People have been predicting the end of the world ever since Homo sapiens were bright enough or dumb enough to risk making forecasts. End of the world predictions have always been popular.
Why?
Because it’s impossible to contemplate the beginning of anything birth, creation without agonizing over its end: death, annihilation.
We would not die if we were not born. In the end is the beginning, Eliot suggests.
Will the world end with whimper or a bang?
Will it end in fire or ice?
Poets love to contemplate The End.
End of world predictions have always been a major aspect of religions. Sin, and you don’t get it into the utopian afterlife. To keep you from sinning today, you’re told the end of the world is tomorrow.
So often has the end of the world been forecast, and with such certainty, it brings to mind Aesop’s fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. So numerous were his false cries that when real danger threatened no one paid attention.
The Sky Is Falling!
Children’s first encounter with the end of the world is in the fairy tale cry The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Uttered by Henny Penny, a hen who has been hit on the head by a falling object, she alerts friends Cocky Locky, Ducky Daddles, Goosey Posey, and Turkey Lurkey. The gaggle of doomsayers race to warn the king. Along the way they met Foxy Woxy, who invites them to take a shortcut to the palace through his lair. The world did end for the hen, cock, duck, goose, and turkey.
In the early 1980s, evangelist Pat Robertson discussed with the staff of his 700 Club how best to televise Christ’s Second Coming - only months away. The Lord, warned Robertson, “has had it up to here. The hour of his wrath has come. If I’m hearing him right, it’s going to be bloodshed, war, revolution and trouble.
For the ancient Romans, who believed in numerology and associated numbers with letters, the end of their empire was coded in the name ‘Rome.’ Rho (value 100) + Omega (800) + Mu (40) + Eta (8). Sum total: 948 years. Since they marked the founding of Rome in 753 B.C., it had to collapse in 195 A.D. (753 + 195 = 948.) and take with it the rest of humankind.
The year 1666 was much feared throughout Western Europe because of its triple sixes, ‘666,’ the Number of the Beast. Satan’s area code. Of course the world did not end but the city of London almost did when it was nearly destroyed by the Great Fire.
The end of the world is nothing to laugh at. In the 16th century, a German astronomer and preacher predicted that a great deluge would sink humankind in 1524. Saturn, Mars and Jupiter, he calculated, were in the sign of Pisces. His terrified parishioners built scores of rafts and one enormous ark. Due to a drought that year, the ark couldn’t be launched, rafts stuck on mud flats, and parishioners tried to drown the reverend in a shallow pond.
There’s less reason to laugh over the Millerites of the 1840s. Farmer and fundamentalist Protestant William Miller, of upstate New York, foresaw The End in an Old Testament passage: And he said to me, two thousand and three hundreds days; then will the sanctuary be cleansed (Daniel 8:14).
Miller alerted friends: I am fully convinced that sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of computation of time, Christ will come, and bring all his Saints with Him. The world and its sinners would be destroyed. For the righteous, there would be a Great Assumption, body and soul.
Miller acquired thousands of followers. When the deadline for the Apocalypse passed, he rescheduled it. He had to reschedule it several times. Each time he lost followers. Not only through disbelief; through catastrophe.
People climbed trees and leaped into the air for Christ to catch them and carry them to heaven. Several leaped off the roofs of their homes hoping to be assumed, according to accounts of the times. One man strapped feathered turkey wings to his back and tried to fly to heaven only to fall from a tree top and break his arm. The only assumption was their own.
999 A.D.
Years that end in zeros have always been a favorite with doomsayers. 200. 600. 800. For every such benchmark there is documentation of end of world predictions - followed afterwards by relief for some, disappointment for others. This is especially true for the year 1000. As 999 changed to 1000, the transition begged dire forecasts.
A full millennium after Christ’s birth struck many Europeans as the appropriate time for God to destroy all he had created. God, for many, kept time by the ticking of millennia.
