The famous—or perhaps more accurately infamous—Endtimes prophet Hal Lindsey recently died. His passing produced surprisingly little fuss outside of evangelicalism. Irony may have a sense of humor there, since Jimmy Carter also recently passed too, and almost everyone seems to be talking about him.

It seems strange even to put the name of Hal Lindsey in the same sentence as Jimmy Carter, except as illustrations of polar opposites. One man helped humanity in countless tangible ways. The other grifted his way through life by selling worried Christian normies doom-and-gloom Endtimes prophecies that never, ever came true. Indeed, Hal Lindsey might be almost single-handedly responsible for the entire Endtimes prophecy fad that swept through evangelicalism between the 1970s and the 2010s.

These days, the prophecy fad’s long over—at least at the highest levels of evangelical leadership. But today, let’s see how Hal Lindsey whipped generations of evangelicals into a fancy froth over the Rapture and the end of the world—only to see that entire genre of publishing and preaching fall apart.

(This post first went live on Patreon on 1/3/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! Also, all emphases in my quotes come from their original source unless I say otherwise.)

Everyone, meet Hal Lindsey

Toward the end of the Endtimes prophecy fad, newer names dominated the grift game. But its first real star and number-one huckster was Hal Lindsey. Without him, the entire Endtimes genre of publishing and preaching wouldn’t look nearly the same. He taught evangelicals how to respond to hucksters like himself—and how to judge Endtimes prophecies on the hucksters’ terms alone.

Hal Lindsey was born in 1929 in Houston. It was a very fine time to be an evangelical wackadoo. After graduating from the University of Houston and serving in the Coast Guard, he began working with Campus Crusade for Christ, a college student-focused evangelism group. (These days, they go by “Cru.” Someone there finally figured out what a bad look it is for evangelicals to call their hard-sales, high-pressure recruitment tactics a “crusade.”)

Hal Lindsey helped Cru out until 1969. Perhaps he already had his eye on something grander. That year, Hal Lindsey finished his first and best known book: The Late Great Planet Earth. Zondervan published it the next year. Most of the rest of his life and career centered around his book and its associated projects. He bounced around evangelical TV networks for a while.

The Late Great Planet Earth made Hal Lindsey and his publisher a fortune

When Hal Lindsey got his book published in 1970, normies were mostly Christian. They’d never really encountered fundamentalists’ breathless brand of wackadoo prophecy. Hal Lindsey’s confident predictions fascinated them. Of course, his book had the same basis in fact as Jeane Dixon’s horoscopes and celebrity predictions. But Lindsey focused on purely Christian themes like the end of the world, massive multinational wars between Good and Evil, and the Earth itself getting annihilated by dark forces. Dixon tended to stay away from that kind of thing, though in 1971 she did predict Armageddon in 2020 and Jesus’ Second Coming by 2037.

Even my very Catholic mother had a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth on her eclectic “religion” shelf. It nestled there alongside such works as Bullfinch’s Mythology, Chariots of the Gods, and, oddly, Dianetics. I don’t think either of us realized what it was. But I must have tried to read it—along with Dianetics, for that matter. After all, I read everything. Alas, I remember absolutely nothing of the attempt. Without much of a framework for understanding his worldview, its histrionics clearly flowed over and past me.

Regardless, The Late Great Planet Earth made Hal Lindsey a household name for millions of people. It also endeared him to countless conspiracy-theorist evangelicals. More than that, though, he jump-started a whole new career path for evangelical leaders. From the 1970s to the 2010s, dozens of them would try their hand at predicting the Endtimes.

And, like those of Hal Lindsey himself, all of their predictions would fail.

On November 25, Hal Lindsey died at the age of 95. None of his prophecies about the Endtimes had ever come true.

(See also: Hal Lindsey thinks prophecy is super-important. Oh, and guess what? Tim LaHaye, one of of the creators of the terribad Left Behind franchise, also died with none of his predictions happening.)

A word (from the Lord) about evangelical prophecy

In evangelicalism, one finds several kinds of prophecy.

