Person
Martin Luther
German theologian (1483 to 1546) and leading figure of the Protestant Reformation, who repeatedly wrote that the last day was near.
Martin Luther was a professor of theology at Wittenberg and the central figure of the early Reformation. Throughout his later life he wrote that the world was in its final age, and he produced a chronology of world history, the Supputatio annorum mundi (1541).
His statements about a time limit for the world appear in several kinds of writing, including prefaces, sermons and recorded table conversations. Their exact wording is a matter of scholarly discussion, so this site treats the 1600 figure as a disputed attribution.