This paper examines messianic belief among Lubavitchers and discusses what happened when their leader died without revealing his messianic status. Following failed prophecy, Lubavitchers continued missionizing at the same high level as previously. The case material illustrates the fact that such an intense religious group as Lubavitch do not follow teachings blindly but are sane people who try to reason their way through facts and doctrine in pursuit of understanding.
Lubavitchers dealt with this failure of prophecy by appealing to a number of post-hoc rationalisations. In accordance with Melton's theory, the messianic belief underwent a process of spiritualization. Most users should sign in with their email address. If you originally registered with a username please use that to sign in.
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Select Format Select format. Zoroaster taught that there would be a final conflict when Ahura Mazda God would defeat Angra Mainyu the Evil One , leading to the Frashegird, an eternity of bliss for true believers. In the couple of centuries around the time of Jesus the Jewish world was awash with apocalyptic frenzy as they eagerly awaited the arrival of their Messiah — a human priest-king, and a very different figure from the Christian Christ — to save them from their oppressors.
From the earliest centuries people have prophesied the imminence of the End Times. Bishop Hilarion wrote in CE that the last battle would be years ahead, while the 6th-century Bishop Gregory of Tours set the date between and CE — both of them sensibly long after their own deaths. The Third Age would begin around , again sensibly after his death, with a brief reign of the Antichrist followed by the coming of a new Adam or a new Christ.
He was hugely influential, including on Dante and Francis of Assisi — but again, he was wrong. In the same century Martin Luther predicted Jesus would return years from his time, so around In the late s John Wesley predicted Christopher Columbus believed it would happen in John Napier , creator of logarithms and an early slide rule, decided the Last Judgement would be going from Revelation or going by Daniel.
Sir Isaac Newton said — or possibly The 19th century was a hothouse of millennial expectation. The Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by Edward Irving in the early s, believed that Christ would return between and Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, said in that Jesus would return in But out of this came the Seventh-day Adventist Church, founded in In , Armstrong published a booklet, in Prophecy, which made it quite clear that Christ would return by then.
The booklet became strangely difficult to get hold of from the mid-Seventies. The failure of any of his specific prophecies for to occur did not appear to have fazed him.
He then prophesied that Christ would return on 27 May Wrong again. Shoko Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo, which launched a Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in , said Armageddon would happen on 2 or 3 September Philip Berg, head of the Kabbalah Centre, said a great ball of fire would hit Earth on 11 September — unless they raised enough money to open a number of new Kabbalah Centres….
In , Scottish-born artist Benjamin Creme b. In , 22 journalists met in an Indian restaurant in the East End, hoping that Maitreya would join them; they were disappointed. Ruth Norman, or Uriel 93 , one of the founders of the San Diego-based movement Unarius, told her followers that aliens would come openly to Earth in , then , then , and then — by which time she could no longer be embarrassed by her failed prophecy.
They may be waiting some time.
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