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In Matthew 24, 36, Jesus said that no one knows the hour or the day of his return. But that hasn't stopped scores of false teachers trying to say they've figured it out, or that God has revealed it specifically to them.
Today we're going to look at some of the most notorious. And be reminded, once again, only God knows the last day when we understand the text.
Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt .com.
Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. Another failed prediction has come and gone, as Mark Blitz, considered the father of the whole four blood moons thing, said September 28th was the day of the rapture. John Hagee didn't exactly say that, but he was captured enough by Blitz's four blood moons prophecy to write a best-selling book and make people think these eclipses have something to do with the end times.
In Matthew 24, Jesus said,. We also have a reference to a moon that turns to blood in Joel 2 .31, Acts 2 .20, which is repeating Joel 2 .31, and in Revelation 6 .12. But the sun and moon are often references to kings and kingdoms throughout the scriptures.
One thing I can tell you for certain is that these passages are definitely not talking about an eclipse. We're talking about something that is fully consuming, affecting even the heavens. It is not a natural occurrence marked by natural signs.
The end will be something supernatural. Over the past 2 ,000 years, numerous false teachers, both men and women, have claimed to know when Christ was going to return or when God would judge the world.
We're going to take down 15 of the most notorious. But first, an example from the Bible. One of the earliest examples that we have of someone failing to predict the return of Christ is something that happened to the Thessalonian Christians in the first century.
We don't know exactly who the perpetrator was, but the Thessalonians were given the impression that Christ had already returned, and they missed it. This prompted Paul to write in 2 Thessalonians 2, beginning right at the start of the chapter,.
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. God sent them a strong delusion, so they would believe what is false, and those who did not believe the truth would be condemned, because their pleasure was in unrighteousness.
That is key. Those who follow in false teachings have been deluded. They chased the delusion because they loved sin. False teaching is a judgment for those who love unrighteousness. And throughout history, we have multiple examples of these false and failed attempts at predicting the return of Christ.
These false teachings were successful only in being deceptive. In the mid -2nd century, between 135 and 177 AD, a man by the name of Montanus called for openness to the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit.
If that sounds familiar, some theologians and historians say Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement in the New Apostolic Reformation, can be traced back to Montanism, which continued into the 6th century.
Montanus had two women disciples, Priscia and Maximilla, whose popularity exceeded even his. Together, they were called the Three, and they claimed the Holy Spirit spoke through them. Tertullian wrote that they believed their teachings fulfilled and superseded what was proclaimed by the apostles.
Montanus said Jesus would return during the lifetime of those three members. In the 16th century, some from among the Anabaptists believed that Christ's millennial reign would begin in 1533. They claimed that the two witnesses that are talked about in Revelation 11 were Enoch and Elijah, and they had come in the form of Jan Mathis and Jan Brockelsen, also known as John of Leiden, two Anabaptist leaders who were going to set up the New Jerusalem in Münster, Germany.
The two expelled all Catholics and Lutherans from the city, but Mathis died while fighting against a Catholic-supported army, and Brockelsen became king of Münster until its fall in June of 1535, when he was captured.
On January 26, 1536, he was tortured and then executed in Münster. So much for the New Jerusalem. In 1771, Roman Catholic Bishop Charles Walmesley, also known as Signor Pastorini, 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.
Dare I say our titles for today's publications aren't nearly long enough. Pastorini said that the fifth stage of the church was a duration of 300 years that began with the Protestant Reformation in 1520 or 1525.
By 1825, Protestantism would be overthrown, God would destroy the Anglican churches, and the Roman Catholic Church would stand triumphant. In 1823, Pastor Fido published a refutation called Pastorini Proved to be a Bad Prophet and a Worst Divine.
Joseph Smith, whom you know as the founder of Mormonism, met with his church leaders in February of 1835 and made an ambiguous statement about Christ's return. He said Jesus appeared to him and said that if he lives to be 85, he would see the face of the Son of Man.
So Smith said Christ wouldn't return until at least 1891. But I guess Jesus didn't come back because Smith didn't live to be 85. He died in 1844 at the age of 38. There were many failed predictions of Christ's return in the 19th century, but the biggest of which would probably have to be William Miller's.