Where you lived in Europe, determined how you regarded The End. In the Germanic and Slavic lands of the north, people thought the earth would spontaneously burst into a giant ball of fire, without warning. People in Mediterranean counties thought they would get a warning from the trumpeting of Gabriel’s horn. Time to repent. Then fire.
As the year 999 neared its end, mass hysteria gripped Europe. So we are told by later accounts of the period. Peoples’ behavior was altered by the specter of impending doom. Men forgave borrowers debts. Poachers offered replacement pheasants to Lords of manors. Husband and wives confessed infidelities. In the final weeks of the year, commerce between towns and cities came to a halt. Why worry about food or farming equipment when you would soon be fired to a cinder.
If you were a sinner, that is. The just would enter Paradise, but how just did you have to be to get in? No one was certain.
Generosity abounded. Since hoarding wealth would be frowned upon at the Final Judgement, the rich fed and clothed the poor. As the beatitude called for. The shamefully rich gave away cherished heirlooms to be saved. “If a man asks for your cloak,” advised one preacher, “give him your shoes also.”
Criminal were released from stockades. Executions cancelled. Churches, monasteries and convents were besieged by crowds demanding confession, absolution, counsel.
One of the most colorful descriptions of the panic of 999 was given by 19th century writer Charles MacKay, who composed a classic work on mass hysteria. MacKay wrote:
The scene of the last judgement was expected to be at Jerusalem. In the year 999, the number of pilgrims proceeding eastward, to await the Coming of the Lord in that city, was so great that they were compared to a marching army. Most of them sold their goods and possessions before they quitted Europe, and lived upon the proceeds in the Hold Land.
Buildings of every sort were suffered to fall into ruins. It was thought useless to repair them, with the end of the world so near. Many noble edifices were deliberately pulled down. Knights, citizens, and serfs traveled eastwards in company, taking with them their wives and children, singing psalms as they went, and looking with fearful eyes upon the sky, which they expected each minute to open, to let the Son of God descend in his glory.
Every phenomenon of nature filled them with alarm. A thunderstorm sent them all upon their knees in mid march. It was the opinion that the thunder was the Voice of God, announcing the Day of Judgement.
Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of terror. Every shooting star furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the sublimity of the approaching judgement was the principle topic.
By December, 999, groups of flagellants roamed the countryside scourging each other. They congregated in market places where they left trails of blood. A wave of suicides erupted as people sought to punish themselves prior to Doomsday. Or they could not bear the anxiety of waiting to be judged.
Christmas day, 999, passed with an unprecedented outpouring of piety and love. It was the last Christmas the world would celebrate. Families renewed bonds of love, and young lovers remained continually in each other’s embrace.
After Christmas day, the countdown really began.
Farm animals were freed. Bakeries and town markets gave away entire inventories. The sick and dying, in hospitals and convents, begged to be placed outdoors to witness Christ’s descent.
Midnight Mass:
In Rome on the evening of December 31, the immense Basilica of St. Peter’s overflowed with worshipers for midnight mass. Earth’s last mass.
A dramatic account of the incident is described in The Story of Human Life, by Frederick H. Hartens. Believe what you wish. Hartens himself missed the event by some nine hundred years:
Pope Sylvester II stood before the high altar. The church was overcrowded, all in it lay on their knees. The silence was so great that the rustling of the Pope’s white sleeves as he moved about the altar could be heard. And there was still another sound. It was a sound that seemed to measure out the last minutes of the earth’s thousand years of existence since the coming of Christ! It echoed in the ears of those present as the pulse-beat does in the ears of a man with a fever, and its beat was loud and regular and never stopped. For the door of the church sacristy stood open, and what the audience heard was the regular, uninterrupted tick, tick, tock of the great clock which hung within, one tick for every passing second.
The Pope was a man of iron will-power, calm and collected. He had probably left the sacristy door open purposely, in order to secure the greatest amount of effect at this great moment. Though his face was pale as death with excitement, he did not move nor did his hands tremble.
