What would be a good illustration of the attitude toward the future that Jesus has spoken about? Would it be someone poring over biblical texts, looking for clues to predict the end? Or would it be a police officer, patrolling a tough section of town in the middle of the night? Listen and decide.

            In the first part of the 19^th century a man named William Miller spent a long time studying what the Bible says about the future and concluded that the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world would be sometime between October 1843 and October 1844. He gathered a lot of followers, and as the end of the period approached their anticipation became intense. On the last night of the window of opportunity, some of Miller’s disciples gathered on a hill outside town wearing white robes, waiting for Jesus to appear. One joker who wasn’t impressed by the prediction snuck up on them and, at midnight, blew a blast on his trumpet. Some of the believers leaped into the air, expecting to be caught up in the clouds. They weren’t.

            You might think that this would end the practice of trying to predict the end of the world, but you would be wrong. People started trying to figure out where Miller had gone wrong and to revise his calculations. They formed churc

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