[AUG 12 2026]—Total solar eclipse — Greenland / Iceland / Spain—OBSERVED[AUG 28 2026]—Partial lunar eclipse — Americas / Europe—OBSERVED[FEB 17 2026]—Annular solar eclipse — Antarctic—OBSERVED[AUG 02 2027]—Total solar eclipse — longest of the century, Egypt / Saudi Arabia—OBSERVED[MAR 11 2011]—M9.1 Tōhoku earthquake — 15,900 dead—OBSERVED[DEC 26 2004]—M9.1 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami—OBSERVED[FEB 06 2023]—M7.8 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence—OBSERVED[APR 15 2014]—First eclipse of the 2014–15 tetrad—SPECULATION[SEP 28 2015]—Fourth eclipse of the tetrad — nothing recorded—SPECULATION[OCT 21 2011]—Camping's final date — no event recorded—EXPIRED[AUG 12 2026]—Total solar eclipse — Greenland / Iceland / Spain—OBSERVED[AUG 28 2026]—Partial lunar eclipse — Americas / Europe—OBSERVED[FEB 17 2026]—Annular solar eclipse — Antarctic—OBSERVED[AUG 02 2027]—Total solar eclipse — longest of the century, Egypt / Saudi Arabia—OBSERVED[MAR 11 2011]—M9.1 Tōhoku earthquake — 15,900 dead—OBSERVED[DEC 26 2004]—M9.1 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami—OBSERVED[FEB 06 2023]—M7.8 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence—OBSERVED[APR 15 2014]—First eclipse of the 2014–15 tetrad—SPECULATION[SEP 28 2015]—Fourth eclipse of the tetrad — nothing recorded—SPECULATION[OCT 21 2011]—Camping's final date — no event recorded—EXPIRED
The Claimants
Who is expected, who is feared, and everyone who has been accused of being either. Quoted texts are SCRIPTURE or TRADITION. Identifications are SPECULATION. The register is long, and its length is the finding.
The parallel register: figures held to be the Mashiach, the Mahdi, or the returned Christ, audited against the criteria their own traditions state. Where a claim is still held by a living community, it is recorded as disputed and both positions are stated.
Three numbers, three different questions. THE FIT asks what the texts require. COVERAGE VOLUME asks how loudly it is discussed. THE CONSENSUS asks what our readers believe. They rarely agree. That disagreement is the finding.
Led the revolt against Rome as the messianic king, striking coins for the redemption of Israel.
Endorsed by
Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, who applied Numbers 24:17 to him and is reported as saying “this is the King Messiah”; opposed at the time by Rabbi Yohanan ben Torta.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — killed at Betar, 135. Rabbi Akiva's endorsement was subsequently treated in the tradition as the standing example of how a great sage can be wrong about this.
The fitMEETS 1 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA14%
The fit
14%
MEETS 1 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Jerusalem Talmud, Taanit 4:5; Dio Cassius; documentary papyri
JUDAISM · 1648–1676, with the movement's peak in 1665–66
The claim
Proclaimed himself Mashiach and announced the redemption for 1666 — the year itself part of the fervour, arrived at from Christian as well as Jewish apocalyptic arithmetic then in circulation.
Endorsed by
Nathan of Gaza, who proclaimed him and served as his prophet; endorsed or tolerated by communal leadership across the Ottoman empire, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and England at the movement's height.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — converted to Islam in 1666 and died in 1676. The largest messianic movement in Jewish history since bar Kokhba collapsed within months of its own announced date.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah; Ottoman court records
Claimed to continue Shabbetai Zevi's messianic role, teaching that redemption came through transgression.
Endorsed by
The Frankist movement in Podolia and Poland, which regarded him as the successor to Shabbetai Zevi's soul; rejected and placed under ban by the rabbinic authorities of Brody and elsewhere.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — converted to Catholicism in 1759; died in 1791 with nothing effected.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe
DISPUTED
JUDAISM · Claim advanced from the early 1990s; the Rebbe died in 1994
The claim
That the Rebbe is Mashiach — held by some in the movement to be pending his revelation, and by some to be unaffected by his death.
Endorsed by
A messianist current within Chabad-Lubavitch which holds that he is the Mashiach; the position is rejected by much of Chabad's own institutional leadership and by the broad mainstream of Orthodox authorities, and the Rebbe himself discouraged the proclamation in his lifetime.
