In the days leading up to September 23 and 24, some people quit their jobs and sold their cars and houses, convinced that the rapture would take place. The modern idea, especially popular among American evangelicals, refers to a purported first return of Jesus, when his followers—living and dead—would suddenly disappear from the earth and ascend to heaven.
On TikTok, the hashtag #RaptureTok included videos of people preparing for what they believed was inevitable. Another hashtag, #RaptureNow, appeared in more than 300,000 videos. The commotion stemmed from a widely shared video by Joshua Mhlakela, a pastor from South Africa, who said Jesus appeared to him in a dream seven years ago and told him the apocalyptic event would take place on those dates this year.
Searches for “rapture” and “rapture Tuesday” spiked around September 20, according to Google Trends.
At least one Episcopal priest said parishioners reached out with concern, and some clergy responded publicly. On social media, they sought to debunk the rumors, explain the history of the idea, and calm fears. They emphasized that the rapture is not biblical and is not consistent with Episcopal and Anglican teaching.
“Is the rapture happening this week? No, it is not,” said the Rev. Barrett Lee, rector of St. Mark’s Church in Coldwater, Michigan, in a video posted September 22 on the parish’s YouTube channel.
“It became popular in the 20th century because of several books and movies like the Scofield Reference Bible, The Late Great Planet Earth, and the Left Behind series,” he said. “But it has never been accepted as doctrine by the majority of Christians worldwide.”
The National Endowment for the Humanities’ magazine, Humanities, has reported that The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey was instrumental in popularizing an apocalyptic worldview—complete with the rapture and rise of the Antichrist.
Lee added that curiosity about the rapture is connected to the human desire to know the future.
“This tendency to recognize patterns has been hardwired into our brains by evolution,” he said. “Most of the time it’s a very good thing because it allows us to accurately predict the outcome of future events, such as the link between smoking cigarettes and getting lung cancer. But sometimes the false association is actively harmful, like a preacher manipulating you into quitting your job, selling your home, and giving all your money to the church because he has convinced you that the world is about to end.”
In an Instagram reel, the Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail, vicar of Jubilee Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, and host of the podcast And Also With You, said the rapture is “not a real thing” from the perspective of sound Christian doctrine. She explained that a 19th-century figure named John Nelson Darby, who served as an Anglican priest for a time, is credited with inventing rapture theology, which then spread through the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909.
“It’s not that it’s like, you know, a bad thing that the Scofield Bible was a study Bible, but folks read the notes on rapture theology in the Scofield Bible as if it was scripture itself,” McManus-Dail said. “And the thing is, it’s just not. It’s just not.”
Speaking to The Living Church two days after the predicted rapture, on September 26, Lee said, “I’m pretty well secure in my own belief and knowledge from the study that these things are not part of our tradition. When it comes to these predictions … Christ himself said, no one knows the day or the hour. And yet somehow for the last century or two, people have gotten really worked up at predicting the day and the hour, which is something that Jesus himself said we don’t know.”
Other Christian leaders said predictions of the end times often resurface in moments of social and political anxiety. In the current context, that includes a federal government shutdown, news of private-sector job losses, an assassination that shocked the nation, and long-term wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.
In a video posted earlier this year, the Rev. Justin Clemente, associate pastor of Holy Cross Cathedral, an Anglican Church in North America congregation in Loganville, Georgia, said Anglicans “affirm what the Scripture teaches about the rapture, but … we don’t agree with the popular characterization of what the rapture is.”
Clemente cited 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, a passage used to support the idea, but said its popular interpretation comes from Darby’s dispensationalism—an “innovated idea” that Anglicans reject as doctrine.
Lee said that the exact date of Jesus’ return is one thing people need not worry about.
“We do affirm the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the living and the dead, as it says in the creeds. When that will happen, we don’t know,” he said. “Jesus told us we don’t know and we can’t know. And what he said instead was to be ready … because, yes, it could happen today. It could happen in another 2,000 years. We don’t know.”
And being ready, Lee said, means staying grounded in faith and in Jesus’ command: “to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
After the rapture failed to materialize last week, Mhlakela apologized, but new rumors suggest that it will instead occur on October 6.
On the subject, Lee emphasized, “It’s going to happen in God’s time, whenever God decides the time is.”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
