This article lists Christian religious predictions that failed to come about in the specified time frame, listed by religious group.
Adventism, Millerism Adventism has its roots in the teachings of the Baptist preacher William Miller. He first predicted that the Second Advent of Christ would occur before March 21, 1844.William Miller to Joshua V. Himes, February 4, 1844. When that date passed he revised his prediction to April 18, 1844.George R. Knight, Millennial Fever and the End of the World, Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 1993, pp. 163–164. After that date also passed, another Millerite, Samuel S. Snow, derived the date of October 22, 1844.Samuel S. Snow, The Advent Herald, August 21, 1844, p. 20. The failure of those predictions has been named the Millerite Great Disappointment.
On May 27, 1856, Ellen G. White, prophet of the Seventh-day Adventist church, wrote: "I was shown the company present at the Conference, Said the angel: 'Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.'"Testimonies for the Church, Volume 1, pp. 131, 132. Pacific Press Publishing Assoc., Mountain View, California. A newborn attendee at that conference would have been 100 years old in 1956. "As more and more of the conference attendees died off, the faithful became increasingly excited about soon seeing Jesus. Fifty-four years after the prophecy, they made a check-off list of attendees to show who was still alive and who was deceased—because it was prophesied that Jesus would return while some of them were still alive."
Anabaptist Church Certain Anabaptists of the early 16th century believed that the Millennium would occur in 1533.When Prophecy Fails, Festinger, Riecken and Schaeter, p. 7. Another source reports: "When the prophecy failed, the Anabaptists became more zealous and claimed that two witnesses (Enoch and Elijah) had come in the form of Jan Matthys and Jan Bockelson; they would set up the New Jerusalem in Münster. Münster became a frightening dictatorship under Bockelson's control. Although all Lutherans and Catholics were expelled from that city, the millennium never came."Soothsayers Of The Second Advent, William Alnor, p. 57.
Anglican Church In volume II of The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, author Leroy Edwin Froom wrote about a prominent Anglican prelate, who predicted:The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, pp. 417, 419.Edwin Sandys (1519–1588), Archbishop of York and Primate of England was born in Lancashire... Sandys says, "Now, as we know not the day and time, so let us be assured that this coming of the Lord is near. He is not slack, as we do count slackness. That it is at hand, it may be probably gathered out of the Scriptures in diverse places. The signs mentioned by Christ in the Gospel which should be the foreshewers of this terrible day, are almost all fulfilled."
Assemblies of God Church During World War I, The Weekly Evangel, an official publication of the Assemblies of God, predicted: "We are not yet in the Armageddon struggle proper, but at its commencement, and it may be, if students of prophecy read the signs aright, that Christ will come before the present war closes, and before Armageddon...The war preliminary to Armageddon, it seems, has commenced."April 10, 1917 edition, p. 3. Other editions speculated that the end would come no later than 1934 or 1935.May 13, 1916, pp. 6–9, etc.
Calvary Chapel The founder of the Calvary Chapel system, Chuck Smith, published the book End Times in 1979. On the jacket of his book, Smith is called a "well known Bible scholar and prophecy teacher". In the book he wrote:
The pastor Hal Lindsey published the same view in his book, The Late Great Planet Earth.see p. 43
Catholic Church From 1516, Catholic preachers were forbidden by the Fifth Council of the Lateran Session 11 from apocalyptic preaching with specific or general dates: preachers must not "presume to preach or declare a fixed time for future evils, the coming of antichrist or the precise day of judgment; for Truth says, it is not for us to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority." Public preaching should be limited to "only what the people who flock to their sermons will find useful, by means of reflection and practical application, for rooting out vices, praising virtues and saving the souls of the faithful." In contrast, "in Lutheran Germany, scholars continued to reckon the date of Doomsday throughout the latter part of the [16th] century, thereby contributing to a heightened sense of urgency."
In 1771, Bishop Charles Walmesley (under the pen name "Signor Pastorini""Signior" is the spelling used in the book (see pp. iii and following of the third edition).) published his "General History of the Christian Church from Her Birth to Her Final Triumphant State in Heaven Chiefly Deduced from the Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist". In it he described a fifth age of the Church as a duration of 300 years, beginning with the Protestant Reformation in 1520 or 1525. This was widely interpreted as predicting the downfall of Protestantism by 1825. Four years later, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 ended the process of Catholic Emancipation throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Edward Irving
The Scottish cleric Edward Irving was the forerunner of the Catholic Apostolic Church.Flegg, C. G. Gathered under Apostles. 1992. Oxford University Press In 1828 he wrote a work entitled The Last Days: A Discourse on the Evil Character of These Our Times, Proving Them to be the 'Perilous Times' and the 'Last Days. He believed that the world had already entered the "last days":
Family Radio
Harold Camping, who was then president of Family Radio, stated that the rapture and Judgement Day would occur on May 21, 2011, and claimed the Bible as his source. He suggested it would happen at 6 p.m. local time with the rapture sweeping the world time zone by time zone. Following the failure of that prediction, Camping stated that the physical rapture would occur on October 21, 2011.
