Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Will the world end before Christmas?



The Mayans say that the world will end on the 21st of December this year. There have been a number of failed predictions about the end of the world though which makes the Mayan doomsday schedule just one of those things that some people like to talk about. 



Montanus, who claimed he is the embodiment of the Holy Spirit said that the end of times were near. The word “near” is relative of course.

Before year 1000, many went out of their way to go to Jerusalem hoping to be saved because a rumormonger –a good one at that- said the world will end in the year 1000. The world didn’t end in 1000 of course –we are still here.

Charles Wesley of the Methodist Church


Methodist church founder Charles Wesley believed that the world was to end in 1794 while his brother claimed that the Great Beast would arrive in 1836 and that this event will cause the world to end. The brothers Wesley were wrong.

Jehovah’s Witness and The End of Days

Jehovah’s Witness –a religion, is probably the biggest fan of the end of the world because they predicted that the world will come to an end in 1914 and when it didn’t they said it would be in 1915. They released the same prediction three years later then the same prediction for 1920, and yet another in 1925. They also predicted that the world will end in 1941 –it did not of course but the group did not stop –they said the world will end in 1975 and when that didn’t happen, they waited for almost two decades to release the same prediction. Old habits never die it seems.



Joanna Southcott, Servant Woman’s Box

Joanna Southcott, a self-proclaimed mystic believed that she will give birth to the Messiah and when she does, the world will end. Southcott said at the time of her prediction that she’s due on October 19, 1814 –she was 64. While this would have been a milestone in medical history in terms of pregnancies in old women, historians believe that Joanna was never pregnant.  

So the day came and went and the world did not end. Two months later however, it did end –for Joanna at least. When she died two months after October of 1814, Joanna’s followers said that the mystic left a sealed box that should only be opened when 24 Anglican Bishops gather together to open it.

William Miller and the Great Disappointment


William Miller founded the Millerite movement which later on became known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. According to Miller, Jesus Christ was scheduled to come to earth between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. The schedule was not followed by Jesus Christ though and Miller died waiting.

What do the Seventh-day Adventist Church say about this? They say that Miller’s prediction was correct but the event did not happen on earth but in heaven.

Haley’s Comet, Planetary Conjunction, The Jupiter Effect, Hale-Bopp, and Y2K

Science made a grave mistake in 1910 when they thought that Haley’s comet will come with a poisonous gas that year. Nine years later, a respected meteorologist named Albert Porta said that the conjunction of six planets will puncture the sun which would then lead to a series of explosions. When Porta released this information to the public, mob violence followed while some committed suicide. Porta lost his job. Thankfully he got another job later on. Porta became a weather columnist.

The Jupiter Effect was a theory written by two astrophysicists –Stephen Plagemann and John Gribben. They said that the aligning of the planets in our solar system will cause major natural disasters. No major catastrophe happened but the tide was 0.04 mm higher than normal. The tide was high but we held on



Hale-Bopp, a comet, dreamt of being the “star” when it appeared visible to the naked eye for 18 months. An amateur astronomer stole the show though and said that he saw another object following the comet. 

Chuck Shramek, the astronomer, promptly called a radio show to release his “findings”. 

Although Shramek’s intention was not to cause any type of commotion, the Heaven’s Gate cult believed that the object following the comet was the spaceship that would pick them up from earth so that they could go back to their original home. The cult committed mass suicide in early 1997. No one knows where their supposed home is since mankind has been looking for an alien race for decades. A Facebook post has confirmed though that aliens do exist [see below].



By the year 1999, many feared that Nostradamus’ end of days prediction would happen. Many read into Nostradamus’ words and assumed that the King of Terror will descend on the earth killing everything and everyone in it –the King of Terror being the Cassini probe as interpreted by Nostradamus fans.


Nostradamus, a pharmacist, probably inhaled a few things to see the future. Nostradamus’ drug use aside, many say that some of his predictions were quite accurate but the one in 1999 was definitely just something he dreamt up. The year came and went and the probe did not descend.

Doomsayers never tire of this end of the world issue though and just a year later, some people were scrambling to prepare for Y2K.

The whole hoopla about the Mayan prediction was incensed when documentaries about it were shown on television and many a gurus from the world over started writing guidelines on how to perform an out-of-body experience to remove oneself from all the destruction that will happen to the whole of the earth when D-Day comes.

A few years back, stories about the Planet Nibiru came about even if the story of Nibiru is more like another installation of the movie Alien Vs. Predator. But because this is such an interesting subject I started digging –not literally of course because a lot of resources are needed in such an activity. I chanced upon a book called Hercolubus/Nibiru written by Zecharia Sitchin. Sitchin,  who passed away in 2010, said in many of his works that human origins involved ancient astronauts –specifically ancient astronauts from the Anunnaki alien race. The Anunnaki come from the planet Nibiru – a planet which Sitchin believes is a part of our solar system but traverses elliptically –the very reason why we’ve never seen it. 



He associates what happened to Noah, his ark, and the pairs of animals that surprisingly entered the ark without hesitation to a close encounter of the planet Nibiru. Sitchin said that Nibiru will come near Earth again.

I got to have a copy of the book in 2009, a year before Sitchin’s death and I remember reading a note by Sitchin himself that the book will be sent to anywhere in the world –to anyone who wants to learn more about Nibiru for free because his wish is for all of us to survive the destruction that Nibiru will cause. 

Curious, I gave his office my home address and a week later, I got mail straight from Spain. The  book is interesting but as one would expect, the ideas of the Azerbaijani-born author were rejected by the academe; describing his work as a mishmash of pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

Just the other day, some people on the social networking site Facebook started posting about the end of the world. No one really knows when the world will end though but if scientists are right this time, there might be major changes –so major these changes can include obliterating you or me or the person you do not like or the person you really like from the face of the earth.
Whichever the case, you can choose your plan of action –prepare your bucket list and do all that before the 21st of December or prepare a doomsday survival kit or just go on with your life.

One last note though, the Mayans predicted the end of the world but never saw the Spanish coming.

Article written by: Sigrid Salucop