The Great and Dreadful Day

The Great and Dreadful Day is an apocalyptic expression for the moment when Christ returns to judge the world and establish God’s kingdom. In the book, its most consequential interpretation comes from Dan Lafferty, who turns the language of judgment and harvest into a framework for understanding his own violence. The phrase thus joins a promised future reckoning to the immediate consequences of his actions.

Apocalyptic Meaning

Dan imagines earthly life as a struggle between the children of God and the children of the devil, with the Great and Dreadful Day marking the arrival of Christ and the sorting of humanity. The day is great for those he considers God’s children and dreadful for those he casts as their enemies. He connects this distinction to the biblical parable of the wheat and tares: at the harvest, those who do not belong to Christ are gathered out of the kingdom and killed.

This account makes the expression more than a prediction of distant upheaval. It gives Dan a narrative in which present disorder is temporary, suffering serves a divine purpose, and a final judgment will expose who belongs to God. The promised thousand-year reign becomes the culmination of that history.

Dan Lafferty’s Interpretation

Dan interprets the prophesied reapers not as supernatural beings descending from heaven but as men already living on earth who, once instructed, carry out what they understand to be God’s work. He invokes the idea of avenging agents associated with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and presents himself as someone who can identify Christ and prepare the righteous for the coming kingdom.

He describes the killings of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty as a foreshadowing of the Great and Dreadful Day. In his interpretation, the murders become an advance enactment of the harvest he expects: a human act assigned apocalyptic significance by the person who commits it. The book’s account makes clear the gap between Dan’s religious explanation and the harm his actions inflicted.

Signs and the Coming Kingdom

Dan links the expression to his belief that he has a role in announcing the arrival of Christ and initiating the thousand-year reign of God’s kingdom. A year or two after his incarceration, he recalls hearing a voice tell him that the moon would shine from noon until nine. He later interpreted this as a sign of Christ’s return, while admitting that he did not know how such an event would occur.

The sign extends the same pattern that governs Dan’s reading of the Great and Dreadful Day: an uncertain future is given a definite religious meaning, and that meaning is tied to his own sense of prophetic purpose. The expression therefore marks both a collective expectation of final judgment and Dan’s attempt to place his crimes within that expectation.