You’ve heard them all. Barack Obama is: a Muslim, a socialist, a communist, the anti-Christ and a Kenyan. And, as Fox News has repeatedly noted, Obama hates white people/America/Christmas/Israel and puppies. All this while ‘Barry’ pals around with terrorists and plots to take away your guns and bibles in his fervent attempt to usurp the Constitution and impose sharia law on America.
Michele Bachmann, determined to keep her ‘I’m a Total Idiot’ status all the way through to her own end time in Congress, proposes a new anti-Obama, made-up piece of nonsense to add to the mix. E.A. Blair explains.
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On the 5 October broadcast of the Christian radio show Understanding the Times our favorite batshit crazy member of congress lied about the President again by saying that “Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition. Your listeners, U.S. taxpayers, are now paying to give arms to terrorists including Al-Qaeda.”
Of course this is a lie. What the President actually did was let the U.S. Government “…provide or license, where appropriate, certain non-lethal assistance inside or related to Syria.”
However, ol’ Charlie Manson Eyes can’t, as usual, handle the truth. She let the lie roll on and on, laced with Christian gobbledegook:
“This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists. Now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s End Times history. Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”
Apparently the Representative of Vaccine Hysteria forgets the words of Genesis 9:11: “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” In other words, Yahweh ain’t gonna do no more what he did to Noah. That’s also why the first nine generations of the bible never saw a rainbow.
So now Bachmann has become an eschatologist (for those of you who are not theologically inclined, eschatology is the religious study of the end of the world), and claims that Obama is leading us into the end times. I guess she hasn’t heard that all good and true Christians are supposed to want the End Times, and to do everything they can to bring them about (this is the religious rationale for supporting Israel). Instead of hating President Obama, she should be supporting him.
Bachmann is in fine company. Thousands of people have predicted the end of the world, and sometimes, people actually paid attention and wrote these predictions down. Fortunately, these would-be prophets are about as right as Republicans when it comes to the future. I just looked out my front door, and, providing reality is not purely subjective, none of them have come true so far. I wonder what makes Bachmann think she can do any better than her predecessors. A partial list is given for your consideration (My source is Wikipedia; the snark is mine). I leave it as an exercise for the reader to pick the most plausible one.
634 BCE – Romans feared the city would be destroyed in the year 120 AUC. The first known round number prediction.
389 BCE – Romans again feared that the city would be destroyed in the year 365 AUC. Doomsayers also like the number 365.
33 CE – Jesus tells his Apostles that the End will come “within their lifetimes”. Since that didn’t happen, how true can the rest of the New Testament be?
66 CE – Essene Jews saw revolt against Rome as the end times battle.
365 – Hilary of Poitiers also bases his prediction on the number of days in a year.
400 – Martin of Tours says that the Antichrist had already been born. Someone should have told him that wouldn’t happen until 4 August 1961.
500 – Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus and Irenaeus expects the end of the world on a round number (reinforcing a habit).
793 – Spanish Monk Beatus of Liébana says Christ will return on 6 April.
800 – Sextus Julius Africanus revises his date of 500 to 800, sticking with round numbers.
799–806 – Gregory of Tours calculates a date between 799 and 806. History records that he could never balance his checkbook, either.
992–995 – Various Christians decide that since Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation happen on the same day, something bad is going to happen, like when payday is on a Friday the 13th.
1000 – Pope Sylvester II expects the end of the world on a really nice round number.
1033 – Since the world didn’t end 1000 years after Christ was born, various Christians figures it would end 1000 years after his death.
1186 – John of Toledo predicts the end times based on astrology (a practice forbidden by the church and the Bible).
1260 – Joachim of Fiore says that the Millenium would begin sometime between 1200 and 1260. His descendants all now hold jobs scheduling cable TV installation appointments.
1284 – Pope Not-so-Innocent III predicts the end 666 years after the rise of Islam. 666 will come back to haunt doomsayers.