Why do I say it's the biggest? Because it got its own name, The Great Disappointment. Miller claimed that Christ would return in 1844, and many of his followers gave away their possessions, believing that he was right.
He had this huge time chart showing how he'd mathematically come to his conclusion that Christ was coming back between March 21st of 1843 and March 21st of 1844. After the latter date came and went, Miller still kept many of his followers.
So he changed the date to April 18th, based on a different Jewish calendar instead of the rabbinic calendar. When that date came and went, another follower, using Miller's same calculations, changed the date to October 22nd, 1844.
Some Millerites abandoned his teachings, but others refused to admit Miller was wrong and started the Seventh-Day Adventists. In true Millerite fashion, the Seventh-Day Adventists have had a host of failed prophecies.
One of its founding members, L. N. G. White, backed Miller's end-of-the-world prophecy in 1844 and used his same method to predict the end of the world, and she came up with a different date in 1851.
She would blame her failed prophecies on the Seventh-Day Adventist church, saying that if they had been united upon the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our history.
Not surprisingly, the Jehovah's Witnesses have a notorious history of false prophecies. Over 20 published and failed predictions regarding the end of the world. Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, predicted 1874 would be the year of Christ's second coming.
He refused to admit he was wrong and claimed Christ did come back, but he was invisible. He predicted the rapture would be in 1878 and the Day of Wrath would come in 1914. A Watchtower Society publication predicted in 1917 that God would begin to destroy churches and millions of their members in the next year.
J. F. Rutherford, who followed Russell as president of the Watchtower Society, predicted the millennial reign of Christ would begin in 1925 and that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David would be resurrected as princes.
Various other Jehovah's Witness publications predicted Armageddon would come in 1975. In 1974, Witnesses were commended for selling their homes and property, setting up yet another great disappointment.
Back to the 19th century now, there's a famous case involving Klaus Epp, Jr., a Mennonite minister who led a group of 60 families into Central Asia where he predicted Christ would return on March 8, 1889.
When that date came and went, he said the original date was based on a leaning clock, so his new prediction became March 8, 1891. After that date came and went, Epp became eccentric and declared himself to be Christ's son.
His congregation dwindled, but he still maintained a following until his death in 1913. Never was able to find out, though, if he was still claiming to be Christ's son all the way up to his death. During World War I, the Weekly Evangel, a publication put out by the Assemblies of God Church, predicted that Christ would come before the present war closes and before Armageddon.
Before the war ended in 1918, an edition came out on April 10, 1917 that changed the prediction, saying the end of the world would be no later than 1935. In 1970, Hal Lindsay published what is perhaps the most popular book on end times, The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold 28 million copies by the year 1990 and was made into a movie narrated by Orson Welles.
In the book, Lindsay predicted Christ would come back in 1988. When that year grew closer and Lindsay started to doubt that the end of the world was going to happen then, he changed his date and said, I feel certain that it will take place before the year 2000.
To this day, Lindsay is still consulted as a prophecy expert. He's still pastor of his church. He hosted a program on TBN and occasionally has articles popping up in places like World Net Daily, where he said that Barack Obama was paving the way for the Antichrist.
In 1978, Chuck Smith predicted that the generation of 1948 would be the last generation and that the rapture would occur in 1981, starting the seven year period of tribulation. His church, Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, held a New Year's Eve service at the end of 1981 to wait for the end to come, according to Smith's prediction.
When that didn't happen, many followers left Calvary Chapel, though it still remains to this day. Smith passed away in 2013. In 1980, Pat Robertson, yes, host of The 700 Club, in fact, he said it on his television program, that Armageddon and the end of the world would occur by 1982.
When asked on the show why he thought that, he chuckled and said, because the Bible says so. He also reported that the Bible says Russia would invade Israel, but he quoted no scripture to qualify any of this.
