10 End-Of-The-World Prophecies That Didn't Come True

5. 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Wasn't In 1988

You have to have some balls to make an end-of-the-world prediction in the first place. It takes even more self-confidence (or maybe self-obsession, or perhaps even self-delusion) to write a whole book outlining why you think the world is going to end and when, with lots of dubious facts and figures to back up your conclusion. And yet that's what Edgar C Whisenant did, writing the book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be In 1988, which was published in 1988. Talk about getting it in just under the write, Whisenant. Deciding his ludicrous reasons needed to be seen by as many people as possible, 300,000 free copies were sent to ministers across America. Some people took him seriously, with the Christian Trinity Broadcast Network interrupted to provide special instructions on preparing for the rapture. Then it didn't happen, and Whisenant wrote books with predictions for various dates in 1989, 1993, 1994 and 1997. But by that point he was the boy who cried €œapocalypse!€