The Homer Hermeneutic: 2028 is the New 1988
By Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (April 3, 2026)
Edited by Daniel E. Harden and Eric Rauch, Reviewed by Brett Prieto and Gary DeMar[1]
[7-Minute Read]
Ever since Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book Late Great Planet Earth graced the shelves of bookstores everywhere, American Christians have suffered from an addiction to pop-prophecy fiction. The fact that this approach to Bible prophecy is in fact fiction is evident in the sheer number of failed predictions. That number would be … all of them. Every single one of them. Without fail, they all failed. To date, pop-prophecy has a 100% failure rate.
The quintessential example is all the hype that was associated with the year 1988.
To the chagrin of those who gave that year a prophetic spin, 1988 came and went without an apocalyptic trace. As a support for his 1988 date, Hal Lindsey famously said that a Biblical generation is “something like 40 years.” Now here we are, something like 40 years later, and we now have a new date to circle for the end times to begin.
2028 is the new 1988.
Doomsday Date Update
In his 2013 book What On Earth Is About To Happen For Heaven’s Sake: A Dissertation on End Times According to the Holy Bible, Kent Hovind gave us his own “prediction for the End of Days.”[2] According to Hovind, “you can tentatively pencil Jesus into your calendar for sometime in 2028.”[3] While Hovind’s What on Earth didn’t quite make the splash of Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, it still sent enough waves through the Christian community that are still being felt even now—as the supposed pivotal year of 2028 draws closer.
Cashing in on the action and riding that wave early, David Netherton released The Rapture 2028: America’s Countdown to Apocalypse! in January of 2015. In 2019, Gabriel Ansley offered the world his 2028 END: Declaring the End from the Beginning. A month after the book’s release, the online journal The Week offered this press release:
“Second coming of Christ ‘due in nine years’ (February 20, 2019): An Armageddon group claims clues in the Bible show the second coming of Jesus is due in 2028. Referencing the Book of Matthew, the group, called 2028 The End, states that ‘Jesus Christ’s return on our Gregorian calendar’ is ‘set for the Feast of Trumpets AD 2028.’”[4]
Ansley’s book is still selling due largely to the companion website, where his netizens can track the world’s progress (or lack thereof) as we count down to the supposed “end.”
Other online resources, like R.H. Vargo’s Why 2028? take the reader on a wild ride, stringing together a plethora of unrelated passages of Scripture, in a mind-numbing attempt to make them all relate—somehow—to 2028. It’s pop-prophecy’s typical hopscotch hermeneutic at work, only Vargo puts it in overdrive.
This type of haphazard exegesis is propagated on the popular End Times Bible Prophecy website that purports to show How the Bible is Telling us that Jesus Christ will Return in 2028. The Christian public is eating all of this up as believers on TikTok claim that God has shown them that 2028 is the year to fear in their Rapture dreams.
But average Christians on social media are merely telling what the Christian leadership is selling.
And “selling” is the appropriate word here.
A Prophetic Download
On the YouTube channel Daystar, which has almost 500k subscribers, a pop prophet known as Joseph Z claims that God has given him a “prophetic download” regarding the year 2028.[5] Joseph Z says, “The Lord began to point out 2028 to me and said, ‘This is the year of the gate.’”[6] He tells his audience point blank: “I am prophesying to you right now.”[7] And he’s prophesying to his audience “right now” so that they get his “Nephilim Rising DVD right now.” That’s “what you can get,” he says, “when you begin to be a monthly partner at $30 a month or if you sow a one-time gift of $360.”[8]
For working-class people, Joseph Z is asking them to be incredibly generous. According to him, however, it is him and his buddies at Daystar who are exhibiting “generosity” for taking time out of their busy day to sit down and record the DVD.[9] So, he encourages the audience to “call that number” and “partner with Daystar.”[10]
The bottom line is always the bottom line, and “the end times” has always been big money for pop-prophecy. God’s people continue to send the money in, but the hoped-for end times never kick in. Truthfully, Joseph Z’s “prophetic download” is just another pop-prophecy crap load … designed to bring in the financial contributions like a boatload.
And they succeed in the greed because of the Christian public’s insatiable apocalyptic need.
Craving the Pop-Prophecy Fix
A year before Hovind’s 2013 book, World Bible Society President Dr. F. Kenton Beshore set the Apocalypse date for 2028 back in October of 2012. According to Stoyan Zaimov, Kenton claimed, “that based on a lifetime of study, he believes that the ‘Rapture’ is likely to occur before the year 2021, while the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will happen between 2018 and 2028.”[11]
Like 1988, 2021 has come and gone, and time marches on. In fact, it marched right past 2018 all the way to 2026, but the people in the pews still need their pop-prophecy fix. Hence, they continue to fall for the prophecy pundits’ tricks.
And 2028 continues to be the much-anticipated date.
On his website, prophecy pundit Gabriel Ansley feeds the end times addicts with their needed doses of doomsday dopamine.
Ansley rightly points out that “It seems like every year someone is coming up with some reason why THAT year will be the year… I mean, it’s crazy! People are saying things every year!”[12] But for Ansley, the problem isn’t date setting, per se. The problem is that past prophecy pundits have been setting the wrong date! They might have failed, but he promises to prevail. He says,
“But you know what? The truth about when Jesus Christ is going to return has been known ever since the year 2008! It’s been over a decade now! And it’s contained in the book I wrote back in 2008 entitled “Undeniable Biblical Proof Jesus Christ Will Return to Planet Earth Exactly 2,000 Years After the Year of His Death”. Listen, Christ died on Feast of Passover in the year AD 28 on our calendars today, and he’s returning on Feast of Trumpets AD 2028 – 2,000 years later. It’s that simple.”[13]
Ansley is running out of time. At the time of this writing, there is less than a year and a half before he becomes the next failed and false pop-prophet.