In his 1990 book, The New Millennium, Robertson predicted April 29, 2007 as the day of the Earth's destruction. For some reason, he's still the host of The 700 Club. On December 31, 1989, which was a Sunday, Benny Hinn was at the Orlando Christian Center when he went into a kind of trance and gave, in real time, what he claimed to be visions from God of what would happen in the 90s.
He predicted the total collapse of the American economy and said that the East Coast would be ravaged by earthquakes, a woman would be elected president, Fidel Castro would die in office, a short-man dictator would arise, the rapture of the church would occur, and the homosexual community in America would be destroyed by fire no later than 1995.
He also said that Jesus would physically appear ahead of the rapture at many Benny Hinn events overseas, and all of that was supposed to happen within a decade. Of course, none of it did, which I constantly have to wonder why he still has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people that follow him and are fooled into what is obviously a charlatan's ministry.
Jerry Falwell said he foresaw God pouring out his judgment on the world on January 1, 2000. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, author of the Left Behind series, stated they thought the Y2K bug would trigger global economic chaos, which the Antichrist would use to rise to power and incorporate a one-world currency.
As the date drew closer, Jenkins and LaHaye changed their minds about that. January 1, 2000 was the source of a number of failed prophecies, which I'm sure that you probably know of. I chuckled at it.
I was in high school in the 90s when all of these prophecies about January 1, 2000 were coming out, that something apocalyptic was going to happen in particular on that date. Even as a high school student, I thought that was really ridiculous to be predicting.
If anything world-ending was going to happen, it was not going to be December 31, 1999 or January 1, 2000. Why even as a high school student did I think that that was going to be the case? Because I knew that the calendar was not based on the exact date of Christ's birth.
When the Gregorian calendar was figured out, Jesus had been born sometime between 4 and 6 BC, so it wasn't even accurate to the time of his birth. Therefore, January 1, 2000 could not have been any kind of significant date related to the birth of Christ.
It's just a nice round number, but it is not exactly 2 ,000 years from the moment of Christ's birth. That's why I just thought that was just totally ridiculous to think that something chaotic was going to happen.
Now, the Y2K bug was probably a legitimate concern, but that it had anything to do with something apocalyptic, yeah, it just was not going to be that day for sure. May 21, 2011 is a day that will live in infamy.
Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, had previously failed to predict the end of the world in 1994, but he came up with a new prediction. May 21 was going to be the day. May 21, 2011. And then five months of fire and brimstone and plagues would rain upon the earth until the end of the world on October 21, when all non-believers would be dead.
Family Radio spent over $100 million on the information campaign, with billboards going up all over the world. Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired transportation worker in New York, spent $140 ,000 of his savings on advertisements warning about the end of the world.
Believing false teaching can be pretty costly, folks. It's cost people their lives, and it's cost people a lot of money. When the day came and went, Camping said that Christ did return, but it was spiritual, and that His return and the end of the world would occur simultaneously on October 31.
In March of 2012, Camping said that his attempt to predict a date was sinful, and that his critics were right to reference Matthew 24 -36, of that day and hour knoweth no man. He repented and said he was now searching his Bible, not to find dates, but to be more faithful in understanding the Word of God.
Mark Blitz has been teaching that Christ's return would be September 28, 2015, and based it on the lunar eclipse. His theories became known as the Blood Moon Prophecy and were latched onto by John Hagee.
Now, Hagee has stopped short of saying that Christ would return on this exact date. He keeps saying something big is going to happen, but Hagee has been leading people astray with apocalypse preaching for some time.
He previously suggested that 2012 would be the end of the world. Now, he didn't exactly say that the year 2012 would be the end of the world. He was just playing off of the hype because of the whole Mayan calendar thing.
But he made people think that's what he was saying, only instead of using the expiration of the Mayan calendar, he incorporated quack Bible prophecy, all with his spin on it, of course. And all the while, he was writing a book about the Four Blood Moons, which would be published the following year.
It really doesn't matter that Hagee doesn't claim to know exactly when Jesus is coming back. He makes people think that's what he's saying, and he's making a lot of money off of it. Four Blood Moons went from being a best-selling book into being made into a ridiculous and extremely boring documentary.
