Although speculation about the end of the world has become a growth industry in recent decades, the first modern prediction of the Apocalypse was issued in Upstate New York during the 1830s by a mild-mannered farmer named William Miller.
Born in 1782, Miller grew up on a farm in the tiny hamlet of Low Hampton on the Vermont border east of Lake George. His mother’s family were devout Baptists, but young Bill followed his more skeptical father and became a Deist. While not rejecting religion, Deists discounted the notion that God interfered in earthly affairs. [Read more…] about The End Is Near: William Miller’s Apocalypse