Outcome
UNRESOLVED WITHIN THE MOVEMENT, REJECTED OUTSIDE IT — the Rebbe died on 12 June 1994. Whether Maimonides' falsification clause settles the matter is exactly what the two sides disagree about.
Standing dispute
Presented as a live intra-Jewish dispute with both positions stated. The messianist position holds that the identification stands; Chabad's institutional leadership in large part, and Orthodox authorities broadly, hold that it does not and that advancing it is a departure. This surface does not adjudicate between them, and the score above is the criteria list applied mechanically, not a verdict.
The fitMEETS 1 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA14%
The fit
14%
MEETS 1 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 11:4; contemporary Chabad and Orthodox responsa
Declared himself al-Mahdi in June 1881 and led the war that took Khartoum in 1885.
Endorsed by
His Ansar followers, who accepted his proclamation and established the Mahdist state; rejected by the Ottoman-Egyptian religious establishment and by the ulama of al-Azhar.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — died of typhus in June 1885, five months after taking Khartoum; the Mahdist state he founded was destroyed at Omdurman in 1898.
The fitMEETS 1 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA17%
The fit
17%
MEETS 1 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan (1970)
No free image
Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani
SPECULATION
ISLAM · November–December 1979
The claim
Proclaimed al-Mahdi inside the Masjid al-Haram during the seizure of 20 November 1979.
Endorsed by
Juhayman al-Otaybi, who proclaimed him during the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Makkah; the claim was condemned by the Saudi ulama, who issued the fatwa permitting force to retake the mosque.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — killed during the retaking of the mosque in December 1979. The traditions cited by the group had also stated the Mahdi would not shed blood in the sanctuary.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca (2007); Saudi state records
Claimed to be both the promised Mahdi and the Messiah, holding that the awaited second advent was fulfilled in his person in a spiritual rather than bodily sense.
Endorsed by
The Ahmadiyya community, which he founded and which holds him to be the promised Mahdi and Messiah; rejected by mainstream Sunni and Shia authorities, and the basis on which several states classify Ahmadis as non-Muslim.
Outcome
DISPUTED — died in 1908. The Ahmadiyya community holds the claim; mainstream Sunni and Shia authorities reject it. The score above applies the hadith criteria list as stated and does not adjudicate the standing of the community.
Standing dispute
Ahmadis are a persecuted minority in several jurisdictions, and this entry records a doctrinal dispute over a claim, not a judgement about a community. The Ahmadiyya position reads several criteria metaphorically; mainstream authorities read them literally and reject the claim on that basis.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Ahmadiyya primary literature; rulings of mainstream Sunni and Shia authorities
Public domainLater artistic impression — no likeness from life exists
Ann Lee, “Mother Ann”
SPECULATION
CHRISTIANITY · 1770s–1784
The claim
Held by her followers to embody the second appearing of Christ in female form, completing a dual male-and-female revelation, and to have been given the celibate perfectionist order the community then built its common life around.
Endorsed by
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing — the Shakers — who regarded her as the second appearing of Christ in female form; no wider Christian body accepted the claim.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — died in 1784. The community persisted for two centuries in diminishing numbers and now stands at almost none; there was no general resurrection and no judgement.
Internal and external assessment
Two assessments, and they do not agree. Against the mainstream Christian criteria audited above — a bodily return on the clouds, visible to all, with a general resurrection — the claim scores very low. Inside Shaker theology it is considerably more coherent: that framework does not expect a visible sky-borne return at all, reads the second appearing as already accomplished in her, and treats the celibate community itself as the promised order. The low external score measures distance from one tradition's stated criteria, not incoherence in the other.
Christ returned as a woman from Manchester and founded the most successful celibate real-estate network in early America.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Stephen Stein, The Shaker Experience in America (1992)
Claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, commissioned to establish the Heavenly Kingdom on earth.
Endorsed by
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which he founded and ruled; rejected by every Christian mission then operating in China.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — died in 1864 as Nanjing fell. The rebellion is among the deadliest conflicts in recorded history, with deaths estimated in the tens of millions.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Claimed to be the final prophet and the Lamb of Revelation, alone able to open the seven seals.
Endorsed by
The Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel; rejected by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, from which the group had separated decades earlier.
