Rapture panic and jokes have returned this week after a South African pastor predicted the end of the world on Sept. 23, in line with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
Pastor Joshua Mhlakela said in a June 17 interview that he spoke with Jesus Christ in a vision, and Christ told Mhlakela he would be returning to Earth from Sept. 23-24.
“The rapture is upon us, whether you are ready or not,” Mhlakela said. Christ “says to me, ‘On the 23rd and the 24th of September 2025, I will come to take my church.’”
Though the video is three months old, the news exploded on the internet over the weekend as the supposed day of reckoning approached. Thousands of “RaptureTok” videos began trending on TikTok, with people offering a variety of “tips and tricks” for the upcoming end of the world.
Both the second coming of Christ and the rapture have been predicted many times before, but the world continues to spin.
“My only issue with this rapture thing and the world apparently ending is that it’s just before payday,” one person wrote on X. “We worked this whole month for nothing basically? Tell Jesus to reschedule.”
Previous rapture predictions have included Jan. 1, 2000, and May 21, 2011, among many others. Evangelical leader Pat Robertson even predicted the end of the world twice, in both 1982 and 2007.
“When I read the Apostle Peter’s caution that ‘scoffers will come in the last days, … saying, where is the promise of His coming?’, I cannot help but ponder how believers themselves may be culpable for a lot of the scoffing of the world,” columnist Ken Young wrote Monday in Baptist News Global.
