Why people thought a rapture was happening

Oct 2025 23

… but not really.

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 Mr. 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.”

The fact that people want to believe that the world will end on a certain date usually “says more about the uncertainty of our own times than it does about what is actually in the Bible.”

Caption from article by Yan Zhuang, NY Times.

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