For Christians in the United States, 2024 is a boon year for amateur prophetic speculations. For the false prophet, geopolitical events, wars, the coming presidential elections, and the April 8 solar eclipse create the perfect environment to make predictions about the imminent judgment of God or the return of Christ.
Never mind the fact that a number of these so-called prophets have a checkered history when it comes to accurately predicting future events. Self-proclaimed prophet Shawn Bolz has made numerous failed prophetic predictions in the past, including a prophecy that President Trump would win a second term in 2020. Instead of stepping down from public ministry, Bolz decided that he would take a break for a season from public political prophesies, stating, “I am growing in this prophetic journey…” Bolz recently made the vague claim that the eclipse might be a sign from God of a coming national Spiritual awakening or individual breakthrough.
“From a Prophetic Standpoint the eclipse represents a moment of real divine alignment and intervention. You know just as the moon temporarily obscures the light of the sun during the eclipse, there’s some areas of our lives where darkness might seem to be prevailing, or areas of our businesses or country or social issues or whatever that the enemy looks like he is prevailing, or that man’s sinful nature looks like it’s hindering the ability to see clearly or experience the fullness of God’s blessing, but like the moment when the sun emerges again, breaking through the darkness, the eclipse could signify the season of breakthrough and illumination in our lives…”
Bolz now prefers to make vague, rambling predictions rather than specific ones, but this hasn’t stopped him from grifting off of the eclipse event.
A number of prophecy-oriented social media personalities and channels actively promoted the April 8 eclipse as a sign of either judgment, the imminent rapture, or both because the path of the event was purported to pass over seven cities named Nineveh, a town named Rapture, and the Answers in Genesis Ark Encounter.
When these claims were critiqued, it was found that only two actual towns named Nineveh were in the path of the eclipse. Nothing about these “prophetic signs” point to actual contextualized scripture that predicts events with any level of specificity. Rather, their focus is vain speculation and grasping at the straws of current events in a foolish game of pin the tail on the judgment of God and the rapture.
From the viewpoint of a new follower of Christ, the enticement of shady false prophets may seem alluring. These types of failed prophecies have been made for the last two thousand years, but the frequency has increased in the last 200 years, as some dispensationalists have attempted to pin, with detail, a modern futurist interpretation of apocalyptic literature on texts such as the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation.
In the twentieth century, the anti-Christ has been prophetically identified as nearly every dictator and world leader who has come on the scene, with various “prophets” throughout the 20th century claiming that the antichrist is Hitler, Stalin, Obama, and even Danny DeVito. Recent attempts to pin the rapture on a specific date or identify the antichrist are not new developments.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9
Numerous false prophets have also attempted to predict the date of a premillennial dispensationalist Left-Behind movie-style rapture. In 1988, prophet Edgar Whisenant published his book 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988. The best-selling book sold more than 4.5 million copies. When Whisenant’s prediction failed to materialize in 1988, he published Rapture Report 1989, which included a revised prediction that Jesus would return in 1989. Whisenant tripled and quadrupled down with predictions of the rapture in 1993 and 1994, writing 23 reasons why a pre-tribulation rapture looks like it will occur on Rosh-Hashanah 1993 and the book And now the earth’s destruction by fire, nuclear bomb fire.
In the same year that Edgar Whisenant made his last failed prediction, Christian Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the rapture and day of judgment would take place on September 6, 1994. When the rapture failed to take place, Camping revised his original prediction to September 29, 1994, and then October 2, 1994. Undeterred by previous failures, Camping falsely predicted that the rapture and a five-month-long fulfillment of the judgments of Revelation would take place in 2011.
False prophecies of the return of Christ have wreaked destruction on gullible Christians and associated ministries. Many people who bought into Whisenant and Camping’s failed predictions quit their jobs, sold all of their possessions, and donated large sums of money to the false prophet’s media campaigns.
Eschatology does matter. It puts life in perspective of our imminent call to give an account to the God who gave us life. However, this fact is not dependent on the imminent return of Christ. At any given time, a believer can die and find themselves in the presence of the Lord. Christ has promised that he will return, but he has made it crystal clear that no one knows the day or hour of his return except for God the Father.
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Matthew 24:36-44