Outcome
FALSIFIED — died at Mount Carmel, Waco, on 19 April 1993, with 75 others.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 5 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Report of the Department of Justice on the Waco incident (1993)
Aggregate entry — no portraits
Modern self-proclaimed Mahdis and messiahs, as a class
SPECULATION
ISLAM · 20th–21st century, across several traditions
The claim
Recurring small-scale claims to be the Mahdi, the Mashiach, or the returned Christ. The pattern rather than any individual is the entry: a claimant appears, gathers a following in the hundreds or low thousands, sets a date or announces an imminent restoration, and the claim ends when the claimant dies, is arrested, or the date passes. Documented cases include the group that seized the shrine at Najaf in January 2007, reported as the “Soldiers of Heaven”, and a steady stream of assorted internet prophets since. No living private individual is named here.
Endorsed by
Small followings gathered around each claimant, typically local, occasionally armed, increasingly assembled online. No recognised religious authority in any tradition has endorsed any of them.
Outcome
RECURRING — MOSTLY FALSIFIED. Most collapse with the claimant's death or arrest. A few persist as micro-sects for a generation or two, which is the same trajectory every entry above this one followed at the same stage.
The eschatological version of open-mic night.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 6 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Contemporary news reporting and scholarly surveys of modern messianic movements; no individual living claimant is named
No depiction, by rule
Jesus of Nazareth, as evaluated by three traditions
DISPUTED
CHRISTIANITY · First century; the claim is live in two traditions
The claim
The baseline card of this register, and the reason THE FIT exists. Three traditions apply their own stated criteria to the same figure and reach three different results. This card reports those results; it does not adjudicate between them.
Endorsed by
Christianity in all its branches, which holds him to be the Messiah and the divine Son; Islam, which holds him to be a prophet and the Messiah; and mainstream rabbinic Judaism, which does not, and states why on its own criteria.
Outcome
LIVING CLAIM (CHRISTIAN AND ISLAMIC) / REJECTED AS MESSIAH (MAINSTREAM JEWISH). The audit above scores the first coming against the Maimonidean criteria, and it scores low, because those criteria describe things that demonstrably did not happen in the first century — which is precisely the ground on which mainstream Judaism declines the claim. It is not a verdict. Christian and Islamic frameworks both hold the sequence to be unfinished by design, so a first-coming score cannot close a claim whose completion is placed in a return. Read it as what it is: one tradition's checklist, applied honestly, with the other two traditions' reasons for regarding the checklist as premature stated in the same card.
Three traditions, three results
CHRISTIANITYMESSIAH AND DIVINE SON — RETURN AWAITED
Holds the first coming as the atonement and the second as the completion, so the criteria concerning the Davidic kingdom, the rebuilt Temple and universal peace are read as belonging to a return that has not happened. On this framework the sequence is unfinished by design.
JUDAISM (MAINSTREAM RABBINIC)NOT THE MESSIAH
Applies the Maimonidean criteria audited below and finds them unmet in the first century: no restored Davidic kingdom, no rebuilt Temple, no ingathering of the exiles and no world peace. The tradition's own falsification rule is explicit — a candidate who dies before completing these things is thereby not the Messiah — and it is the same rule the tradition applied to Bar Kokhba and to Shabbetai Zevi in the entries above.
ISLAMPROPHET AND MESSIAH — DID NOT DIE, RETURN EXPECTED
Holds him as ʿĪsā, a prophet and the Masīḥ, born of a virgin, who was not crucified to death but raised, and whose return is expected alongside the Mahdi. Not divine, and not a claimant to divinity.
The only figure who is simultaneously the answer and the question depending on which book you open.
Standing dispute
This card is not a debunking, and it is not an endorsement. It is the register's control: the figure whose evaluation differs most sharply between traditions applying their own criteria in good faith. Roughly 2.4 billion Christians hold the claim, roughly 2 billion Muslims hold a different version of it, and mainstream rabbinic Judaism rejects it on the same criteria this surface uses to audit every other Jewish messianic claimant — the same criteria, applied by the same tradition, to Bar Kokhba, Shabbetai Zevi and Jacob Frank. Cross-reference THE FOUNDERS for the historical record; nothing on this surface adjudicates the theology.
The fitMEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA0%
The fit
0%
MEETS 0 OF 7 STATED CRITERIA
Coverage volume
—
No matched coverage
The consensus
—
Insufficient sample — n=0
DORMANT
Do you believe this claim?
THE CONSENSUS is not a poll of the public. It is a poll of people who voluntarily visit an apocalypse dashboard. Weight accordingly.
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 11; the canonical Gospels; Qur'an 4:157–158 and 3:45; standard reference works on each tradition's messianic doctrine
SourcePrimary and scholarly record, cited per card