I couldn't even finish it. I mean, I was trying to watch the whole thing so I could do a review on my blog, like I've done of some of these ridiculous films. I could not finish Four Blood Moons. It was bad.
It dragged. It was terrible. It had no gospel in it whatsoever. It was just an absolutely ridiculous piece of work. It's garbage. And those who believe in it are following a delusion. As the Apostle Paul talked about in 2 Thessalonians 2.
Now, get ready because years ago, alleged psychic Gene Dixon, who died in 1997, predicted that the end of the world would be in 2020. That would be the year of Armageddon and the year that Christ would return.
I would not be surprised to find out that somebody is trying to revive her predictions and making a buck off of that. So maybe within the next five years, we're going to hear something about Gene Dixon's brouhaha.
Of course, there's always going to be someone somewhere predicting the end of the world. Will there ever really be a year that goes by where someone didn't say that year was going to be the one where the world would end?
But here's the one thing to remember. Jesus said in Matthew 24 36 and Mark 13 32 that no one knows the hour or the day. We know they're a false teacher because they claim they know. Either God revealed it to them or they did some kind of Bible calculation in this huge timeline and using numerology to figure all of this out.
They're lying. No one knows. Only God knows. Do not let yourself be swayed by false prophets and false teachers, whether they're teaching about four blood moons or they're teaching you that God doesn't care whether or not you go to church.
Know the scriptures. Entrust yourself to godly men who fear God and his word. Hebrews 10 24 and 25 says, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
It is drawing near. Christ will return. He has promised us that he will. In the meantime, let us remain faithful to his teachings. Being found as faithful servants for when that day of the Lord comes.
Jesus said Matthew 24 beginning in verse 45, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master is set over his household to give them their food at the proper time. Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.
Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards.
The master of that servant will come at a day when he does not expect him. And at an hour he does not know and he will cut him into pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The apostle Peter said, second Peter chapter three. This is now the second letter that I am writing to you beloved. And in both of them, I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.
Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
For they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. And that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact beloved, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises. Some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
That sound like something natural? Sounds like something supernatural to me. Peter goes on in verse 11, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?
Waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Our gracious heavenly Father, we thank you so much for these words. Continue to shape us by them and hold us in your promises. Looking forward to the hope of that day when we know, as is promised, Christ will return.
In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Predicting the end of the world can mean big money, especially when those predictions involve the Bible. But despite some of the more popular biblical interpretations, the end will not be revealed in red or blue moons, or signs on billboards, or encoded in random Bible passages, or in best-selling books, or in a financial collapse, or in Shemitah of goblins, or whatever that was called, or in what's happening to Israel in the Middle East.
Jesus said there will be wars and rumors of wars. Nation would rise against nation and there would be famines and earthquakes in various places. But this is not the end. So what will be the signs of the last days?
Well, Jesus went on to say that false Christs and false prophets would arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. The Apostle Paul said, Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
Peter said scoffers would come in the last days, following their own sinful desires. And John said many antichrists have come, so we know it is the last hour. So what we should be looking out for is not a red moon or a Shemitah, it's false teachers, when we understand the text.
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When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. We feature dozens of videos covering a variety of biblical topics on our website, www .utt .com. Many of those videos are only 90 seconds long and address subjects like the gospel, collection, the trinity, end times, discipline, the church, and much more.
All of these videos are free, available for ministry use. Again, our website is www .utt .com. And while you're there, send us an email and let us know what this ministry has meant to you. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you again Becky.
I just wanted to address you as a listener and thank you for listening to this broadcast. If it was not for the number of listeners that we have, we would not keep this going on a daily basis. We were not expecting the regularity of listenership that we have acquired.
And so we are certainly blessed. And thank you for listening and also letting others know about the biblical teaching that we do on this program. I'm letting you know here that I need to take a break.
It's only going to be for a week, but there will not be daily programs provided for you this week. We're going to resume on Tuesday of next week and we'll start in the book of Colossians. So thank you for giving me time to be able to catch up with everything and hope you will join us again as we continue our study of God's Word so we might become better worshipers of God when we understand the text.