1290 – Joachim of Fiore’s followers, preparing for their hereditary careers, reschedule doomsday to 1290…and 1335.
1335 – Joachim of Fiore’s prediction fails again.
1346-1351 – Black Plague: still not the end – unless your immune system isn’t up to snuff.
1370 – Jean de Roquetaillade says that the Antichrist is already here and the Millennium would begin in 1368 or 1370. The Joachimites were jealous.
1378 – Arnaldus de Villa Nova: another Joachimite who doesn’t do any better than his leader.
1504 – Sandro Botticelli believes the end times have already begun, and that the Millennium would come along sooner or later. God must not have been paying attention.
1524 Feb 20 – London astrologers predict a second Great Flood on 1 February, apparently forgetting Genesis 9:11 (and the biblical prohibition against forecasting the future). 20,000 Londoners leave town and King Henry VIII takes the opportunity to expand the palace grounds over the now-vacant lots.
1524 Feb 20 – Astrologer Johannes Stöffler predicts the end on the basis of a planetary alignment in Pisces. It turned out to be a bit fishy.
1524–1526 – Thomas Müntzer says that these years are the start of the Millennium. His followers were killed by government troops and he was tortured and beheaded, meaning that he was partly right, just limited in his scope.
1528 – Johannes Stöffler fails again, his stars slowly setting.
1533 – Melchior Hoffman, a member of the same cult sect denomination as Müntzer says that 144,000 people would be saved, while the rest of the world would die by the eventual invention and consumption of fast food (death by frying).
1534 – Jan Matthys makes a cheesy forecast that the world would end on 5 April and only the city of Münster would survive.
1555 – Pierre d’Ailly says the end of the world would be in the 7000th year after creation. Another round number freak but with a different approach.
1585 – Michael Servetus claims, in his book The Restoration of Christianity, that the devil had taken over the Church and the council of Nicea in 325CE, and that the intervening years had been the expected Tribulation. No, Mike, it only seemed like a tribulation.
1600 – Martin Luther predicts the end no later than 1600…but he isn’t really sure. He was still trying to clean up after nailing his ninety-five feces to the church door in Wittenberg..
1624 Feb 1 – London astrologers fail again with their next flood.
1648 – Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi uses the kabbalah to predict the arrival of the Messiah, who is more than fashionably late.
1654 – Astronomer Helisaeus Roeslin bases his prediction on a 1572 Nova. Nobody knows how he got his hands on a time-traveling Chevrolet.
1654 – Bishop James Ussher publishes his calculation of the date of the Creation the night preceding 23 October 4004 BCE. His followers later assert that the world would end exactly 6000 years later.
1656 – Christopher Columbus had predicted in 1501 that the world would end in 1656.
1658 – Christopher Columbus later revised his 1501 prediction and regurgitated Pierre d’Ailly’s prediction with a different creation date. He said the world was created in 5343 BCE, and would last 7000 years. Remember, he also thought that he had reached India.
1666 – Rabbi Zevi, having failed to recognize the Messiah if he had, indeed come eighteen years earlier, tries again for 1666. Again, no soap.
1666 – The Fifth Monarchists get their undies in a bunch over a year with the numbers 666, 100,000 Londoners dying of plague and the Great Fire of London. Their descendants rename US highway 666 to U.S. Route 491 in 2003.
1688 – John Napier, mathematician and inventor of “Napier’s Bones”, an early mechanical calculator himself calculates the end for this year from information in the Book of Revelation
1694 – John Mason (Anglican priest), Johann Heinrich Alsted (German Calvinist minister) and Johann Jacob Zimmermann (German theologian and mathematician). A banner year for failed predictions everywhere.
1697 – Cotton Mather makes first American prediction.
1700 – John Napier, after his first prediction failed, maybe used his “Bones” calculator for a second try. He should have waited for Texas Instruments.
1716 – Cotton Mather tries again.
1736 – Cotton Mather proves a third time that he’s no better at eschatology than he was at theology.