First, we encounter the big, bombastic, Endtimes predictions made by the Hal Lindsey types. These almost always follow Lindsey’s lead by trying to shoehorn current world events into their warped misreading of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. In this interpretation, Earth would have “70 Weeks” to live. Each “week” lasts 7 years. In 30 CE, Yahweh paused the clock at 69 weeks. Christians must convert everyone they can during this grace period. But once the 70th week begins, the world will end. You can see their logic in the best damn diagram ever made:

the prophecy of the 70 weeks of daniel, best diagram ever

That’s why Israel declaring itself a nation in 1948 was such a big deal to that crowd. It meant that Yahweh was restarting the “70 Weeks” any time now. The Endtimes were at hand! Joel 2:28 was happening right now!

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions [. . .] [Joel 2:28]

Even though such prophets’ salad days are done, big bombastic predictions are still a genre within evangelicalism. Their websites often run posts containing for-realsies prophecies about the year(s) ahead. Nobody ever holds prophets responsible for their failures (even if the Bible repeatedly advises Christians to do so), so it’s an easy grift.

(See also: Reminder! The Endtimes are still happening any day now!)

Because nobody holds them responsible for failure, Endtimes prophets themselves just leap ahead to another prediction when one fails. As an example, back in 2018 I tracked the various predictions of a little-known Endtimes prophet, Riley Stephenson. At the time, he had both a website and a YouTube channel devoted to the making of bombastic Endtimes predictions.

When I went to archive his site, however, I discovered in the Internet Archive that he’d made a great number of other predictions going back to about 2015. Every time he was wrong, he just updated the site with a new date! After 2018, of course, he kept going like that. Around February of 2020, he predicted that the Rapture would occur between March and May of that year. Even before May had fully passed, though, he updated the date to “Summer of 2020.” But that, too failed. This was apparently his last try. The site’s last archive capture was in May 2021, and it still lists the 2020 prediction. After that capture, the entire domain disappeared from the internet.

Sidebar: Down the rabbithole, we learn someone might have learned from Hal Lindsey’s failures

Incidentally, the “KBwealth” part of the URL hints that our failed prophet got sucked into the “KaratBars” multi-level marketing scam. It’s possible that the owner of the site figured out the scam’s nature and dropped the domain registration.

However, the associated YouTube account, “gevte,” still exists. Its owner was still publishing videos as recently as September 2024. According to that last video’s info box, it seems like the Rapture website gave way to a Google Drive document. The Google document is identical to the Rapture website. Every so often, some other evangelical writes about him, but he’s much more of a presence on YouTube—with a surprisingly large 54k subscriber count, too.

On the Google doc, it doesn’t lead with the failed prophet’s new prediction date, but he seems very focused on the Feast of Trumpets (occurring October 2-4), 2024 as the start of Earth’s last seven years. He also explicitly predicted the Rapture, along with a total “economic banking collapse,” around November 5th. Obviously, neither happened, so when he gets around to updating his page I reckon he’ll change it again.

Interestingly, Hal Lindsey also updated his prediction dates for Earth’s last year of existence. A writer for Baptist News Global, Rodney Kennedy, claimed he’d found over 60 different dates that Hal Lindsey predicted for the end of the world! These ranged from 1980 to 2021. By the time he died, he’d updated the prediction to 2037—and I doubt he even expected to live to see that year.

It’s a good idea to make the prediction so far out in the future that nobody can quickly debunk it!

The other major forms of prophecy, just for accuracy’s sake

In another form of prophecy, evangelical pew-warmers get a profound message from Yahweh himself, then communicate that divine message to others. Often called “a word from the Lord,” this kind of prophecy often contains no actual, concrete predictions or dates or anything else. Often, these prophecies specifically avoid such predictions. They usually only function as a rah-rah message to the flock, with at most a dire warning of some nonspecific trouble arriving in some nonspecific-but-near-future time.

In churches that practice speaking in tongues (a form of euphoria-induced glossolalia), often the person claiming to have received the prophecy interrupts a sermon to deliver it in babbled form. After that, someone then “translates” it for the audience.

