ABSTRACT
Millenarians – those ardent believers in imminent end-time events – are often mistakenly thought to be date-sensitive, anxious to know the precise moment of the Second Coming. There have, of course, been dramatic cases of date calculation, such as the followers of William Miller in the 1840s. Miller, a lay preacher in upstate New York, wrestled with biblical chronologies until he determined that Christ would return sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When that year passed uneventfully, he accepted a follower’s calculation that the real date was October 22, 1844. That, too, came and went, and the tens of thousands in the movement dispersed in what came to be called the ‘Great Disappointment.’ But such attempts to find a precise millennial date have been the exception, not the rule. Despite concerns that the passage from 1999 to the year 2000 would set off all manner of religious fanaticisms, no such upheaval occurred.