1780 May 19 – Connecticut General Assembly think smoke from a forest fire and fog on a cloudy day was the skies turning dark, heralding the end of the world. And you thought the Republican Party didn’t get going until 1854.
1789 – Pierre d’Ailly’s revised 14th-Century prediction said the Antichrist would be born in this year. No Antichrist, but the US Constitution did get ratified.
1792 – In two shaky predictions, the Shakers look for the end in both 1792 and 1794. So why was their furniture built to last?
1793–1795 – Retired sailor Richard Brothers keeps annoying people by insisting the Millennium will begin between 1793 and 1795.
1795 – While campaigning for the release of retired sailor Richard Brothers from an insane asylum, Nathaniel Brassey Haled says that the world would end on 19 November.
1836 – John Wesley, Methodist church founder says that Revelation 12:14 means that Christ would come sometime between 1058 and 1836. He was running out of time. Revelation 12:14 says, ” And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.” Wesley was as batty as Bachman is.
1843 Apr 28 – The Millerites, followers of Adventist/Baptist preacher, predict the end on this day.
1843 Dec 31 – Millerites again.
1844 Mar 21 – William Miller cons the Millerites one more time
1844 Oct 22 – Millerites prove they can be fooled again – lack of doom and destruction become known as the “Great Disappointment”. Too bad all predictions don’t adopt the title.
1847 – George Ramp, founder of the Harmony Society, declares that Jesus will return before he died. It is 7 August, and he is on his deathbed. As it turned out, Jesus wasn’t the one doing the traveling.
1853–1856 – Crimean War thought to be Battle of Armageddon. Maybe Jesus was busy reading Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.
1862 – Scottish minister John Chumming decides that since it was 6000 years since Creation, the world would had passed its “use by” date..
1874 – Charles Take Russell predicts Jesus would return. When nothing happens, Russell claims Jesus is here but “invisible”.
1881 – 15th-century soothsayer Mother Shipton was quoted”The world to an end shall come, In eighteen hundred and eighty one”. A book of her “prophecies, published in 1862, was later proved to be a forgery, but this didn’t stop people from believing it. That volume is now use as the factchecking handbook at Fox News, whose followers also believe even when proven wrong.
1890 – Native American spiritualist Wovoka expects the end of the world on a somewhat round number. He’s late, as the Native Americans’ world ended in 1492.
1892 – Pyramidologist Charles Piazzi Smyth bases his research on the dimensions of the Great Pyramid and concludes that the End will happen sometime between 1892 and 1911. He goes into a deep depression when he discovers that his calculations should have been based on the pyramid of Sneferu. On being informed that the Giza pyramid had been built by space aliens and its dimensions actually encoded the directions to the home planet, his depression becomes fatal.
1901 – The Catholic Apostolic Church, founded in 1831, hold that the world would end when the last of its founders died. Since their main purpose was bringing The immediate Second Coming of Christ, it’s a wonder that the elders weren’t bumped off to hurry things up. The CAC is still in existence, but its members wonder why.
1910 – French astronomer Camille Flammarion says Halley’s Comet would poison the Earth’s atmosphere. People buy “Comet Pills” to counteract the poison.
1914 – Charles Take Russell mistakes a secular war (WWI) for Armageddon.
1918 – The International Bible Students Association hold that their church will be “glorified” in the spring on 1918. The students spend the entire summer in detention.
1920 – Jehovah’s Witless elder Raymond Franz says that the world will descent into anarchy in 1920. The anarchy arrived, but it remained confined to the Witlesses.
1925 – Seventh-day Adventist Margaret Rowen says the angel Gabriel told her the world would end at midnight 13 February (incidentally, a Friday). On 28 November the Grand Ole Opry debuts on radio, which amounts to the same thing. Gabriel was only off by 288 days.
1935 – Evangelist Wilbur Voliva says “the world is going to go ‘puff’ and disappear” in September. On the fifteenth, the Nuremberg Laws go into effect, making him one of the more accurate predictors in history.