(If you’re wondering, there is no screaming social anxiety worse than sitting in church waiting for the “translation.” I’ve been there many times. Every second of those dreadful silences stretches past forever. Every person there is sweating until someone finally reluctantly breaks the awkward silence with the rah-rah message. If nobody does it, then the pastor might do it, or the “prophet” themselves. In that case, the prophecy’s true nature starts looking all too obvious, so it’s not the ideal outcome.)

In still another form of prophecy, a church or denomination might formally appoint someone to be their official “prophet.” In this sense, the prophet sets the tone and direction for the group. He—and yes, almost always this’ll be a man—might not deliver specific predictions, but the group considers him to be speaking for Yahweh. So this point man functions more like the Old Testament-style official prophets Samuel and Elijah. You can read more about this type of prophet here (p. 2, the paragraph labeled “a.”)

There are even more forms of prophecy, of course, but these are the main ones. For today’s purposes, we’ll be examining the first variety.

And why evangelicals fight like they do over prophecy

When I talk about evangelicals and prophecy, bear in mind that quite a few evangelicals reject the kind of prophecies peddled by Endtimes hucksters like Hal Lindsey. Here’s a very entertaining slapfight that occurred just this past spring between Josh Buice (opposing) and Sam Storm (huckstering):

They sound like comic book fans arguing about their favorite superhero. So in response to their extremely earnest bickering, I’ll first say that the Lego Batman is really the best Batman.

Summarizing the two sides of the prophecy slapfight

Prophecy hucksters believe that when the Endtimes are due to begin, Yahweh will pour out his “gift of prophecy” on the flocks. Rick Joyner, an old hand at all of this blahblah, wrote in 2011:

As we have discussed and as we are told in Acts 2:17-21, in “the last days” prophetic gifts will be poured out. This is because we will need this kind of increasingly clear guidance in the times that are unfolding. I was told that the anointing on the prophetic will double this year, and we have already seen a great increase. As we are exhorted in Scripture to “desire earnestly spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy” (see I Corinthians 14:1), this is something we must obey.

They also make a big deal out of the fact that the Bible doesn’t explicitly say anywhere that these showy displays will ever end. To their credit, it doesn’t.

However, Josh Buice and likeminded Christians feel that Hal Lindsey-style prophecy peddling is downright dangerous to believers. Not only are failed dates a serious stumbling block to the flocks’ faith, these opponents argue, but prophecy hucksters themselves lead the flocks into sin by idolizing the Endtimes over obeying Jesus.

Opponents usually rationalize their opinion by claiming that after Paul, all those big showy divine gifts ceased—which is why they call themselves cessationists. (The other side are continuationists, apparently.) Now that the Christian canonical Bible has been established, Christians must keep their faith alive through the Bible itself, not through idolizing big showy divine gifts. In other words, the Bible must be “sufficient” for Christians. So the way prophecy hucksters work threatens the sufficiency of the Bible, which in turn puts Christians’ very souls at risk.

Thus, Josh Buice dismisses Rapture predictions and Endtimes prophecies as the work of “mystics” enthralled by exciting displays of supernatural power—and the entire continuationist movement as a cult.

Buice raised some very serious accusations, which is likely why Sam Storm in turn devoted three entire blog posts to his retort. Storm’s outraged three-part reply doesn’t do much to prove Buice wrong, either. And I say that as someone who once completely sympathized with Storm’s doctrinal stance!

Hal Lindsey made prophecy hucksters rich for a long time, but not forever

Despite so much opposition from the more Calvinist end of evangelicalism, the prophecy hucksters got rich off of their grifting all the way until the 2010s. When their bubble finally burst, their opposition had nothing to do with the ride’s end.

I suspect the ending of that money train had a lot more to do with the rise of social media. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that social media became a big major deal right around Harold Camping’s most famous 2011 and 2012 Rapture predictions.

