I’m so old, I remember when the Rapture was supposed to happen in 2011:

This prophetic pratfall was the legacy of Harold Camping, a 20th-century Christian evangelist whose Family Radio broadcast to 150 stations across the United States.

In his later years, Camping made a career of predicting the second coming. First he said it would be in 1994. When that failed, he moved the date to May 21, 2011 based on a convoluted numerological scheme supposedly based on the date of Noah’s flood.

The May 2011 date was the big one. Family Radio sank over $100 million into a promotional campaign. They put up billboards and distributed tracts all over the world urging the masses to repent. Some of his followers were so convinced the end was near, they quit their jobs and spent their savings. I personally encountered at least one devotee spreading the word.

When this failed to come true, Camping announced that it had been a “spiritual” judgment and revised his date to October 21, 2011 for the real, actual, this-time-we-mean-it apocalypse. That one obviously failed as well, and Camping died soon afterward, perplexed and humiliated.

Of course, Camping wasn’t the first. He was just one in a long line of fanatics who’ve been continuously predicting the apocalypse almost every year since the beginning of Christianity.

Before 2011, there was 2007Rapture.com. Before that, there was Edgar Whisenant and his book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, which singled out Rosh Hashanah 1988 as the date. Before that, there was Hal Lindsay and his 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth.

Before that, there was the 1920 book Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Before that, there was the “Great Disappointment” of 1844. Before that, there was Cotton Mather in 1692.

And you could keep on going back, all the way to the founding generation of Christianity. According to the Bible, Jesus told his contemporaries that some of them would still be alive when he returned to earth (Matthew 16:28, 1 Thessalonians 4:15).

However, fundamentalists never learn their lesson. With the unfounded confidence of faith, they keep on predicting the end, undaunted by the prophetic blunders of their predecessors.

Now there’s a preacher from South Africa, Joshua Mhlakela, who aspires to be the latest to join the list of false prophets:

Speaking on the Cettwinz TV YouTube channel, Mhlakela said in a video that has gone viral: “The Rapture is upon us. Whether you are ready or not.

“I saw Jesus sitting on his throne. And I could hear him very loud and clear saying, ‘I am coming soon.'”

The pastor added, “He said to me on the 23rd and 24th of September 2025, ‘I will come back to the Earth.'”

According to the preacher, Jesus’s return would be announced by the Feast of Trumpets, which would ring in the Rapture and Judgment Day.

If you want to see the prophecy in his own words, here it is:

God took me to see the future and then he brought me back. And then in heaven in a throne room, I see Jesus sitting on his throne and I could hear him very loud and clear: “I am coming soon.” And to the people who are listening, please pay attention to what I’m going to say. He says to me, on the 23rd and the 24th, 2025, I will come to take my church.

Yes, this is the same date that Whisenant proclaimed in 1988. Christians seem to have an affection for Rosh Hashanah.

Despite several erroneous reports to the contrary, Mhlakela isn’t a pastor or leader of any church. He’s just an ordinary believer who claims to have had a divine revelation. (He says he was an assistant pastor at his church for several years, until he resigned to spread the prophetic word.)

For whatever reason, this claim struck a nerve on social media. A number of Christians on TikTok claimed to have had dreams or visions confirming Mhlakela’s date – spawning the so-called RaptureTok hashtag.

It’s tricky to find good examples, because many of the videos on this hashtag are from nonbelievers mocking or parodying it. But some are definitely sincere. For example, here’s a Christian who’s stocking her house with emergency supplies, together with handwritten laminated cards explaining the Rapture, for the benefit of those left behind who’ll find them after she disappears:

@stopwiththebuttholecramp Preparing for the left behind. What are you doing? Let’s try to save as many souls as we can while we are gone. #Christian #missingpeople #christiantiktok #help #jesus ? original sound – Melissa Johnston

Here’s another who’s put out several videos about the date, including one in which she claims her 3-year-old son started speaking in Hebrew as confirmation (obviously, he’s just repeating things he heard his parents saying):

@romans.ten.9through11 My last video. See you in the clouds my brothers and sisters. Jesus please use my account and the remaining videos for YOUR glory and YOUR will. I plead your blood over it and speak a hedge of protection over it that no weapon formed against this content will prosper. Please water every seed that has been planted throughout the time you’ve used it. In Jesus name. Amen. #JESUSISCOMING #rapture #alienabduction #whathappenedtoallthepeople ? original sound – romans.ten.9through11

And a third, who hedges her bets a bit about the date (“pretty much any day now… if not next week, by the end of the year, most definitely”) but nevertheless believes the Rapture is so close, Christians should take the PIN lock off their smartphones, so that converts who find them afterward (in the empty piles of clothes) will be able to use them:

@kingdomwealth_christina I literally just thought of this today! I still have to put together letters for people. I rounded up all of the Bibles in my house and any book that helps explain scripture. Jesus is going to come and get his bride very very soon! ##pretrib##raptureready##rapture2025##jesussaves ? original sound – Kingdom Wealth | Christina

This prophecy stuff sounds appealing, so I’m going to try my hand at it. To be clear, I’m an atheist. I don’t claim to have special revelation or privileged access to the will of a god. However, I can make a few predictions with confidence.

The Rapture isn’t going to happen on September 23, 2025, or September 24, 2025, or any date thereafter. On the predicted date, people will wake up, eat breakfast, drive to work, do chores, care for their families, and fall asleep, just as people have been doing for thousands of years. There may well be wars, earthquakes and other tragedies, but life as we know it won’t come to an end. The sun will keep shining, the earth will keep spinning, and the dead won’t rise from their graves. No one is going to float up into the sky to meet Jesus.

When this date passes and nothing happens, the true believers will respond in one of three ways. Some will delete their videos, try to erase the evidence of their failure, and go on as if nothing had happened. Others will move the goalposts and announce that the prophecy came true as predicted, but in a “spiritual” sense that’s invisible to skeptics and scoffers. Still others will pick a new date and start all over again.

Few, if any, will forthrightly announce that they blundered. None will discard their foolish religious beliefs and choose a more rational philosophy in the future.

Belief in the second coming and the apocalypse is a kind of religious narcissism. It’s founded in the belief that my generation is special – that all of history up to this point, all the believers who lived and died, were just preparation for me, and that I’m one of the chosen ones who’ll live to see the culmination of it all. They think the Bible passages about the apocalypse are for them in a way that didn’t apply to any previous generation.

Because of this self-deluding arrogance, they’re blind to history. The unbroken string of failures racked up by all the past believers who thought the same thing doesn’t give them any humility, nor daunt them at all – just as their example won’t daunt the next generation of believers who’ll start the cycle all over again, a few years down the line, once this prediction has faded into history’s dust.