Greek Icon, Second Coming
(Note: This is part 2 of a 4-part article series: Read Part 1: Failed Predictions of Jesus' Second Coming: The Early Christian Thessalonians in End-Time Excitement
Christianity has a long history of failed predictions of Jesus' coming, failed predictions of the Rapture and Judgment Day. Disappointments at expectation of Jesus' Coming in Church history are sufficient to warn Christians that their most cherished religious hope might after all be mistaken. But what is remarkable about Christian belief in the Jesus' coming is its apparent immunity to negative feedback blows of reality in the form of repeated failure of predictions. While the culture of date-setting for the return of the Lord began in the second century A.D.(as far as the records show), Christians have, since the first century A.D., been hoping in the second coming of the "Lord" (the first century Christians had not, as far as we know, actually set a date for the "return of the Lord" but had been convinced that the "Day of Lord" would come in their generation).
The motto of the Christian Church of the first century A.D. was "Maranatha!" (Our Lord Cometh!). After the incident of excitement over expectation of Judgment Day in the Thessalonian Church of early Apostolic times, history records that Ignatius Bishop of Antioch, early in the second century, raised hopes and expectations when he declared authoritatively and urgently that "The last days are come upon us." Prior to his declaration, Christians had been thrown into feverish expectation of the "coming of the Lord" in the reign of the half-mad Nero who many were convinced was the Antichrist himself; then, again, in the reign of the Emperor Domitian who unleashed vicious persecution on the Christian church.
The first major apocalyptic movement in the post-Apostolic history of Christianity was, probably, the Montanist movement founded by Montanus of Phrygia. The Montanists were a crisis cult (as all millenarian cults are) which arose in a time of horrible persecution of the Christian church between 156-172 A.D. Montanus, supported by the charismatic prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla, proclaimed that Jesus would return about 156 A.D. They also predicted that the New Jerusalem from which Jesus would rule the world for one thousand years would not be Jerusalem but Phrygia.
The Montanists caused a great deal of confusion, excitement and unrest among Christians. They preached extreme asceticism, pronounced a ban on marriage and encouraged Christians to provoke persecution as way of showing their commitment to Christ. After repeated failure of their date-setting prophecies and also because of the widespread disruption their prophecies caused the lives of Christians many of whom abandoned their secular responsibilities in anticipation of Judgment Day, the church excommunicated the Montanist leaders, and the movement died out after the death of Maximilla in 179 A.D. Maximilla had predicted that the end would come soon after her death.
The period before the beginning of the second millennium A.D., that is, the two centuries after the death of Charlemagne (768-814 A.D.), was one of the most unstable periods in the history of Western Europe. The instability and insecurity was due mostly to the murderous and destructive raids of the Vikings ("from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us," became a prayer refrain in Christian churches all over Europe during this period). And as if the fury of the Northmen was not sufficient, a new wave of fierce nomads burst into Europe from the east; the Magyars, kinsmen of the terrible Huns. The Magyars carried out constant fierce raids deep into central Europe burning towns and villages, killing the men and capturing the women who they marched away tied together in gangs. While the Magyars were pillaging deep into central Europe, Muslim pirates were harassing people of the coastal settlements of southern France and Italy. Western Europe was vulnerable to raids in this period because it was the period of decline of the power of the French and German states after the death of Charlemagne who had welded them into a strong Holy Roman Empire.
Poor helpless Europeans, crazed with fear, went raving hysterical. Mass hysteria spread like wildfire and every sort of bizarre portent ever reported in human history were seen in broad-day light: comets, blood downpours, dragons appeared every day in the skies and celestial serpents and devils were as common-place as sheep grazing on the fields (Halley's comet appeared over Europe in 989 A.D.). The church authorities joined in the mass hysteria. The Ecumenical Council sitting in 999 came to the conclusion that the happenings were evidence that God had had enough of the sinful world of humans and that he would end the world on January 1, 1000 A.D. That was the signal for mass madness. On the last day of the year, St. Peter's in Rome was filled to the brim with a crazed seething mass of people, weeping, trembling, screaming in fear of Judgment Day. Prophets told the people that God would send fire from heaven and burn the world to smoldering ashes. Many rich and wealthy people gave away their possessions to the poor to make it to heaven. They dressed up in sackcloth and poured ashes over themselves. The grounds of St. Peter's on new year's eve was filled with people vying to outdo each other in acts of penance: self-mortification, self-mutilation and flagellation. Some branded their skins with hot iron to prove their repentance; some were actually beaten to death by overzealous penance partners.The Pope Sylvester II was said to have trembled visibly in fear as he conducted mass, with his voice trembling and barely audible.
But new year came and passed and nothing happened.
Read Part 3: Failed Predictions of Jesus' Second Coming: The Black Death, Columbus and Nostradamus (1000 A.D.-1600 A.D.)
JohnThomas Didymus is the author of "Confessions of God: The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus"
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