1936 – Herbert W. Armstrong (Garner Ted’s daddy) says only his followers, members of the Worldwide Church of God would be saved. Present-day Tea Partiers say the same thing.
1941 – Some Jehovah’s Witnesses which broke off from the Bible Student movement, predict Armageddon for this year. Apparently the students didn’t learn.
1943 – Herbert W. Armstrong wrong again (just like the Tea Party).
1954 – The UFO cult Brotherhood of the Seven Rays told by leader Dorothy Martin that the world will be flooded on 21 December. She directs her followers to divest themselves of all worldly goods and wait for rescue from space. On 22 December, her followers quit.
1959 – 2nd Prophet of the Branch Davidians Florence Houteff predicts the apocalypse from Revelation will be on 22April. This causes a split in the group, ultimately leading to David Koresh. There was an apocalypse, but not for another thirty-four years. And thirty-six years.
1962 Feb 4 – Jeane Dixon with more astrological nonsense, says a planetary alignment will destroy the Earth. She forgets to explain why previous alignments hadn’t already done so.
1967 Aug 20 – George Van Tassel predicts Soviet nuclear strike. He is supposedly channeling an alien named Ashtar, later revealed to be ALF.
1967 – People’s Temple founder Jim Jones foretells a nuclear war. Eleven years later he tries another way.
1969 – Charles Manson tries to start it himself.
1972 – Herbert W. Armstrong swings and misses for strike three.
1973 – Children of God leader David Berg says that Comet Kohoutek will crash and burn up the world sometime between 11 and 21 January. Kohoutek ended up disappointing both Berg and comet watchers.
1975 – Three times was not a charm for Herbert W. Armstrong. Like the Tea Party, he never learns from his mistakes.
1975 – Nine years previously the Jehovah’s Witnesses publication ran an article that claimed that the fall of 1975 would be 6,000 years after creation, and, therefore, the end, shortchanging Pierre d’Ailly by 1,000 years. They also aren’t any more accurate than d’Ailly. Strike three.
1981 – Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith predicts the baby boomers will be the last generation. The boomers’ parents wish their generation had been the last.
1982 Mar 10 – John Gribbin says Jupiter’s gravity will tear the Earth apart. Like Jeane Dixon, he fails to explain why previous alignments hadn’t already done so.
1985 – Minister Lester Sumrall writes a book titled I Predict 1985. The next year, he publishes a book titled Oops 1986.
1988 – Former NASA engineer Edgar C. Whisenant writes 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988 explaining that the Rapture of Revelation will occur between 11 and 13 September 1988.
1988 – On 3 October, Edgar C. Whisenant: realizes he should have postponed publication.
1989 Edgar C. Whisenant’s book is sold with 1988 scratched out and 1989 written in magic marker.
1990 – New Age guruess Elizabeth Clare Prophet, getting carried away with her name, says a 12-year-long nuclear war will start on 23 April. She has her followers to build a shelter filled with food and weapons. Eight years later, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
1990 – Pat Robertson publishes The New Millennium, which insists destruction will occur on 29 April 2007.
1991 – Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson says the Messiah will arrive at Rosh Hashana. It turns out that the sound of the coming was just a badly tuned shofar.
1991 – Louis Farrakhan mistakes the Gulf War for the Battle of Armageddon.
1993 – David Berg, unfazed by his survival of Comet Kohoutek, gets it wrong again.
1994 Sep 6 – Harold Camping tries for the first time.
1994 Sep 29 – Harold Camping: strike two.
1994 Oct 2 – Harold Camping: strike three. He’s no better than Armstrong, the Witlesses or the Tea Party.
1995 Mar 31 – Harold Camping proves he’s no better than the Millerites.
1996 – Psychic Sheldon Nidre foresees the arrival of angels in 16 million space ships. He fails to explain why angels need to ride in UFOs.
1997 Mar 26 – Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate suicides. Proof that stupidity should be the national sport.
1997 Oct 23 – James Ussher, who calculated the time, day and year of the creation, says this would be the end (6000 years after creation).
