Character guide

Jesus Christ

major

Also known as Christ, Jesus

Jesus stands at the center of the book's argument about how prophecy works: whether his foretellings in Matthew were meant as literal catastrophe or as a vision in which a trillion years shrivel to a pinpoint. Dennis traces how the four gospels rarefy the terror from Matthew's physical fear to John's philosophical calm, and how the early Church, reading the time-phrases literally, saw Nero and the fall of Jerusalem as the end already arriving. He matters because every later date-setter, from millennial monks to William Miller, is arguing with him.

William Miller

supporting

Also known as William

Miller belongs to the long procession of date-setters Dennis chronicles, the Protestant heirs of a numerological game that passed from the Rabbis and the Sibylline Leaves into eager new hands. His failed prediction is one more entry in the ledger of avoided disasters that shook the Church and then, oddly, left it standing. He matters because his earnest miscalculation shows how the machinery of apocalypse keeps running even after the appointed hour passes without incident.

Doctor Auriol

minor

Also known as good Doctor Auriol of Toulouse, Doctor Auriol of Toulouse

Cleric who debated the 1524 deluge prophecy with astrologer Stoffler.

Crazy Amos

minor

Also known as Amos

Local eccentric who spreads doom-laden predictions about the end.

Henry Howard

minor

Also known as Henry

English nobleman and poet, referenced in end-times contexts.

Elder Joshua

minor

Also known as Joshua

Religious leader who interprets biblical signs of the apocalypse.

Mother Shipton

minor

Legendary English prophetess known for dire predictions.

Queen Elizabeth

minor

English queen whose reign is linked to apocalyptic numerology.

Satan

supporting

Satan figures here less as a horned tempter than as the counterweight in a cosmic argument about whether the world is improving or decaying. Dennis sets the vision of holiness driving him steadily back against the grim biological counter-case: famine, plague, degenerating bodies, civilization sapping man's vigour. He matters because the book's central tension, whether humanity ascends or declines, is fought out on the ground of his supposed defeat.

Buddha

minor

Founder of Buddhism, mentioned in comparative end-times discussions.

Julius Africanus

minor

Also known as Julius

Early Christian historian who calculated the world's age.

Jehovah

supporting

Jehovah presides over the great millennial fevers, when the year 1000 came and went without the Bridegroom, and chiliasts simply recalculated for 1030 or 1033. Dennis catalogs the signs that seemed to confirm the hour: wars, famines, plagues, dragons in the sky, a black wolf ringing the bells of Orleans. He matters because the recurring failure of his announced judgment, and the faith that survives each failure, is the pattern the whole book traces.

Noah

minor

Biblical patriarch who survived the Flood, a type of end-times survival.

Daniel

supporting

Daniel supplies the symbolic architecture, the beasts and kingdoms and numbered weeks, that later interpreters mined for their forecasts, much as Pseudo-Methodius and the Sibylline Leaves were mined in the Middle Ages. His visions sit behind the book's distinction between the spectacular side-issue of planetary destruction and the real end, the Last Judgment of souls. He matters because the whole numerological tradition Dennis chronicles, from Stoffler's 1524 flood to the Fifth Monarchy Men, runs on the rails his prophecies laid down.

Chronos

minor

Personification of time in Greek myth, used as a metaphor for endings.

Stoffler

minor

Also known as the German astrologer Stoffler

Astrologer who predicted a global flood in 1524.

Paul of Tarsus

minor

Also known as St. Paul

Apostle whose writings on the end times are frequently cited.

Tsar Alexander

minor

Russian emperor whose reign is tied to apocalyptic speculation.

Lindbergh

minor

Also known as the lunar Lindbergh

Aviator or lunar explorer, referenced in futuristic end-times scenarios.

Jacob

minor

Biblical patriarch, referenced in genealogical end-times calculations.