Latter Day Saints
Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, made dozens of prophecies during his lifetime, many of which are recorded in the sacred texts of the Mormon faith. The prophecies included purported predictions of the Civil War, the second coming of Jesus, and several less significant predictions. Church apologists cite prophecies that they claim came true, and church critics cite prophecies that they claim did not come true.
Lutheran Church Michael Stiefel predicted the end of the world in 1533 and consequently lost his position as minister. He was given another position by Philip Melanchthon.Thorndike, pp. 392–393. *Lynn Thorndike, in a chapter "The Circle of Melanchthon" in his multi-volume History of Magic and Experimental Science. It appears as Chapter XVII in what Google Books has as Part 9, but that is from a paperback edition not respecting the original structure of 8 volumes.
One later writer noted, "In all of [Martin Luther's] work there was a sense of urgency for the time was short... the world was heading for Armageddon in the war with the Turk."Luther's View of Church History, John M. Headley, Yale University Press, 1963, pp. 13, 14.
Even after Luther's death in 1546, Lutheran leaders maintained the claim of the nearness of the end. About the year 1584, a Lutheran named Adam Nachenmoser wrote the volume in which he predicted: "In 1590 the Gospel would be preached to all nations and a wonderful unity would be achieved. The last days would then be close at hand." Nachenmoser offered numerous conjectures about the date; 1635 seemed most likely.Prophecy and Gnosis – Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Protestant Reformation, Robin Bruce Barnes, p. 64.
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod issued a study in 1989 refuting any end times claims, declaring that "repeatedly taught by Jesus and the apostles is the truth that the exact hour of Christ's coming remains hidden in the secret counsels of God ( 24:36)".The "End Times": A Study on Eschatology and Millennialism. A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. September 1989
Mennonites Russian Mennonite minister Claas Epp, Jr. predicted that Christ would return on March 8, 1889, which was subsequently revised to 1891.Bartsch, Franz and Richard D. Thiessen. Epp, Claas (1838–1913). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. April 2005. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 3 November 2006.
Montanists Montanus, who founded the Montanist movement in 156 AD, predicted that Jesus would return during the lifetime of the group's founding members.
Presbyterian Church Thomas Brightman, who lived from 1562 to 1607, has been called "one of the fathers of Presbyterianism in England." He predicted that "between 1650 and 1695 would see the conversion of the many Jews and a revival of their nation in Palestine...the destruction of the Papacy...the marriage of the Lamb and his wife."A Great Expectation – Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 by Bryan W. Ball and E. J. Brill, p. 117.
Christopher Love, who lived from 1618 to 1651, predicted that Babylon would fall in 1758, God's anger against the wicked would be demonstrated in 1759, and a worldwide earthquake would occur in 1763.The Logic of Millennial Thought by James West Davidson, p. 200.
Watch Tower Society
Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Watch Tower Society, calculated 1874 as the year of Christ's Second Coming, and taught that Christ was invisibly present and ruling from the heavens since that year."The writer, among many others now interested, was sound asleep, in profound ignorance of the cry, etc., until 1876, when being awakened he trimmed his lamp (for it is still very early in the morning.) It showed him clearly that the Bridegroom had come and that he is living "in the days of the Son of Man." Russell explained how he accepted the idea of an invisible return of Christ from N.H. Barbour in "Harvest Gatherings and Siftings" in the July 15, 1906 Watch Tower, Reprints p. 3822.The Three Worlds and The Harvest of This World by N.H. Barbour and C.T. Russell (1877). Text available online at: http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/contents/history/3worlds.pdf Scan of book in PDF format Russell proclaimed Christ's invisible return in 1874,The Three Worlds, p. 175 the resurrection of the saints in 1875,The Three Worlds, pp. 104–108 and predicted the end of the "harvest" and the Rapture of the saints to heaven for 1878,See pp. 68, 89–93, 124, 125–126, 143 of The Three Worlds. and the final end of "the day of wrath" in 1914.The year 1914 was seen as the final end of the "day of wrath": "...the 'times of the Gentiles,' reach from B.C. 606 to A.D. 1914, or forty years beyond 1874. And the time of trouble, conquest of the nations, and events connected with the day of wrath, have only ample time, during the balance of this forty years, for their fulfillment." The Three Worlds, p. 189. 1874 was considered the end of 6,000 years of human history and the beginning of judgment by Christ.In 1935, the idea that the 6,000 years ran out in 1874 was moved forward 100 years. . A 1917 Watch Tower Society publication predicted that in 1918, God would begin to destroy churches and millions of their members.Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. 7, 1917, p. 485, "In the year 1918, when God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by the millions, it shall be that any that escape shall come to the works of Pastor Russell."