During the few years of its existence, the world has grown used to using Google to find out the answer to almost everything.

But – the second coming of Christ?

An article for Motherboard outlines how typing the word 'dog' into Google Translate 19 times and asking for it to be translated from Maori to English comes up with the answer: 'Doomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve. We are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus' return.'

It's one of a number of strange messages discovered by Reddit users, some of them with religious themes. Examples uncovered so far have been altered by Google, however. For example Motherboard says putting 'ag' 21 times into the programme and translating from Somali results in: ' As a result, the total number of the members of the tribe of the sons of Gershon was one hundred fifty thousand.'

This has been changed to: 'He is at a haunt acting at a glance.'

While some users have speculated about the existence of a 'Google demon' and others have speculated that it might indicate Google has access to private emails, the software giant has rubbished the idea there is anything sinister behind the translations.

'Google Translate learns from examples of translations on the web and does not use "private messages" to carry out translations, nor would the system even have access to that content,' said Justin Burr, a Google spokesperson, in an email to Motherboard. '[This is simply a function of inputting nonsense into the system, to which nonsense is generated."