Some believe that when Jesus refers to “the last times,” he is referring only to the last times for the covenant of God with Israel, which these believers think ended with the First Jewish-Roman war and the destruction of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Though this has some truth, others say the references to “last times” refer to the era of the church, and see that as extending from the time of the Book of Acts to the present, as suggested earlier in the point made about the intentional ambiguity of the meaning of the Second Coming.

When Will it Happen?

William Miller, a 19th-century Baptist farmer in New York state, studied the Bible according to prophetic tools he had developed, and with the help of Bishop James Ussher's dating of the biblical time periods, concluded that the Second Coming of Christ would take place in 1843.

Upward of 100,000 people anticipated the fulfillment of the prophecy that year, many of them divesting themselves of their assets to prepare, but they were disappointed (or relieved).

In 1970, Hal Lindsey, one of the most widely read prophecy experts in American evangelical circles, wrote in The Late Great Planet Earth that, based on biblical prophecies about the restoration of the nation of Israel, within a generation of modern Israel's founding in 1948, all things prophesied in Matthew 24 should come to pass.

Critics say that, biblically, a generation is about 40 years, so by 1988 all the prophesies Jesus made about the end times should have come to pass, according to Lindsey's timetable. But there is no evidence that the scenario presented in Matthew 24 was being played out between 1948 and 1988.

Harold Camping, founder of the Family Radio network and its major on-air personality, predicted in 1994 that the apocalypse would occur in September that year, but that he could not predict the exact date because Matthew 24:36 says, “no man knows the day and hour, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

Many in his radio audiences were disappointed, and some, it has been reported, were relieved when the apocalypse didn't occur.

Prophecy-Based Cults

There have been many secular and cult groups built around prophecies. Some of these groups are infamous, like David Koresh's Branch Dividians, Jim Jones' People's Temple, and the “Heaven's Gaters” with their Hale-Bopp Comet prophesies. The prophecy experts cited previously profess to be traditional Christians, and are generally accepted as such within Christian circles.

Considering the way Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah are used by the writers of the New Testament (emphasizing the failure to discern the prophecies), it's not surprising that Christians in later times would look for signs that the Second Coming might happen soon. Many believe, even, that it would be an error to fail to look for such signs.