2004: The Day of Judgement and the 144,000 elect.

Joanna Southcott (or Southcote) ( 1750 – 1814 ), was a self-described religious prophetess. She was born at Taleford, and raised in the village of Gittisham in Devon, England.

Her father was a farmer and she herself was for a considerable time a domestic servant in Exeter. She was originally of the Church of England, but about 1792, becoming persuaded that she possessed supernatural gifts, she wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme, and then announced herself as the woman spoken of in Revelation – in the King James Version, Revelation 12:1–6:

1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
2. And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
3. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
4. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
5. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

Coming to London at the request of William Sharp (1749–1824), the engraver, she began to seal the 144,000 elect at a charge varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. At the age of sixty four she affirmed that she was pregnant and would be delivered of the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis 49:10. The date of 19 October 1814 was that fixed for the birth, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance.

She died not long after. The movement did not end with Southcott's death in 1814. Her followers, referred to as Southcottians, are said to have numbered over 100,000 but had declined greatly by the end of the nineteenth century.

Southcott left a sealed wooden box of prophecies, usually known as Joanna Southcott's Box, with the instruction that it be opened only at a time of national crisis, and then only in the presence of all 24 bishops of the Church of England (there were only 24 at the time), who were to spend a fixed period of time beforehand studying Southcott's prophecies. Attempts were made to persuade the episcopate to open it during the Crimean War and again during the First World War.

An advertising campaign on billboards and in British national newspapers such as the Sunday Express was run in the 1960s and 1970s by one prominent group of Southcottians, the Panacea Society in Bedford (formed 1920), to try to persuade the twenty four bishops to have the box opened. Their slogan was: "War, disease, crime and banditry, distress of nations and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box." According to the Panacea Society, this true box is in their possession at a secret location for safekeeping, with its whereabouts only to be disclosed when a meeting with the bishops has been arranged. Southcott prophesied that the Day of Judgement would come in the year 2004, and her followers stated that if the contents of the box had not been studied beforehand, the world would have had to meet it unprepared.

The efforts of the Society have so far been unsuccessful; Church of England officials have commented that for them to take part in the opening would be to unnecessarily arouse public interest in the affair.

THE SEALING OF THE 144,000.

Rev. 7:1-8.

"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the East, having the 'SEAL OF THE LIVING GOD': and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have SEALED THE SERVANTS OF OUR GOD IN THEIR FOREHEADS. And I heard the number of them which were SEALED: and there were SEALED A HUNDRED AND FORTY AND FOUR THOUSAND OF ALL THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL."

It turns out that the number 144,000 comes from 12 x 12,000 and 12,000 is the number of times we must "think a thought" before it becomes a habit!! ALL of our "human beliefs" are going to eventually be "uprooted" (when we make the next step in our evolution from "human material" to spiritual substance - and this will happen when we live according to the law (= we are ONE with God). The 12 are the 12 tribes of Israel, each of which represents a faculty or power, e.g., Judah = faculty of praise; Reuben = faith; Gad = personal power; Asher = our happiness and blessedness; Nephtalim = our ability to mentally surrender the material for the spiritual; Manassas = our forgetfulness of the material; etc. These faculties/powers/beliefs are not "sealed in the forehead" until they are joined with the power of LOVE and FELT. (Just as the Golden Key to manifestation/demonstration is FEELING the desire as it would be manifested - and then IT IS MANIFESTED.)2012: The doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan, ideas