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The Day and the Hour

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THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR!
How many times have you heard a doomsayer in church or
a conspirist co-worker say this. I met an individual once
who was convinced that he could predict the "season" in
which Christ would return. "Season", because although you
could not nail down the exact time and day... you could
figure out the year and season. This was his thinking.
This book answers these people.
This book must be read before you try to figure out
the day and the hour.

Francis Gumerlock, a classmate of mine, has done a great job of research here. He chronicles the false interpretations of end-time prophecy throughout church history. You will learn about some of the most bizarre scoundrels and heretics in church history as well as some orthodox folks who were simply reading the Bible in light of world events rather than the opposite. Reading this book is a good way to get a jolt of humility in this day and age when prophecy books about a future antichrist run rampant (The Left Behind series, for instance). This is definitely one to add to your library -- I can think of no book like it.

You could go out and do a ton of research on all the "End is Near" statements over the centuries or you could get this book.

Well researched, filled with good information and very entertaining.

Professor Gumerlock makes an excellent point in the introduction of his book, in summing up the LCD of all the soothsayers and so-called "prophets" throughout recorded history. Very good arguments are also made in the opening to set the "actual time" certain prophecies were made. But then, and even by Professor Gumerlock's own admission, this "book" carries on in the manner for which was its' main purpose; to gather in one end-all publication all of the prophecies made - and the prophets who orated them, in chronological order. Great if you're doing an essay or report on the subject at hand...pretty dry material if you're on the outside wanting a provocative read on the subject. Amazingly well-researched, footnoted and referenced, but again - very dry material. I got the point after the introduction.

This is not really a book one reads linearly from beginning to end, though you could. It is more a reference guide to "last days madness" (to borrow the title of another of American Vision's books) as it has manifest itself throughout the centuries. The book is broken up into chapters each of which is devoted to a specific aspect of eschatology such as the millennium, the abomination of desolation, the anti-Christ, wars and rumors of wars, the "rapture", etc. Within each chapter are date headings under which we find some of the beliefs expressed at the time regarding the return of Christ. What becomes immediately obvious after reading several of these is that our present day does not have the market cornered on the belief that we are the last generation or in assigning prophetic significance to contemporary world events.

We find out for example that in A.D. 449 a deacon at Carthage named Quodvultdeus wrote in a book called Book on Promises and Predictions that "the barbarian invasions in his lifetime were signs of the End. He identified the Goths and the Moors as Gog and Maygog." Kind of a 3rd century The Late, Great Planet Earth !

Later we read that Sir Walter Raleigh in 1615 believed that Gog and Maygog were the Pope and Spain and that the Turks were the locusts in the Book of Revelation.

Examples of this kind go on and on for a variety of eschatological topics. The one thing they all have in common is that they were later proven wrong by the passage of time. Another interesting feature of the book is a series of some 20 charts outlining things such as candidates for the anti-Christ at various points in history or different views on the meaning of the mark of the beast. As with the narrative examples, the common thread is that all of these beliefs have been proven wrong.

Some examples in the book have been proven wrong before the very eyes of people still living today such as Chuck Smith's prediction that the "rapture" would occur in 1981.

Having been raised on dispensational premillennialism, I remember it coming as a surprise to me that others throughout history had made similar predictions to those being made by people like Hal Lindsey. As with many in this belief system, I felt that what men like Lindsey were teaching was unique to our time and was based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. A book like this which has essentially done all the research for you (the footnotes are extensive for those interested in tracking down original sources) is an valuable resource for debunking that thought and the newspaper exegesis going on today.