February 19: Beatus of Liebana

February 19 is the feast date of Beatus of Liébana. His "Commentary on the Apocalypse" (786 CE) predicted that the Sabbath Age, or seventh millennium of creation in which Christ would rule the Earth, would begin in the year 800. Beatus himself died in 800 without evidence of Jesus' return.

February 18: The African Xhosa famine

In 1857, Nongaqawuse, a teenaged Christian millennialist prophet of the Xhosa people, predicted that if the Xhosa would first kill all of their own cattle, spirits would arrive on this date and sweep the British occupation into the sea. Nearly 75% of the Xhosa population of 100,000 would go on to die in the resulting famine, with many of the survivors resorting to cannibalism.

February 14: Thomas Malthus

On February 14, 1766, Thomas Malthus was born. His 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population forecast a cataclysmic future as growth in population exceeds growth in the resources needed to sustain it. These views, though oversimple in their mathematical assumptions, were profound enough to help inspire the theory of evolution independently in the thoughts of both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace.

February 12: Ray Kurzweil, and global warming

Two dates to note:

In 1948, Ray Kurzweil was born. He proposes that comprehensible human history will end in a fast-approaching Singularity, in which computers become intelligent enough to build still-more-intelligent computers, in a feedback loop which will become transhuman.

In 1979, the World Climate Conference of the World Meteorological Organization issued a declaration that anthropogenic climate change is real, cementing the scientific consensus on global warming.

February 10: Jose the Galilean

Rabbi Jose the Galilean predicted the arrival of the Messiah would occur three 20-year generations after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem - ie, sometime near the year 130.

February 9: The Apocalypse of Baruch

In the late 100s CE, the Apocalypse of Baruch, a pseudepigraphical (falsely-attributed) work was written, surviving in Greek and Syriac versions. "The youth of the world is past, the vigor of creation is at its end; the coming of [last] times is near."

February 7: Johanan ben Zakai

Dying in 90 CE, the Jewish sage and Mishnah writer Johanan ben Zakai had prophesied that the Messiah could be expected to arrive imminently.

February 6: Joseph Priestley

On February 6, 1804, Joseph Priestley died. Best known for discovering oxygen, this early chemist also wrote "The Present State of Europe Compared with Ancient Prophecies", a tract finding fulfillment of the books of Daniel and Revelation in the French Revolution.

February 5: Foundation of the Branch Davidians

Victor Houteff died on February 5, 1955. This Bulgarian-born Seventh-Day Adventist leader led a splinter group away from Los Angeles to Waco, Texas in 1935, and founded Mount Carmel Ministries. Here he expected to gather 144,000 followers as the world ended ("the elect", per Revelation 7:3-8).

After Houteff's death in 1955, the group renamed itself the Branch Davidians.

February 4: Messiah Jonathan the Weaver

During 73 CE, Jonathan the Weaver led a group from Jerusalem into the wilderness. Interpreted as a messianic bid by the Roman governor, troops were dispatched to massacre them. Jonathan was ultimately captured and burned alive.

February 3: John Chilembwe's 1915 Mozambique rebellion

On February 3, 1915 John Chilembwe was executed in Mozambique. He had led an unsuccessful popular uprising in neighboring Malawi after developing a Christian millenarian philosophy in Lynchburg, Virginia at a Black theological seminary. Chilembwe had gone to America as a domestic employee of Baptist minister Joseph Booth.

Afterward, as an ordained minister in his own right, Chilembwe worked in Nyasaland (currently Malawi) where abuses by whites led to his uprising, which he expected would precipitate Christ's return. Three men were murdered on January 23, one of them by decapitation in front of his family. Chilembwe then fled to Mozambique and was killed.

February 1: Secretary of the Interior James Watt

In February, 1981, Secretary of the Interior James Watt said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns. Whatever it is, we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

This statement of Watt's dominionist Christian views, and belief in impending apocalypse, had been made in testimony before the House Interior Committee. In May, asked to expand on his views by The Washington Post, Watt said, "My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns."

Janaury 31: Raining Blood!

On January 31, 1030, the Duke of Aquitaine William V died. Writing in 1028, he recorded an apocalyptic omen in the form of a rain of blood on the shores of the Aquitaine.

January 30: John Milton, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and the English Civil War

On January 30, 1649, Charles I of England was executed. The Puritan pamphleteer and poet John Milton claimed that Charles' fall from power would usher in Judgment Day. A pamphleteer with differing political views held that it was actually Oliver Cromwell who was the Beast of Revelation, with a name adding up to the number 666.

January 29: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

On January 29, 1929, Sergei Nilius died. He authored the infamous anti-semitic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as part of the third edition of his apocalyptic "The Great in the Small: Antichrist Considered as an Imminent Political Possibility" (1901).

January 28: William Butler Yeats

On January 28, 1939, the mystic, Order of the Golden Dawn member, and poet William Butler Yeats died. He had believed the world would end in the year 2000.

January 25: the sack of Rome, and the development of the Rapture doctrine

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.

January 24: Messiah claimant Menahem

In January I've been reviewing some of the larger messianic movements in Jerusalem's "Late Second Temple Period." It was in 66 CE, not long before permanent Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70, that Menahem led a briefly-successful rebellion.

Per Josephus, Menahem was son of Judas the Galilean (see Jan. 6 - but if they truly were related, Menahem was likelier Judas' grandson). After raiding the Roman armory at Masada, Menahem stormed Jerusalem, and went on to kill the Jewish high priest in a bid to consolidate religious and secular power. Dressing himself as a king and going up into the temple to worship, Menahem was set upon by a group led by a man named Eleasar, dragged to a public square, and stoned.

January 22: The Münster Horror

On January 22, 1536, Jan van Leiden, Anabaptist King of Münster and "Messiah of the last days" was tortured and executed.

Van Leiden, AKA Jan Bockelson, led a general peasant uprising in 1532/3 with Jan Matthys and others, declaring Münster the seat of a New Jerusalem and fulfillment of God's plan for Earth. After Matthys was beheaded outside the city walls defending Münster from attack on Easter, 1534, van Leiden assumed complete dictatorial control, declaring himself the successor to King David. Though there were egalitarian and proto-socialist elements to the Anabaptist movement, which had grown from theocratic Protestant uprisings in Germany a decade before, van Leiden commandeered Münster's wealth, assembled a harem of 16 wives, and presided over summary beheadings.

A siege continued against Münster by cities throughout the region, causing starvation; and panic was suppressed only by the increased viciousness of van Leiden's reign. Once Münster was defeated in the field in 1535 and the city fell, van Leiden and two co-conspirators were publicly tortured with hot tongs, stabbed to death, and left suspended in cages which remain in place within the steeple of St. Lambert's church to this day (the bones were removed after 50 years.)

January 20: Barack Obama

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama assumed the office of President. By March the year following, Obama was suspected of being the Antichrist by 24% of Republican voters (14% of all voters) according to a Harris poll. One line of evidence supporting this view is from Nostradamus, who named the three Antichrists of world history as "Napaulon Roy" (Napoleon), "Hister" (Hitler), and "Maubus" (an inaccurate anagram for "Obama").