The World Is Ending Tomorrow, According to Christian TikTok
Good news: It’s all about to be over.
This is the promise made by a group of Evangelical Christians on TikTok preparing for the Rapture, which is supposed to take place tomorrow, Tuesday, September 23. The Rapture is the Evangelical Christian belief that Jesus Christ will return to Earth and ascend back to Heaven with true believers, leaving the unsaved behind to face seven years of God’s judgment.
The date September 23 appears to stem from a sermon delivered by the South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela. In the clip, which was posted on the very official-sounding YouTube channel CENTTWINZTV, Mhlakela claims to have received a direct vision from Jesus Christ himself, telling him that the end of the world will occur on September 23 or 24.
“He was telling me that by June 2026, the world is gearing up towards the World Cup,” he said in the clip. “But after the rapture of September 2025, the chaos that will be in the world, the destruction and the devastation that will occur with the Rapture — there will be no World Cup 2026.” Which may be bad news for fans of soccer but is certainly good news for the women who date them, who have to pretend to care about it for three months.
Though Mhlakela’s video was posted online on June 17, it didn’t really start gaining traction until a few days ago, when searches for “rapture Tuesday,” “is the rapture coming,” and — my personal favorite — “Why is the Rapture happening on a Tuesday” started spiking, according to Google Trends. On TikTok, interest in the Rapture has exploded, with more than 290,000 posts under the #Rapture hashtag. Though many of these videos are parodying the concept — in one, a woman shows her followers how to call dibs on nice houses in their neighborhood that may be left vacant by such an event — some are clearly meant in earnest.
In one video, a man who brands himself as “a prophet and evangelist to the nations” claims the impending Rapture inspired him to sell his car. “Car is gone just like the Brides of Christ will be in September,” reads the caption for the video, which has more than 320,000 views. In another, a woman shows her followers how she’s preparing her house for the Rapture, including leaving Dollar Tree Bibles with bookmarked scriptures for the unsaved: “Hopefully, these books will end up in the hands of those who need them,” she says. One woman is urging her followers to unlock their phones so the left behind can access them, presumably because when the true believers are called to Heaven, they won’t be allowed to take their phones. (Apparently, going to Heaven is like attending a Jack White concert.)
People are so excited about the Rapture — and honestly, given the state of the world, who can blame them — that they’re looking for confirmation in virtually every aspect of their lives. In one video that racked up more than 188,000 views on TikTok, a Louisiana woman named Hannah Gallman said she prayed to God that she would be able to stay at home with her family when the Rapture happened. She said she was fired shortly thereafter, which she took as proof that the September 23 date was correct. “Instead of being upset about not having a job, all I felt was peace,” she said in the video.
In a message, Gallman told the Cut that “God got my attention about the end time stuff” last November, when she started experiencing an urgency that the world was about to end. Seeing Mhlakela’s video go viral confirmed her suspicions. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s going viral now,” she said. “People are joking about it, but it just breaks my heart because they’re going to remember hearing about this after it happens and know the truth too late,” she said. “I really do hope we’re crazy because if we’re right, the world is about to go through the worst seven years it’s ever seen.”
This is far from the first time that claims of an impending Rapture have gone viral. In 2012, a Mayan-calendar prediction that the end of the world would fall on December 20, 2012, spread online, prompting some to stock up on household goods or even quit their jobs in advance of the apocalypse. And Church of God pastor Ronald Weinland proclaimed that the end of the world would take place on June 9, 2019, causing panic in some evangelical circles. (He later pushed back the date to 2020.)
It’s unclear why Mhlakela’s specific prophecy has gained so much traction this time around, nor do we know why his projected date for the Rapture coincides with Rosh Hashanah or the birthdays of Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco, and Pitch Perfect star Skylar Astin. No matter what happens, at least Mhlakela has given us something concrete to look forward to, though it would be nice if we were allowed to take our phones with us.