What with all the scary things going on these days–AIDS, global warming, Michael Jackson–you don’t need to invent problems to raise your blood pressure high enough to power a fire hose. Yet polls show five to ten million Americans aren’t satisfied with the varied menu of real disasters the world so generously offers them. So they’re waiting for the end of the world.
Bethel members and the Goers seem harmless and well-meaning. “I been on TV 15 years and never asked for any money,” says Bishop McCollough. “We’re not Jim Jones, we’re the true church. You can see we’re still here–nobody’s been killed,” he chuckles. But as Jim Jones and David Koresh (among others) have proven, some followers can go much farther than selling a few possessions to settle debts before the end, as some Bethel members have reportedly done. Or spending their retirement nest egg on newspaper ads, as the Goers are doing. When a South Korean fundamentalist church predicted the Rapture for October 28, 1992, one woman reportedly had an abortion–because the fetus’s extra weight might have weighed her down during the expected ascension to heaven.
Divine hindsight: None recorded.
Divine hindsight: Stoeffler and Iggleheim had little chance to explain. When it rained that day, the unfortunate count was crushed under a presumably general-admission mob intent on boarding his ark. When the rain failed to engulf the world, Stoeffler was allegedly tossed in a pond by a disappointed rabble.
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Prophet: William Miller
Divine hindsight: None recorded. October 22 became “the Disappointment,” and the Millerites became the Seventh-Day Adventists.
Divine hindsight: According to a Witnesses leader, Russell came down to breakfast on October 2, “briskly clapped his hands and happily announced: ‘The Gentile times have ended.’” Russell explained that Christ had battled Satan successfully and set up his millennial kingdom, but had done so in heaven where no one else could see it.