1998 – Taiwanese cult leader Hon-Ming Chen, says God will come to Earth in a flying saucer at 10:00 am on 31 March. Not only that, but – Surprise! Surprise! God would look exactly like Hon-Ming Chen! How convenient! Supposedly, Chen would be “translated to heaven” so he wouldn’t be mistaken for a deity. On 25 March God was to appear on channel 18 on every TV set in the US. On 25 March, channel 18 in my hometown ran a Gilligan’s Island marathon.
1999 – In a banner year for End Times predictions, The Amazing Criswell says “lights out” would be on 18 August. He had also predicted that Plan 9 From Outer Space .would be a blockbuster hit and the breakout movie of 1959.
1999 – Language maven Charles Berlitz has the what, but not the how. He does say that it may involve nuclear devastation, asteroid impact, pole shift, other earth changes or sloppy enunciation.
1999 – After failing to be recognized as a deity last year, Hon-Ming Chen predicts a nuclear war.
1999 – Yale University President Timothy Dwight IV sees Christ’s millennium beginning.
2000 – Many expect the end of the world or horrible disasters (Y2K) to greet New Years’ Day on another round number, including Isaac Newton, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, Edgar Cayce, Sun Myung Moon Johnathan Edwards and the thousands of saps who built bunkers and hoarded MREs. Lester Sumrall publishes I Predict 2000.
2007 – Pat Robertson’s 1990 prediction for 29 April, like everything else he says, is wrong (What? People still listen to this senile old fart?). Nothing is mentioned on The 700 Club.
2008 – Starting up the Large Hadron Collider on 10 September will produce micro black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth. Construction delays postpone doomsday until 30 March 2010. After several years of operation, no holes yet.
2008 Nov 4 – Barack Obama (the Antichrist) elected President of the US. Republican and fundie heads explode, their world ends.
2009 – Tea Party starts a five-year whine that having a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Fascist liberal tyrant commie member of a radical Black Christian church in the White House means the United States, if not the whole world, is doomed.
2011 May 21 – Harold Camping rides again.
2011 Oct 21 – Harold Camping proves you can’t keep an old fool down. Claims that the May date was just the judgement and this date would be the end.
2012 – José Luis de Jesús, founder of Miami’s Growing In Grace International Ministry, says that governments and economies will collapse on 30 June and he and his followers will gain the ability to fly and walk through walls. Since 1 July 2012, de Jesús has been in a coma due to head injuries sustained trying to fly through a wall.
2012 Nov 6 – Obama re-elected; fundies shocked that he hasn’t revealed his horns, tail and pitchfork. Some suspect that he has no reflection.
2012- Various gullible idiots, not content with one mythology’s failed predictions, turn to misinterpreting the religion of the Mayans, about which most of them know nothing, and, spurred by a really crappy movie, decide the world will fall apart on 21 December. Other than the death of Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dorman, nothing significant happens that day.
2012- Warren Jeffs, the Fundamentalist Mormon leader, wants something to look forward to other than a life+20-year prison sentence, declares the end on 23 December..
2012- Eight days later, Warren Jeffs blames his prediction’s failure on his followers’ “lack of faith”.
2013 Oct 1 – Government enacts Affordable Care Act; Republicans shut down government in hopes of ending the world. Shocked to find out that the rest of the world doesn’t care.
2013 Oct 7 – Michele Bachman blames the end times on President Obama, not realizing that as the Antichrist, he plays a vital role in the Second Coming.
2020 – Jeane Dixon tries again. After the failure of her 1962 prediction, she settled on a date when she knew she probably wouldn’t be around to be embarrassed by it.
5,000,000,000 – Various scientists anticipate the sun will expand into a red giant and engulf the Earth. That’s hard to argue with.
5.000.000.001 – The Tea Party blames the death of the sun on President Obama.
-E.A. Blair
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The Michele Bachmann source photograph is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.
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The Age of Blasphemy 