The midnight mass had been said, and a deathly silence fell. The audience waited. Pope Sylvester said not a word. He seemed lost in prayer, his hands raised to the sky. The clock kept on ticking. A long sigh came from the people, but nothing happened. Like children afraid of the dark, all those in the church lay with their faces to the ground, and did not venture to look up. The sweat of terror ran from many an icy brow, and knees and feet which had fallen asleep lost all feeling.
Then, suddenly the clock stopped ticking!
Among the congregation the beginning of a scream of terror began to form in many a throat. And, stricken dead by fear, several bodies dropped heavily on the stone floor.
Then the clock began to strike. It struck one, two, three, four. It struck twelve. The twelfth stroke echoed out, and deathly silence still reigned!
Then it was that Pope Sylvester turned around, and with the proud smile of a victor stretched out his hands in blessing over the heads of those who filled the church. And at the same moment all the bells in the tower began to peal out a glad and jubilant chime, and from the organ-loft sounded a chorus of joyous voices, young and older, a little uncertain at first, perhaps, but growing clearer and firmer moment by moment. They sang the Te Deum Laudamus ‘Thee, God, we praise!’
The whole congregation united their voices with those of the choir. Yet it was some time before cramped backs could be straightened out, and before people recovered from the dreadful sight offered by those who had died of fright. When the Te Deum had been sung, men and women fell in each other’s arms, laughing and crying and exchanging the kiss of peace. Thus ended the thousandth year after the birth of Christ.
And ended without the destruction of the world.
Most likely the second millennium will also end without the destruction of creation. In 1999, or 2000, depending on when you choose to mark the occasion, the dread is not the fiery Day of Judgement. It’s the Y2K problem. Planes fall from the sky. Elevators plummet. Hospital respirators stop dead. National economies collapse. Worldwide anarchy!
If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Fatima Prediction
Perhaps the world is about to end.
The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three children at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Mary imparted a secret message to the children, which was written down by Church officials and has been kept under lock and key at the Vatican ever since. In accordance with the Virgin’s request, the letter was reportedly opened in 1960 by Pope John XXIII. He read it, fainted, then ordered it resealed.
What did it say?
Few people knew then or know now. The most common story is that the letter predicts a fiery end of the world. When? During the term of the fifth pope after the letter was first opened. Soon.
Since the letter was opened in 1960, there have been, including John XXIII, four popes; the other three being Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II, who is pope at the time I am writing these words. Each pontiff has read the letter, and is said to have gasped and ordered it resealed. No pope has revealed the message because the Church fears, it is said, that the doomsday forecast might lead to physical and spiritual anarchy. People sink into profound depression. Some commit suicide. Others pillage, plunder, and generally pleasure themselves, choosing to live out their final days in one mad last fling.
The Virgin’s prediction is to be realized during the term of the next pope. If, in the year 2000, the current pope dies – and he is a sickly man – the new pope would be number five, and the fiery end of the world could, conveniently, coincide with the millennial end. That might please many disaster mongers, who would probably give a farewell shout of I told you so! I, for one, wish John Paul II a long life indeed.
In this millennial edition of The Browser’s Book of Endings, a bookend to my The Browser’s Book of Beginnings, I present a gallery of assorted endings. Famous people’s last words. The bequests and behests of dying Presidents. The stories behind America’s most famous cemeteries. The gory history of capital punishment - crucifixion to beheading to lethal injection. The planet’s great mass extinctions - dinosaurs to dodos. Virulent diseases that have decimated human populations - bubonic plague to malaria to AIDS. Horrific medical practices that were once routine and are now, thankfully, history. Plus scores of biographies on the final agonies and ecstasies of history’s most celebrated, and notorious, men and women: The Buddha, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Casanova, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Beethoven, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Edison, Calamity Jane and Jesse James, to name a few.
Dare I say it?
The End.
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