In 477, Genseric died at the age of 88. With Alaric, he had led the Vandals and Alans in the sack of Rome in 455, and into kingship over Italy, north Africa, and the western Mediterranean. Identified with the Beast of Revelation, the numerical value of the name "Genseric" was tallied at 666. Many also believed at the time that the apocalypse was approaching at or around 500 CE.
In 1795, Morgan Edwards died. This Welsh-American Baptist minister was an early pioneer of the premillennialist "rapture" theory. An idiosyncratic interpretation of scripture, the doctrine of rapture draws very specifically on 1 Thessalonians 4:17: "After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." The rapture doctrine would later be extended and popularized in America by John Nelson Darby.
