End Times

End Times belief in the book is not a single forecast but a shared expectation interpreted in markedly different ways: Christ will return, history will reach a divinely appointed reckoning, and the faithful will be vindicated. Among Mormon Fundamentalists, that promise can become an imminent prediction, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasizes preparedness without specifying a date. The contrast reveals how the same hope can sustain patient preparation or intensify certainty that the present crisis is about to end.

A Restored American Timeline

The book situates Mormon expectation within a story of restoration that locates sacred history in America. In the account of the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ visits people in the New World after his resurrection, and Joseph Smith’s revelations place both the Garden of Eden and the anticipated return of Christ in America. A revelation about Jackson County identifies the area near Independence as a place of gathering and predicts Christ’s return there before the nineteenth century was out. This historical expectation gives the end of history a distinctly American geography, though the promised return within that century did not occur as foretold.

The narrative also shows how the anticipated future is made visible through public religious performance. Each summer, more than ten thousand Latter-day Saints gather at Hill Cumorah for the pageant staged there since 1937. Its large outdoor production presents Christ appearing, teaching the people, and ascending into the night sky. The pageant is not itself a prediction of when the End Times will arrive; it gives a communal, recurring form to the belief in Christ’s return, placing that promise within a sacred account of the continent.

A further foundation is the sharp moral division described in the Book of Mormon: humanity belongs to one of two churches, aligned with the Lamb of God or the devil. Dan Lafferty’s personal account extends this division into an end-times chronology. In his telling, Christ’s chosen children agreed to endure six thousand years in a world dominated by evil, with each hour of hardship adding to their eventual reward. The period would end with Christ’s return and a thousand-year Millennium, after evil had been removed. His account turns historical time into a moral ledger: suffering is not meaningless, but counted toward a promised future.

Fundamentalist Imminence and Public Signs

For many Mormon Fundamentalists in the book, the End Times are close at hand. Dan Lafferty remains confident that the Last Days will begin at any moment. He expects the trumpet announcing their arrival to release him from maximum-security prison and usher him into the Kingdom of God. His imprisonment therefore does not disprove his religious certainty; he interprets it as a temporary condition before the divine order is revealed.

In Colorado City, Warren Jeffs likewise presents current events as signs that the end is near. His father, Rulon Jeffs, had prophesied that a hurricane of fire would sweep the world clean by 2000, a prediction that failed. The attacks of September 11, 2001, nevertheless renewed Warren’s confidence. Although he condemned the attacks publicly, he described them to followers in Bountiful and Colorado City as a portent of the End Times and a reason for hope that God’s chosen people would soon receive eternal glory. In Bountiful, photographs of the planes striking the World Trade Center were clipped from magazines and displayed in the school halls so students would recognize the attacks as evidence that the Last Days were approaching.

The book connects this expectation to a worldview that sorts people into the righteous and the evil. Dan describes the children of God as possessing love, in contrast to those he identifies as children of the devil. Within his own account, this division gives the anticipated transformation of the world a stark moral shape: the Millennium is imagined as a reward for the chosen, following the removal of those deemed evil. This is Dan’s stated religious interpretation, not a description of a shared timetable accepted by all Latter-day Saints.

Prophecy, Authority, and Preparedness

The End Times also appear in prophecies preserved by Mormon Fundamentalists about the future of religious authority. At a meeting connected with John Taylor’s 1886 revelation, Taylor predicted that during the seventh president’s tenure the Church would enter temporal and spiritual bondage, and that the figure called the One Mighty and Strong in Section 85 of the Doctrine and Covenants would come. The meeting’s participants were also placed under covenant to defend plural marriage and consecrate their lives, liberty, and property to it. In this setting, a prophecy about future bondage and deliverance reinforced a present commitment: the promised future was bound to the continuation of a contested religious principle.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is described as sharing an expectation that the hour is near and that plagues and desolations will precede the Second Coming. Church authorities have urged members to store a year’s worth of food and survival supplies for the coming privation. Yet the book distinguishes this preparedness from the more immediate claims made by fundamentalist prophets: beyond citing scripture that places the world’s end seven thousand years after creation, LDS leaders are circumspect about precisely when the Apocalypse will occur. Preparation is encouraged; a firm date is not supplied.

Hope, Crisis, and the Shape of the Future

Across these accounts, End Times belief joins a forecast of upheaval to a promise of order restored. For Dan, the delay before the Millennium explains why life can feel unbearable while still serving a purpose; his expectation of release from prison is one intensely personal expression of that promise. For Warren Jeffs, contemporary violence becomes confirmation that divine vindication is close. The LDS Church’s emphasis on provisions for a future period of privation expresses the same broad expectation in a more cautious, practical register.

The differences matter. A failed prediction by Rulon Jeffs did not end apocalyptic expectation in Colorado City, and the later interpretation of September 11 renewed it. The End Times thus function in the narrative not only as a belief about the world’s final period, but also as a way of reading events as signs, binding hardship to future reward and strengthening the authority of those who claim to interpret prophecy. The book’s juxtaposition of imminent fundamentalist forecasts with LDS caution shows how a shared expectation can produce very different relations to the present.