…the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors.
— Doctrine & Covenants 110:16
Religious movements of the 1800s just couldn’t wait for Jesus to come back, and Mormonism was very much a product of its time. Did Joseph Smith make a firm prediction about it, or did he not? I guess when the name of your church includes “Latter-day Saints”, you’re expecting it to be pretty soon.
Accordingly, every single youth leader I ever had was utterly convinced that our generation was going to usher in Christ’s return. There were breathless reports of patriarchal blessings that said, “Yep, you’ll be alive for the whole wrapping up.”
Well, apparently the return is on the back burner for now.
The end is not near, senior LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer said Saturday.
Today’s youths can look forward to “getting married, having a family, seeing your children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren,” Packer told more than 20,000 Mormons gathered in the giant LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City.
There has been no immediate comment from LDSLastDays.com.
I would, however, like to suggest a slight change of logo:
3 October 2011 at 6:22 pm
What's really funny about this is that although the church claims two meanings for "latter days" in English (i.e., "the last days" and the rather strained "these current days"), in languages such as Chinese and Japanese, the church's name only refers to "the last days."
My patriarchal blessing, BTW, says that I'll help prepare for the Second Coming, which will "come quickly," and I'll "witness signs of the times and see prophecy fulfilled," but doesn't say whether I'll actually see Jesus come back.
3 October 2011 at 9:38 pm
The Church's business partners asked them to tell the members something that would stop them from hoarding their money. It's ok to spend. The end is not near.
7 October 2011 at 3:31 pm
OMG – that is funny stuff@
20 October 2011 at 7:41 am
Ok, let's suppose that Christianity extends between two points: the death of Jesus, say AD 30 – call this time D, and his 2nd coming at time (unknown) T. We really know nothing about when T will be, but we can still make predictions about when it's likely to be. The current date is N = D+1981yrs. The chances of any date, like N, being inside the last 10% of the life of Christianity will be 10% (because we know nothing, we assume a flat distribution of asking this question between D and T). So we have a 10% chance that T < D + (N-D)*100/90 = 2231. If we set 200yrs as the cut-off for latter/last days, then we're still 20yrs shy of a 10% chance of being in the last days. So how about: Church of Jesus Christ of the Soon-to-be Possibly Latter-Day Saints.
What's even worse, though, is that by 2031 – unless we get some really good signs – the start of the 10% probability last 200yrs will be pushed back to 2053.
22 November 2013 at 8:13 pm
What about?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints