21 May 2011: Thousands of people went to bed expecting never to see another ordinary morning. Harold Camping, an American radio broadcaster, had calculated Christ would return that day. His warning went up on billboards in dozens of countries. Some listeners happily gave away their savings; some quit their jobs.
The sun rose on 22 May as it always had.
Camping wasn’t the first to try, and he sure won’t be the last. Since the second century, men have counted, charted and calculated the date of the second coming—the return of Jesus Christ in glory to judge the world. Every prediction has failed. Every single one.
Complete failure across 19 centuries should push us toward a sharper question than “who got the sums wrong?” The better question to ask is whether the sum can be done at all.
And Jesus answers it in one sentence.
The sentence that closes the door
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36).
Look at how the sentence is built. It shuts three doors, one above the other.
- Human beings don’t know.
- Angels—creatures who stand in the presence of God—don’t know.
- The Son Himself, during His earthly ministry, didn’t know.
Only the Father knows. That’s not a narrow gate left open for clever date-setters. It’s a wall.
The verse sits inside the Olivet Discourse, the sermon Jesus preached on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24–25). Matthew 24:36 begins with a turn—”But concerning that day and hour”—lifting our eyes to a final day nobody will see coming.
Christians read the earlier verses in more than one way. Some say Matthew 24: 4–34 speaks chiefly of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70; others take them as describing the whole age between Christ’s two comings. That debate is genuine, but it changes nothing here: by either reading, verse 36 says the same thing.
And everything Jesus says next drives the same nail:
- The days of Noah. People ate, drank and married, “and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away” (Matthew 24:39). They’d no idea one was coming.
- The thief in the night. Had the householder known the hour, he’d have stayed awake (Matthew 24:43). The illustration collapses the moment the hour can be worked out.
- The ten virgins. Five run out of oil, and the chapter ends: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13).
Three pictures, one emphatic hint: no warning, no calendar, no countdown.
But how could Jesus not know?
Here’s a question that troubles even believers: If Jesus is God, how can He say there’s something He doesn’t know?
First, a note on the text. The phrase “nor the Son” is missing from some later Greek manuscripts of Matthew, which is why the King James doesn’t carry it here. But it stands undisputed in Mark 13:32. Copyists who found it uncomfortable may have dropped it. That sounds likelier than copyists inventing it.
Second, the answer lies in who Jesus is. The eternal Son took to Himself a real human nature, so that one person now exists in two natures, divine and human, neither mixed nor swallowed up. This is the incarnation—God the Son becoming genuinely man without ceasing to be God. As God, the Son knows all things. As man, He grew, learned, and didn’t know the day. Luke says plainly the boy Jesus “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52). Sinclair B Ferguson notes if a genuinely learning Jesus embarrasses us, the problem lies not with the text but with a picture of the incarnation that has stopped being human.
John Calvin adds a layer that’s easy to miss. Christ speaks here as our Mediator, sent to make the Father’s will known to us, and this wasn’t given him to pass on. Compare Acts 1:7: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” The date isn’t missing by accident; it has been held back on purpose.
Four escape routes, and why every one is blocked
Date-setters are rarely careless readers. They know Matthew 24:36 does exist, and each has an argument for slipping past it. Here are the four, and none of them holds.
| THE ESCAPE ROUTE | WHAT’S REALLY BEING CLAIMED | WHY THE CLAIM FAILS |
|---|---|---|
| “Day and hour” only | Jesus ruled out knowing the exact day and the exact hour. He said nothing about the year, the month or the season. So a careful student may work out the year and simply stop short of naming the day. Or the hour. This was Harold Camping’s stated argument. | In Hebrew speech “day and hour” is a word-pair meaning “the time”, much as “night and day” means “always”. Jesus isn’t separating big units from small ones. Scripture proves it by changing the words and keeping the same answer: Mark 13:33 says we don’t know the season, and Acts 1:7 says times and seasons aren’t ours to know. A thief who announces the year has stopped being a thief. |
| The fig tree | When the fig tree puts out leaves, we infer summer is near (Matthew 24:32–34). Some date-setters argue the fig tree stands for the nation of Israel; Israel became a state again in 1948, so the leaves have appeared. Jesus then says “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”. Count a generation from 1948 and you have a deadline. | The fig tree isn’t a code for Israel: Luke tells the same parable as “the fig tree, and all the trees” (Luke 21:29)—it’s simply how anybody knows summer is coming. And “this generation” most naturally means the people standing in front of Jesus, who did live to see Jerusalem destroyed—in AD 70. The parable isn’t a countdown: leaves tell you summer is near, not which week it begins. |
| A thousand-year day | With the Lord one day is as a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8). Set that beside the 6 days of creation and you get 6000 years of world history, then a 1000-year sabbath. Date creation, add 6000 years, and the end can then be dated, too. Or so say other date-setters. | The verse is made to do the exact opposite of what Peter wrote it to do. He’s answering mockers who ask why Christ hasn’t come, and His answer is that God doesn’t experience time as we do—so our sense of “late” proves nothing. A verse written to stop men measuring has itself become a measuring tape. It also runs both ways: a thousand years are as one day, and a rate that works in both directions converts nothing. |
| “You are not in darkness” | Paul agrees the day comes like a thief, but then adds “you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief” (1 Thessalonians 5:4). So the thief only burgles unbelievers. Date-setters tell us watchful believers can expect to see it coming. | Read what Paul says next. He doesn’t tell them they have information; he tells them they have a character—“you are all children of light” (5:5)—and then tells them to keep awake, stay sober, and put on armour (5:6–8). The difference is readiness, not knowledge. A man who expects burglars fits locks; he still doesn’t know the night. |
God gives us signs—not dates
Someone will object Jesus Himself lists signs of the end—wars, famines, earthquakes, false messiahs, persecution, believers falling away, the gospel preached to all nations (Matthew 24:4–14). True. But read what He calls them: “the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:8). And read what He tells us to do about them: “see that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6).
The picture is exact. Labour pains tell a woman a birth is certainly coming. They don’t tell her the hour. Anthony A Hoekema and Cornelis P Venema both make the point: the signs aren’t a countdown but a description of the whole age between Christ’s two comings. They’re given so the church isn’t shocked by the character of its age; the date is withheld so the church isn’t careless in how it lives.
And here’s the detail that settles it. God did give a timetable for the first coming: Daniel 9 supplies a numbered prophecy, and Paul says Christ came “when the fullness of time had come” (Galatians 4:4). That he hasn’t done so for the second coming isn’t an oversight to correct but a decision to respect.
Why has God hidden it?
Scripture states the principle that governs the whole question: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children” (Deuteronomy 29:29). What God has revealed is enough, and it’s ours to obey. What he has kept back is His, and prising at it isn’t devotion. It’s trespass.
The historic confessions answer directly. The Westminster Confession says Christ would have us certain a day of judgement is coming—to deter men from sin and to comfort the godly in adversity. Yet He would keep the day unknown, that men may shake off all carnal security and be always watchful, ever ready to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” The Belgic Confession adds the appointed time is unknown to all creatures.
Notice the shape of that answer. It’s not that God doesn’t know; it’s that God knows and hasn’t told us. The certainty gives comfort; the secrecy keeps us awake.
THE HIDDEN DATE IS A MERCY. HERE IS WHY:
- It kills deadline religion. Repentance saved for the last calculable moment isn’t genuine repentance.
- It keeps obedience honest. A servant who works because the master may walk in at any moment works from love, not panic.
- And the delay has a stated reason: God is “patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).
What “watching” actually means
If we cannot know the date, what does Jesus mean by “Watch therefore” (24:42)? The New Testament words for watching—staying awake, alert, sober—are moral words, not astronomical ones. None means scanning the horizon for clues.
Jesus defines the term Himself in the next lines. The servant He commends is the one “whom his master will find so doing” when he comes (Matthew 24:46)—at his post, feeding the household, doing the work he was left to do. Watching is faithfulness in ordinary duty. The man who quits his job to await a date has stopped watching in the only sense Jesus ever commanded.
The apostles modelled the response. When a report went round Thessalonica that the day had already come, Paul didn’t answer with a better calculation. He corrected the teaching—“Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)—and sent the excited idlers back to work (2 Thessalonians 3:6–12). Sound doctrine, then ordinary faithfulness.
Nineteen centuries of failure
The history is revealing.
| WHO | DATE | WHAT HAPPENED |
|---|---|---|
| Jan Matthys and John of Leiden | 1534–35 | A radical kingdom was set up at Münster to await the end. It collapsed into tyranny and slaughter. |
| William Miller | 22 October 1844 | Tens of thousands waited. Still known as the Great Disappointment. |
| Watchtower publications | 1874, 1914, 1925, 1975 | Repeatedly reset. The 1914 failure was reinterpreted as an invisible enthronement—a claim that cannot be disproved. |
| Edgar C. Whisenant | 1988 | 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 sold in the millions. |
| Harold Camping | 1994, then 2011 | Global billboards, ruined finances, and eventually an admission that seeking the date had been sinful. |
| Blood moons and celestial “signs” | 2014–15, 2017 | Eclipse cycles and a star pattern in Virgo read as countdowns. Nothing followed. |
A pattern emerges more troubling than the failures. Predictions rarely end in repentance; they end in reinterpretation—the date spiritualised, made invisible, or moved. Scripture supplies a blunt test: “if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22).
The damage isn’t theoretical
Date-setting is no harmless hobby. Peter warned that scoffers would come asking “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4), and every failed date hands them the question ready-made. Believers lose homes and savings. Converts won by a deadline drift away once it passes. Holiness becomes a burst of intensity before a date rather than a settled life—the opposite of what Peter urges (2 Peter 3:11–14).
And here’s the deepest irony. Date-setting looks like burning faith. It’s unbelief in costume. It demands the certainty God has withheld instead of resting in the certainty He has given.
WARNING SIGNS OF A DATE-SETTING MOVEMENT
- Number-crunching from outside Scripture: gematria, calendars, eclipse cycles.
- Claims of private revelation: “the Lord showed me a date.”
- Followers drawn away from their local churches, and contempt for the ordinary means God has given—preaching, sacraments, prayer—in favour of secret knowledge.
Two objections worth answering
“Surely God reveals His secrets to His prophets” (Amos 3:7). Amos speaks of the message God gave through the prophets—warning of judgement and explaining its meaning, not a diary of dates. God did tell Noah the flood was 7 days off, but Noah received that as head of the covenant family, and Jesus cites that very episode to prove the world had no idea.
“A date would motivate evangelism.” The Great Commission is grounded in Christ’s authority, not a countdown: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore…” (Matthew 28:18–19). Mission driven by a deadline collapses when the deadline does.
One clarification prevents a muddle. That Christ may return at any moment doesn’t mean He will return soon: the master is away “after a long time” (Matthew 25:19). Readiness doesn’t depend on nearness.
The date we already live under
Here’s the turn that makes this urgent rather than academic. We already live under a decisive date we cannot know. “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement” (Hebrews 9:27). For each of us the question of the last day is settled long before the last day arrives.
So we don’t need the date of the second coming. We need to be ready for a day already unmarked on our calendar. So let’s stop calculating. Let’s trust Christ, who bore the judgement for all who are His. Let’s take up our ordinary duties and do them faithfully. And pray, as the church has prayed for 2000 years and will pray until He splits the sky: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).
Wanting Him back is right. Fixing a day for Him isn’t.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Is date-setting actually a sin, or just unwise?
It is more than a lapse of judgement. Jesus states plainly the day is unknown, and Acts 1:7 says the Father has fixed it by His own authority. To announce a date is therefore to claim knowledge God has deliberately reserved, and to speak in His name where He hasn’t spoken. That is why Harold Camping, looking back on his own predictions, described the attempt itself as sinful rather than merely mistaken. There’s a difference, of course, between a teacher who publishes a date and a young believer swept along by one. The first needs repentance and, if he holds office, correction from his church; the second needs patient teaching.
If the rapture is a separate, secret event, could a date still apply to something else—like the start of the tribulation?
Christians disagree about the timing and nature of the rapture, and this article doesn’t need to settle that debate. But notice every position on the question holds to imminence—the conviction that Christ may come at any time. A knowable date destroys imminence just as thoroughly whichever scheme you hold, because a countdown to the tribulation is a countdown to everything that follows it. In practice, schemes promising a datable trigger move the guesswork one step back rather than remove it. The wall of Matthew 24:36 doesn’t have a side door.
What about blood moons, eclipses and the Jewish feast calendar? Don’t these point to something?
Astronomical patterns are real; the meanings attached to them aren’t. Eclipse cycles are predictable centuries in advance and recur constantly, which is exactly why they make poor signs. A sign that arrives on schedule signals nothing. As for the numbers in prophecy, GK Beale and Vern S Poythress argue at length that figures such as 1,260 days, 144,000 and 666 in Revelation work symbolically, communicating completeness, limitation or falsehood rather than supplying arithmetic. Read that way, the numbers are doing theology, not timekeeping. The moment a reader treats them as a code to be cracked, the book has been turned into the opposite of what it is—a revelation.
Someone predicted a date and it failed. Are they a false prophet, or just wrong?
Deuteronomy 18:22 gives the test: if a man speaks in the LORD’s name and the word doesn’t come to pass, the LORD didn’t send him. What matters most is what happens next. A man who confesses he spoke presumptuously and submits to correction may be restored. A man who reinterprets the failure—the event happened invisibly, the date was a test, the calculation was slightly off—has revealed a system that can never be wrong, which is the signature of a false teacher rather than an honest one. Churches should be slow to write off the deceived and clear-eyed about the deceivers.
Matthew 24:14 says the gospel must reach all nations first. Can translation statistics give us a rough window?
It’s a serious question, because the verse does describe something that must happen before the end. But “proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations” isn’t a target any agency can certify as met, and Paul could already write of the gospel bearing fruit “in the whole world” (Colossians 1:6) while vast regions had never heard it. Richard B Gaffin Jr. has pressed the point that the whole period between Christ’s ascension and His return is “the last days”—the church has always been living in the final chapter, not approaching it. Mission statistics are a wonderful spur to prayer and giving. They’re not a fuel gauge.
A family member has given away money or left their job over a prediction. How do I help?
Do not begin by arguing about the date; you will simply be handing them a debate they’ve rehearsed. Begin with Jesus’ own definition of watchfulness—the servant found doing his work when the master arrives (Matthew 24:46)—and ask gently whether abandoning that work is really readiness. Bring their pastor and their church into it early, because isolation is what makes these convictions grow. Protect what can be protected practically: savings, employment, the children’s stability. And when the date passes, be there without saying “I told you so”, because the hours after a failed prediction are when people either come home or lose their faith altogether.
Is it wrong to want Jesus to return soon, or to feel disappointed He hasn’t?
Not at all—that longing is commanded, not merely permitted. The earliest Christians prayed “Maranatha”, our Lord, come (1 Corinthians 16:22), and Scripture closes with the Spirit and the bride saying “Come” (Revelation 22:17, 20). Paul speaks of a crown laid up for all who have loved Christ’s appearing (2 Timothy 4:8), which means eagerness for that day is itself a mark of grace. The disappointment is real too, and Scripture does not scold it; it reframes it, telling us the delay is patience, and that in the waiting more people are being brought home. So long for it deeply, pray for it daily, and let that longing show up as holiness and mission rather than mathematics.
Related Reads
- The Second Coming of Jesus: Why Hasn’t He Returned Yet?
- Signs of Christ’s Return: Are We in the Last Days?
- Judgement Day is Almost Here: Are We Ready?
- The Rapture Debate: A Primer on End-Time Bible Prophecy
- Sequence of End-Time Events: What Do We Expect First?
- Sheep and Goats: Does Matthew 25 Hint at a Third Judgement?
