Armageddon

Armageddon, as presented in the late-1990s prophecy of Rulon Jeffs, was an imminent apocalypse that promised salvation for his followers and catastrophe for everyone else. When the foretold end did not arrive in 2000, Jeffs made his followers’ obedience—not the prediction—responsible for its failure, allowing the unfulfilled prophecy to reinforce religious discipline.

The promised apocalypse

As the new millennium approached, Rulon Jeffs assured followers that they would soon be lifted to the Celestial Kingdom. The rest of the world, whom he characterized as wicked, would be swept away by pestilence, hail, famine, and earthquake. The prophecy thus divided the future into rescue for the faithful and destruction for those outside their ranks.

The expectation shaped decisions before the predicted catastrophe arrived. Fearing that single women would be left behind to perish because they had not been given the opportunity to live the Principle, Jeffs arranged marriages for a number of teenage girls to older men who were already married. Ruth Stubbs was one of these brides. In this way, the anticipated apocalypse became a reason to hasten marriages within the community.

The missed date and its explanation

The year 2000 came and went without Armageddon and without anyone being lifted up. Rather than withdraw the prophecy, Jeffs told his followers that they had brought its failure upon themselves by not being sufficiently obedient. The residents responded contritely and promised to live more righteously, shifting the consequence of an unfulfilled prediction onto the people who had believed it.

Prophecy as discipline

Apostate DeLoy Bateman observed that predictions of the world’s end could serve Jeffs regardless of whether they came true: if the apocalypse failed to arrive, he could blame the people’s iniquities and use that explanation to control them in the future. The episode shows how the failed forecast did not simply end the expectation. Its revised explanation made obedience the continuing test, while the threatened distinction between the saved and the condemned remained in place.