On This Day in History: October 22

The Great Disappointment

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In the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda Kevin Kline’s character looks upon a safe he just cracked, expecting to find diamonds, yet it’s empty. He splutters a moment, then yells, “Disappointed!” That’s how the religious cult members of William Miller’s Baptist sect felt when on October 22, 1844, they discovered it was just a regular day, with no great rapture like they’d been promised. I mean, it is called the Great Disappointment.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 22, 1844--

Fighting in the War of 1812, a bomb exploded next to William Miller and blew the shit out of his comrades, but he was unscathed. Of course, that meant God saved him, and so Billy decided to transform from being lackadaisical in his religious beliefs to becoming a good little Jesus freak.

His friends were all like “Kinda going overboard on the God stuff, aren’t you?” His response was to not just thump a Bible, but read it. Study it. Focus on one particular part in Daniel 8 that had some math and stuff about a sanctuary being cleansed and he was all holy fucking asscrackers Jeebus is coming back, and I know when!

In 1831 Miller started telling everyone the world was going to end in a dozen or so years, and being that 1830s America sucked, plenty of folks were all “It’s about fucking time.” He amassed a great following of people called Millerites, because why not. By the 1840s, Millerism was a national movement. When examining how Trumpism quickly became a national movement, I’m forced to admit humanity’s penchant for embracing dumbfuckery is alive and well.

They didn’t nail down the exact rapture date until August 1844. The tl;dr is they read some more shit and looked at some calendars and then said “This coming October 22 is the fucking day! Jesus is coming back soon! Collective orgasm!” But like Stormy Daniels’ experiences in that Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006, it was a woefully unsatisfying nothingburger. She didn’t see Jesus, and neither did the Millerites.

A bit of a shitnado followed. Many of the adherents had given away their possessions in anticipation, and they were pissed. A Millerite church was burned, and two others vandalized. Millerites were even attacked by mobs with clubs and knives, and one group of them was tarred and feathered.

The Millerites fractured after the Great Disappointment, but that didn’t stop future delusional dipshits from predicting raptures and being wrong about them. It’s almost like those books they’re basing such predictions on are works of fiction.

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