Way back in Ye Olden Dayes before social media, Rapture predictions could be easily forgotten and moved past. Even when I was Christian myself, I noticed how quickly my tribe memory-holed Harold Whisenant’s infamous 1988 prediction (which I’ve called the “88 Reasons Rapture Scare”). Starting around when I joined Pentecostalism, that particular prediction whipped people into a frenzy. My church’s younger members panicked because we had no idea it was one of a very long line of similar—and similarly failed—predictions. At any time, my first pastor could easily have calmed us down. He chose not to. None of the church’s other older members did either.

When Harold Camping’s predictions came out, social media was in full swing. Suddenly, it became much easier to keep track of failed Rapture prophecies—and failed prophets themselves. I don’t think most people even realized in 2011 that Camping had made a number of failed guesses starting in 1993. But when 2011 failed and Camping updated it to 2012 and that failed too, we sure as hell did notice.

And we noticed every single other time a relatively-high-profile Christian trotted out a prediction.

Camping and these other prophets became laughingstocks to the normies, who only a generation or two before had been so fascinated with Harold Camping’s dire predictions. It must have been quite a shock—to both him and his fellow high-level prophecy hucksters.

The end was nigh, though—just not for Earth

Prophecy hucksters’ new normal of being laughingstocks took a little time to filter down to the rest of the industry. But filter down it did. By 2018, I noticed a distinct downtick in the number of Endtimes predictions—along with a decline in the popularity and fame of their creators.

John Hagee might hold the honor of being the last super-popular, super-famous evangelical leader to make a very public Rapture prediction. His prediction hilariously centered itself on the fact that between 2014 and 2015, we’d see an interesting and fairly rare astronomical event called a “tetrad” —four consecutive and complete lunar eclipses, or “blood moons.” Hagee predicted the Rapture by the time of the last eclipse in the tetrad on September 28, 2015.

At the time, I remember astronomy bloggers poking fun at him and his very willfully-ignorant prediction. The humiliation Hagee suffered might be why he kept very, very quiet in 2018 when a far lesser-known huckster, Paul Begley, predicted that the Rapture would occur on the date of a so-called “Super Blood Wolf Moon.” Obviously, it failed too.

More to the point, Begley’s Rapture prediction was so low-profile that Wikipedia doesn’t even list it on its “Apocalypse predictions” page or its “Second Coming predictions” page. Since then, I haven’t seen a prominent Christian leader offer any predictions.

It used to be fun to watch evangelicals squabble about exactly when, along that last seven years of that last 70th week, the Rapture would occur. Alas, those arguments no longer occur in easily-found places.

That difficulty is part of the ultimate legacy of Hal Lindsey.

The legacy of Hal Lindsey

In 2017, Humanities magazine offered a decidedly non-ethereal look at Hal Lindsey. He owned sportscars and operated a personal management business that dealt in long-term investments. Neither fit the public’s opinion of a prophet! And, of course, reputable Bible scholars and theologians denounced him and his prophecies.

That Humanities writer marveled at the sharp dichotomy between Lindsey’s fans and the many scholars who knew he was just a bullshit artist who’d found his ANGLE.

But those two groups still exist, as we saw in the Josh Buice/Sam Storm argument. They always will. They’re the two sides of the Christian coin.

So despite the opposition against Hal Lindsey and his predictions, laypeople glommed onto his hucksters’ wares. I can see why, too! He offered them easily-digested predictions about current world events, lots of death and mayhem to titillate the senses, and complicated conspiracy theories. To quite a few Christians, that stuff was catnip.

It still is.

Even though Endtimes prophecies and Rapture predictions have gone out of style at the highest levels of visibility online, they both still exist in the Christ-o-sphere. Their hucksters are just lower profile. They’re also sounding more secular, too, as we saw in recent years’ QAnon conspiracies and COVID-19 denialism.

Most of all, prophecy hucksters have learned two very, very important lessons from Hal Lindsey’s example:

  1. Don’t name specific dates for the Endtimes!
  2. If you must name a specific date, make it many years in the future—so you’ll be dead and therefore immune to humiliation when it fails!

If Hal Lindsey can’t be an inspiration to others, then perhaps at least he can serve as a warning!

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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