# The End of the World — Character guide

> Key figures in The End of the World by Geoffrey Dennis.

- [Jesus Christ](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/jesus_christ.md): 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 tra
- [William Miller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/william_miller.md): 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 on
- [Doctor Auriol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/doctor_auriol.md): Cleric who debated the 1524 deluge prophecy with astrologer Stoffler.
- [Crazy Amos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/crazy_amos.md): Local eccentric who spreads doom-laden predictions about the end.
- [Henry Howard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/henry_howard.md): English nobleman and poet, referenced in end-times contexts.
- [Elder Joshua](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/elder_joshua.md): Religious leader who interprets biblical signs of the apocalypse.
- [Mother Shipton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/mother_shipton.md): Legendary English prophetess known for dire predictions.
- [Queen Elizabeth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/queen_elizabeth.md): English queen whose reign is linked to apocalyptic numerology.
- [Satan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/satan.md): 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 b
- [Buddha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/buddha.md): Founder of Buddhism, mentioned in comparative end-times discussions.
- [Julius Africanus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/julius_africanus.md): Early Christian historian who calculated the world's age.
- [Jehovah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/jehovah.md): 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: w
- [Noah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/noah.md): Biblical patriarch who survived the Flood, a type of end-times survival.
- [Daniel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/daniel.md): 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. H
- [Chronos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/chronos.md): Personification of time in Greek myth, used as a metaphor for endings.
- [Stoffler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/stoffler.md): Astrologer who predicted a global flood in 1524.
- [Paul of Tarsus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters/paul_of_tarsus.md): Apostle whose writings on the end times are frequently cited.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_end_of_the_world_se/characters