False Prophecies tend to unite them cults.
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That and New York, ever notice how many started there? Must be something in the water.
No, there’s a very sad reason so many started in New York. Following the Great Awakening, upstate New York was poor and poorly educated. Itinerant preachers found the local population easy to fleece with promises of revival. The locals eventually grew very cynical, making them very hard to be reached by mainline Protestant preachers afterward. But as G.K. Chesterton noted, those who believe in nothing will eventually come to believe in anything. Embittered against “traditional Protestantism,” they fell easy prey to Restorationism, which preached that there were essential flaws in mainstream Christianity. Most of these related their “restoration” of “true Christianity” to an imminent return of Christ.
Restorationist con men exploited the figurative nature of Revelations. In Greek, 1000 means 999+1, but it also means a “zillion.” To those ignorant of this, the claim that there would “only” be 144,000 saved people validates the notion that there is some massive defect in mainstream Christianity, thus validating restorationist cults. Plus, it’s real easy to get people to give away their life savings if they believe they’re going to get swept up to Heaven before they get to spend it.
The largest of the surviving restorationists are the Mormons, 7th Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Mormons are the most successful, because they never predicted exact dates of a rapture.
Please note that I am drawing a distinction between restorationism and reformation, even though the Reformation necessarily had some restorationist elements. Baptists aren’t truly restorationists because they believe that some elements of essential Christianity survived as a remnant throughout the Catholic era. Mainline Reformed Protestants, including not just Calvinists who use the name Reformed, but also Anglicans, Lutherans, etc., aren’t restorationists because they did not assert that ancient Catholics’ faith was so severely deformed as to prevent salvation, although one could infer that from some particular writings. To them, the Catholic Church deformed Christianity (hence, they refer to its reformation), as opposed to supplanting it (which, hence, requires restoration).
Restorationism is a feature, however, in some New England congregationalist churches, too... not strictly a quasi-Christian New York thing.