It's common among some sects of evangelical Protestants, like the ones that would read that Left Behind book series, to view the end of the world as right around the corner. To be fair to them, God wins in the end of the Book of Revelation, but nobody knows when all that stuff is going to take place, and there are Bible verses warning not to focus on it..

This problem was actually worse in the 19th Century. For example, there was a huge movement called the Millerite movement after the preacher who pushed it. Christ's non-appearance becomes known as the Great Disappointment, and it eventually spawned the 7th Day Adventists as a denomination.

Catholics and Orthodox are not immune from this sort of thing though, and sometimes put too great of a stock in various appearances of Mary. To be fair, though, these generally involve calls for repentance and asking for X or Y to be done or bad things will happen or warning of trouble ahead, but there's always trouble ahead.