You mean, we don't see it today in those communities. Predictions of imminent apocalyptic doom were a little more common in earlier historical times, and was typically a go-to explanation for a catastrophic event like the Black Death.
That's simply untrue.
Can you point to any encyclicals, papal bulls, papal addresses, historical documents, or anything at all that might support this claim?
You can't, because you have fabricated it. The fact is that the church did not react in such a way.
The major religious reactions to the black death took two forms. The first was blaming the Jews, something that Pope Clement wrote a Papal Bull to try to stop (calling the blaming of the Jews a lie from the devil, and calling on Christian churches to protect the Jews in their communities). The other was the rise of flagellant brotherhoods. These brotherhoods were not an outgrowth of the church, but were fanatic fringe movements. Contrary to your claim that they saw this as signs of the end of the world, they instead saw it as a punishment from God and taught that if they appeased God through flagellation, they could make it stop.
There simply isn't any evidence that there was ever widespread belief in any particular end of the world predictions tied to catastrophic events.
I will agree that not every single Christian expected to be Raptured last week.
Probably no one did. None of the predictions involved a rapture coinciding with the blood moon.
The larger question is, how many take it seriously?
From the look of it, hardly anyone.
That said, I'm gonna stick with Pew's numbers. A 2010 poll showed that 41% believe Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. Evangelicals lead the way (58%) but Catholics are far from immune (31%). (
Jesus Christ?s Return to Earth | Pew Research Center)
That has nothing to do with your claim. Your claim was that Christians have been repeating a cycle of making predictions about the impending end of the world, then discarding those predictions when they don't come true and moving on to a new one.
That Jesus will return is obviously a teaching of Christianity. The fact that 51% of evangelicals and 31% Catholics think it will probably be within the next 40 years doesn't in any way imply that they believe in any of these silly predictions that fringe elements prop up. It doesn't in any way support your claim that they are involved in a cycle of failed predictions. It simply shows they think the end is probably sooner rather than later.
Thus, my phrasing may be a bit broad, but hardly a major cause for objection to the basic principle -- especially since I was quite clear that the underlying cognitive error is not in any way unique to Christians.
The basic premise was wrong. There is no evidence that Christianity has been in a cycle of failed predictions. There is evidence that there have always been fringe elements, primarily within the evangelical community, which do fall into those cycles. But there is no evidence that this is at all common within Christianity.
I could probably make the case that these fringe elements are primarily motivated by money. It's awfully suspicious that this always seems to come from the usual suspects at TBN. If we look at the sources for this blood moon thing, we can trace it back to a series of books, dvds, and other materials two specific people whose livelihood revolves around these sorts of predictions are trying to sell. But I don't have the interest to actually do the research to back that up. I'll just call that my suspicion.