And if you’re a young person reading this, or unfortunately listening to Ansley, know for certain that his prophecy will fail, as surely as the failed prophets before him failed. It’s all been said and done before, and you might as well be watching a cartoon if you’re spending time watching videos of pop-prophecy.
In fact, this has all been said and done in just that – a cartoon.
The Homer Hermeneutic…D’oh!
According to the YouTube channel Stellar Realities, in a video titled Rise of the Beast: The Simpsons’ Darkest 2028 Prophecy:
“In a twisted future segment from season 28, episode 4, Treehouse of Horror 27, there is a blink and you miss it moment that feels less like satire and more like a warning…. Homer opens his jacket for a quick visual gag, revealing a campaign badge pinned to his chest that reads Ivanka 2028.”[14]
“Pause that frame and look at the badge glinting under the light. It is not just a prop. It is a warning dressed as humor. If 2028 unfolds the way that moment hinted, the real question will not be who wins, but who saw it coming.”[15]
The video then narrates through numerous other scenarios in various episodes of The Simpsons, including Mr. Burns replacing workers with AI that ultimately turns on humanity, Maggie being marked with 666 and portrayed as the Antichrist, and Springfield itself descending into environmental collapse—complete with toxic waters, government quarantine domes, mutated wildlife, and looming apocalyptic destruction.
Under the heading, “The Final 2028 Alignment,” the video then concludes with these words:
“Chilling prophecies. A world teetering on the edge. A yellow cartoon saw the future before we did. Ivanka rising to power. AI taking over the workforce. The mark of the beast emerging and a toxic flood no dome can contain. Was it mere satire or a signal from something far deeper woven into the very DNA of Springfield?”[16]
Bottom line: the prophecy pundits are following the same hermeneutic as the writers of The Simpsons, and their approach to Bible Prophecy is no less cartoonish than the popular TV show itself.
No More D’ohmsday Reruns
In previous articles, I’ve talked about the damaging effects that Doomsday Indoctrination has on the minds of young people. The failed predictions also cause people to doubt the credibility of the Bible and become ambivalent toward the Christian Faith. In an article about the 2025 Rapture prediction titled Why Is Everyone Talking About The Damn Rapture Again?, Kelsey McKinney writes,
“I was raised very evangelical, and one thing evangelicals do a lot of is Bible study…. I was in an iconic Bible study for high school girls, led by a woman who had this same Rapture theory…. Which is all to say that the Bible is absolutely right about one thing: that there is absolutely nothing new under the sun…. Just in my lifetime, this is the fourth major prediction of the Rapture’s arrival. The first two were radio evangelist Harold Camping, who predicted Sept. 6, 1994, then admitted he got the date wrong and revised it to May 21, 2011, which was also wrong. The pseudonymous end-times conspiracy theorist and author David Meade swore the Rapture would come on Sept. 23, 2017, basing his prediction on astrological alignments of planets, but was also wrong.”[17]
Pop-prophecy is as predictable as its failed predictions, and it’s high time for adult believers to start setting up some restrictions. The end didn’t come in 1988, or 2008, and it won’t come in 2028. Let’s not fail another generation with our appetite for end-times sensation. It’s time to end our addiction to pop-prophecy fiction.
It’s time to stop chasing headlines, replacing hermeneutics with hype, and turning the Bible into a cartoon.
If not, we’re going to be saying “D’oh!”, yet again, when the next doomsday dud goes thud.
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[1] A shout out also to Eric Ogea for his input and suggestions
[2] Krystle Lestrange, “5 Apocalypses You Can Look Forward to in the Next 5 Years” | Medium https://bit.ly/41HCTPU
[3] Lestrange, “5 Apocalypses”
[4] Second coming of Christ ‘due in nine years’ | The Week https://bit.ly/4v0NEKF
[5] “2026-2028 ACCURATE Prophetic Timeline! The Next 3 Years in Prophecy” | Daystar (YouTube) https://bit.ly/4uXTw7r
[6] “2026-2028,” 17:32-17:40.
[7] “2026-2028,” 24:37.
[8] “2026-2028,” 32:15-32:26.
[9] “2026-2028,” 32:36.
[10] “2026-2028,” 44:47.
[11] Stoyan Zaimov, World Bible Society President Says Jesus Returning Between 2018 and 2028 | The Christian Post https://bit.ly/4tgw43B
[12] When Will Christ Return? Part 1/10 – Introduction | 2028 End https://bit.ly/3NGnqfT
[13] When Will Christ Return? Part 1/10
[14] Rise of the Beast: The Simpsons’ Darkest 2028 Prophecy | Stellar Realities (YouTube), https://bit.ly/48etovd 1:20 – 1:42.
[15] Rise of the Beast, 2:30 – 2:38.
[16] Rise of the Beast, 7:44 – 8:09.
[17] Kelsey McKinney, “Why Is Everyone Talking About The Damn Rapture Again?” | Defector https://bit.ly/3OckkjT
