the end of the world as we know it. Y2K was going to be the year that things fell apart for sure, even if God didn't get involved. Power, phones, banks, they were all going to go down. There would be riots and looting, and we would need to stockpile food, water, generators, gasoline, and guns. 2000 was the Biggest Fizzle Yet.
We have about a decade to go before things really blow up, but this time we've at least caught on. It might be the Yellowstone Supervolcano, or a meteorite, with attendant global cooling (the 1815 eruption only caused a 1.5 degree Fahrenheit global cooling; a meteor could do ten times that, or worse). Most likely it will be global warming, flooding from melting ice sheets, and the acidification of the oceans. Of course, it could be the flu again; we have next to no defense against major new mutations in the flu virus. And with antibiotics becoming more and more useless as bacteria mutate to survive them, we could have an epidemic of literally anything. We're all set for the biggest disaster since the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
It'll be an exciting time to be alive -- briefly.