Why Do People Like to Set Dates for the Apocalypse?

And why do they tend to set The End in the very near future?

I’ve been reading and researching and reading (and probably not enough writing) for a book I hope to put out one day on right and wrong responses to the Apocalypse.  At this rate, The End might come before publication.

Anyway, I was showing a curious student some of the more amusing past interpretations of the Book of Revelation that I’ve found, and he had a simple but very good question: When it comes to the Second Coming and other events of The End, why do people so like to set dates?

I had been so focused on the details of past prognostications and interpretations, that his question caught me short.  He asked me a forest question when I had been focusing on trees.  So I had to think a minute.  I gave him a good answer if I may say so.  But there was different good answer that did not occur to me until later.

That good answer that I wished I had given is that the heart of the Christian yearns — or should yearn — for Jesus to return and establish his kingdom.  We see that in the next to the last verse of the Bible: “He which testifieth these things saith, “Surely I come quickly.” Amen! Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Then there’s that odd 2 Peter 3:12, which says we should be “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” (ESV)  That verse has long been a head scratcher for me.  It sounds like we should be doing things to manipulate the Lord to hurry up and come already.  And back in the days when I listened to Christian radio for laughs — I was an irreverent youth even after my conversion — I heard preachers sound just like that.  Trying to wheedle or bribe the Lord to “hasten” him to return more quickly seems rather presumptuous.  But maybe that’s just me.

Fortunately there are better interpretations.  One I recently heard is that our attitude toward the Second Coming should be like that of children toward Christmas.  Kids get so eager for Christmas, it almost hurts.  And if they could make Christmas come sooner by an act of the will, they would.  Lord knows many of them try.  It’s as if they are hastening Christmas.  That’s how eager we should be for Jesus to return.

But we can allow good attitudes to warp into bad ones.  There’s nothing wrong with a kid being eager about Christmas.  It’s good actually.  But if a kid whines and begs to open presents a week before Christmas, that is not so good.

Well, if we allow our good eagerness for Christ’s return to give us an excuse to disregard Jesus stating that “it is not for you to know times or seasons” and that “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Acts 1:7, Luke 12:39), that is not good either.  And that disregard has in history resulted in any number of episodes in date setting.

And the eagerness for Christ’s return is one reason said date setting usually has the End of Age and/or the Second Coming in the near future. The followers of Joachim of Fiore and perhaps Joachim himself were convinced the End of the Age would occur by 1260.  William Miller had Jesus returning in 1844.  Then was the Great Disappointment because he and most of his followers were still alive to see he was wrong.  Edgar C. Whisenant wrote 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988 not 2188.  Harold Camping’s billboards scattered across the land in 2011 had The End occurring in . . . 2011.  (To his credit, he later apologized.)

Many who have studied and written on what Scripture teaches on The End allow their findings to confirm their wishes.  They rightly yearn for the soon return of Christ, so that influences their studies to just happen to find that, yes, He is indeed returning in our lifetimes.  Even brilliant and reputable scholars, such as Beatus of Liébana of the 8th century and Edward Irving of the 19th, have fallen into this.

So, yes, yearning for Jesus to return soon, even in our lifetimes, is a good attitude as reflected in Scripture.  But even the best of yearnings can lead to unwise and even destructive acts, such as setting dates for His return. I say destructive because any number of lives through history fell apart because of conviction that Christ was returning at such and such a time.  I hope to write on that sad subject another time.

So to avoid our faith and lives becoming shipwreck, we must remember Jesus’ admonition that it is not for us to know when He is returning.  We must not only remember it but obey by not setting dates for His return or paying undue attention to those who do set dates.

But there is another reason why people do so set dates, the reason I gave the inquisitive student.  But that will have to wait for another post.

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image: from a fresco of Joachim of Fiore.