WWUTT Wednesday - The End Is Near!

What do the Christadelphians, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Mormons, and Pat Robertson have in common (besides the obvious)? To these people the second coming of Christ has come and gone without anyone noticing. In some cases it was rescheduled but the predicted apocalypse was again a non-event.

The Christadelphians had some very interesting predictions. Their founder, Dr. John Thomas, predicted that the end times would start in 1866 with the resurrection of the prophet Daniel and come to a climax in 1911. Robert Roberts who took over after John Thomas' death went one better than Dr. John claiming that Christ would return in 1910. Charles P. Wauchope of Adelaide, South Australia noticed the complete lack of Christ's return in 1910 and 1911 and predicted Christ got delayed, but would be back in 1934 dressed in the tattered robe of a beggar and thief and come quietly into the British headquarters where he would establish His Kingdom. Again He failed to uphold their predictions. Their latest prediction would be Christ's return in 1988, and there's been no update to that.

Charles T. Russell founded the Jehovah's Witnesses and they STILL use the date that Russell set  as the second coming: 1914. When Christ didn't come, Russell claimed he was right, but that Christ came invisibly! Up until about 1996, Jehovah's Witnesses continued to teach that the world would end within one generation after 1914 AD. Even the May 15, 1984 Watchtower magazine echoed this false prediction. Like all cults and date setters, they quietly stopped making the prediction based upon one generation after 1914 and keep going door to door with their ever changing lies and deceptions.

William Miller, after several years of very careful study of his Bible, concluded that God's chosen time to destroy the world would be some time between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When Christ didn't show, they moved the 'due date' to October 22, 1844 and again Jesus didn't return.  O. J. D. Pickands used Revelation 14:14-16 to teach that Christ was now sitting on a white cloud, and must be prayed down. Eventually Millers followers gave up and became the Quakers, the Shakers, and the Seventh Day Adventists.

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, called a meeting of his church leaders in February 1835 to tell them that he had spoken to God recently, and during their conversation he learned that Jesus would return within the next 56 years, after which the End Times would begin promptly. Fifty Six years put the end of the world shortly after Joseph's 85th birthday. This leaves us with two options, A) whoever told Joseph Smith this fibbed, or B) when Joseph Smith died in 1844 God cancelled the whole plan. I'm going with Option A.

In late 1976, Robertson predicted that the end of the world was coming in October or November 1982. In a May 1980 broadcast of The 700 Club he stated, "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world."(source) In September 2011, Robertson and several others who incorrectly predicted various dates for the end of world were jointly awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations"

There are literally tens of thousands of predictions of Christ's return, and all of them are wrong. We can look at these examples and chuckle, shake our heads, wonder why these denominations still exist, and say "How could they buy that?" Seriously? Go to any "Christian" book store and you'll see people you thought were solid Christians snagging similar stuff off the shelves as fast as the shelves can be stocked. There is one sign of the impending return of Christ that is being missed Christ gave it to us Himself and it's pretty obvious: