Are you still here? Me too! That could mean one of two things: Either we’re heathens who missed the rapture, or yet another prediction of Jesus’ return proved false.
Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.
But if you get your theology from TikTok — Seriously, why would you? — you might believe that Jesus is coming on September 23 (or 24, in the case of those who want to give themselves a little wiggle room).
Where did this idea come from? The Boston Globe explains:
The date of Sept. 23, 2025, appears to have originated from Joshua Mhlakela of South Africa. Though news reports have widely described him as a pastor, he said in a YouTube video from June: “I’m just a simple person, no title. I’m not an apostle, I’m not a pastor, I’m not a bishop. I’m just a believer.”
In the video, he says that Jesus came to him in a dream in 2018 and told him, “On the 23rd and the 24th of September, 2025, I will come to take my church.”
The context, as Mhlakela understood it, was the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “He was telling me that by June 2026, the world is gearing up toward the World Cup,” he said, but because chaos would descend after the rapture, “there will be no World Cup in 2026.”
Related: Sunday Thoughts: Rethinking the End of the World, a Conversation With Dr. Matthew Halsted, Part 1
Of course, predicting a rapture isn’t anything new. A couple of years ago, I wrote:
I’m old enough to remember the apocalyptic predictions of Edgar Whisenant and his companion-piece booklets “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988” and “On Borrowed Time.” They were popular, selling over three million copies, often printed back-to-back.
Whisenant was supremely confident that Jesus would return between Sept. 11 and 13, 1988 — so much so that he famously said, “Only if the Bible is in error am I wrong; and I say that to every preacher in town.” When the Second Coming didn’t take place between those dates, Whisenant revised his prediction to Sept. 15, specifically 10:55 a.m. When that didn’t happen, Whisenant moved the date up to Oct. 3.
But it gets better. When Jesus didn’t return in 1988, Whisenant realized that an error in the calendar meant that Jesus wasn’t coming back in 1988 after all. He was going to return in 1989. Then it was 1990. Then 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994. Needless to say, the Second Coming hasn’t taken place yet, and Edgar Whisenant is just another historical curiosity.
“The Bible is full of patterns and symbolism,” Peter Sherlock, a professor and theologian at Charles Sturt University in Australia, told the Boston Globe in an email. “It’s no wonder that in trying to interpret this sacred text, many readers end up decoding these patterns to arrive at prognostications of doom, sometimes even dates for when the world will end.”
The idea of a rapture before the second coming of Christ and the final judgment flows from a theology called dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a biblical framework that sees history in distinct eras and teaches that Christ will rapture believers before a future tribulation and His return.
The Lexham Survey of Theology tells us that the word “rapture” refers to the act of believers ascending to heaven, whether at the end of days or in a dispensational pre-millennial gathering of Jesus’ followers:
The word “rapture” is derived from the Latin translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17. English translations translate the key word in that verse with “caught up” or “snatched up.” There are several views among Christians about the exact nature and timing of this rapture, this “snatching up,” primarily due to its relationship to other eschatological events in Scripture.
Side note: I don’t subscribe to dispensational theology, and I believe that the Lord will rapture Christians, both living and dead, into heaven at Christ’s second coming at the end of days. Your mileage may vary.
TikTokers have been taking this whole rapture thing seriously:
Regardless of whether or not one is a dispensationalist, God’s Word tells us that no human can predict when Christ will call His church home. Jesus told His disciples:
But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only…
Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Matthew 24:36, 42-44 (ESV)
You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Luke 12:40 (ESV)
“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you,” the Apostle Paul told the church in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2. “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”
“Remember, then, what you received and heard,” Jesus said in Revelation 3:3. “Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.”
Related: Sunday Thoughts: Rethinking the End of the World, a Conversation With Dr. Matthew Halsted, Part 2
My friend Trey Bailey, who serves on staff at Eastridge Church and was a recent guest on Faith All Over the Place, put it this way: “In Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32, Jesus says that ‘no one knows the day or hour of his return, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’ If Jesus himself does not know the date of his return, how arrogant are we to assume and predict a specific day? Like church elder and Superior Court Judge Sammy Ozburn always likes to say, ‘If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.’ So rather than try and guess the date of Jesus’ return, let’s live every day like the final judgment is upon us.”
The Babylon Bee’s Kyle Mann has an interesting take:
Here’s the thing: We don’t know when Jesus will return. It could be today; it could be any day. But the truth is that we should always be ready.
This is the only rapture I’m sure will happen today: