A viral doomsday prophecy shared by a South African pastor has prompted some social media users to announce sudden resignations and liquidate possessions ahead of a predicted Rapture on Tuesday, with videos circulating under the #RaptureTok hashtag showing people claiming to have quit jobs, sold cars and transferred homes while urging others to prepare for what they believe will be the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Local newsrooms and national outlets tracking the trend reported a sharp spike in search queries and TikTok activity tied to the dates 23–24 September 2025, even as clergy and commentators pointed to biblical passages warning against assigning a day or hour to the end times.
The prediction is centered on Pastor Joshua Mhlakela, who gained wide attention after appearing on the Centtwinz TV YouTube channel to say a vision had provided him specific dates for the Rapture, aligning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish Feast of Trumpets. “The rapture is upon us, whether you are ready or not,” he said in the interview, adding, “I saw Jesus sitting on his throne, and I could hear him very loud and clear saying, ‘I am coming soon.’” In another clip cited by multiple outlets, he asserted: “He says to me on the 23rd and 24th of September 2025, ‘I will come to take my church.’” The claims, which Mhlakela frames as a direct message from Christ, have not been endorsed by major denominations and are disputed by Christians who cite scriptural prohibitions against date-setting.
As Tuesday approached, individual TikTok creators amplified the call to prepare with posts describing drastic personal decisions. A content creator named Tilahun Desalegn told followers he had disposed of his five-year-old car because he would be “catching a flight to heaven,” saying in a video, “She’s got to go. I won’t need her beyond September. I’m going home, to where my father in heaven is.” In a subsequent post he promised to “upload an apology video” on 25 September if the prophecy failed and acknowledged he was “very likely deceived” should nothing happen. Other posters claimed to have handed over property deeds or vowed to give away cars and household goods, reflecting a mix of fervent belief and possible satire that nevertheless added to the perception of a wave of pre-emptive divestment ahead of the dates.
Comedian Kevin Fredericks, who performs as KevOnStage and has commented on Christian culture for years, told his audience he was seeing believers “selling their cars, clothes,” and said “some people are making post-rapture kits for the people who are left behind.” He questioned the logistics of any timed event across multiple zones, asking, “What time zone is it happening in? Because the whole thing about the rapture that I was taught was that no man knows the date or the hour… There are 24 time zones on Earth, 38 if you include the ones that have half-hour times. No man knows how you all know.” His remarks echoed broader pushback within Christian communities that circulated alongside the viral clips promoting Mhlakela’s timetable.
Newsrooms compiling explainers on the phenomenon said the surge in content was measurable. MySA, a Hearst outlet, reported the “rapture” tag on TikTok had more than 295,000 videos attached and that Google searches for queries like “Is the rapture happening tomorrow?” had risen by more than 5,000%, while noting that Christian sources frequently invoked Matthew 24:36—“But about that day or hour no one knows”—in response to the prediction. The Austin American-Statesman similarly traced the flare-up to Mhlakela’s interviews and summarized online claims that some believers were quitting jobs and selling homes and vehicles ahead of the dates.
Examples of job resignations remained primarily anecdotal and user-generated on social platforms, but the motif recurred across coverage of the trend. The Economic Times wrote that “people are suddenly handing in resignations and putting their cars up for sale” as talk of the Rapture spread, and international sites from Vibe to Al Jazeera described creators posting “advice” and checklists framed as last-minute spiritual preparation. Some clips mixed earnest devotion with satire, including one widely viewed video in which a woman said, “I’ve given away all my earthly possessions to the heathens that I know will not be coming with us, the chosen ones… I’ve already transferred the deed to my house. I just need to give this car away,” a claim that viewers debated as either sincere testimony or performance.
The man at the center of the prediction has tied his timeline to the Feast of Trumpets, a holy day that some evangelicals associate with Pauline passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, which speak of believers being “caught up” to meet Christ. Mhlakela has presented his message as a divine promise rather than a probabilistic reading of prophecy, telling viewers the dates were revealed in a dream and repeating that Jesus would “come to take my church.” Those statements have been met by reminders from pastors and lay Christians that Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus as saying “no one knows” the day or hour, a verse commonly cited to caution believers against calendar predictions.
The format of the content has broadened the reach of the claim beyond church audiences. Explainer pieces described a blend of sober “how to be ready” checklists, mockery, and “Rapture trip tips,” as the Statesman put it, alongside memes offering to adopt pets or collect “left-behind” belongings when owners ascend. The label #RaptureTok itself mirrors past cycles in which apocalyptic timetables—most famously radio evangelist Harold Camping’s 2011 dates and the 2012 Mayan-calendar panic—gained traction online before fizzling without incident. At the same time, the current iteration includes specific, on-camera declarations by individuals of life-altering choices—resignations and sales—made in expectation of being gone by week’s end.
The patchwork evidence of people leaving jobs is difficult to quantify, with no official data or employer statements tying departures to the prophecy. But a consistent thread in posts gathered by outlets is the rhetoric of urgency and finality. Desalegn, who has more than 25,000 followers, framed his car sale as an act of obedience and inevitability—“I won’t need her beyond September”—and pledged public contrition if the dates passed without event. Others spoke of “preparing rooms” for those left behind or building kits with Bibles and instructions, a trope Fredericks noted in his own commentary. The tone across many videos suggested an expectation that normal obligations—work schedules, car payments—would be irrelevant within hours.
Counter-messages have proliferated with equal speed. Regional U.S. outlets compiling reader questions featured clergy and lay leaders telling Christians not to panic, to ignore date-setting and to focus on daily faithfulness. Explainers emphasized that the word “rapture” does not appear in the Bible and that beliefs about the sequence and timing of end-times events differ widely among Christians, with some rejecting the pre-tribulation framework that underpins many #RaptureTok videos. Listeners shared clips of sermons and study notes reiterating that “no one knows” when Christ will return and urging discernment online.
International coverage treated the wave largely as a social-media phenomenon rather than a church-sanctioned campaign. Al Jazeera described evangelicals “sharing warnings and advice in videos on social media in preparation for the potential imminent rapture,” and Australian site News.com.au catalogued online humor and debate, while noting reports that some participants were “preparing ‘post-Rapture kits’.” Tech-adjacent outlets including Forbes and IFLScience framed the surge as another case study in how apocalyptic narratives spread during moments of uncertainty, pointing to the role of short-form video platforms in turning a single interview into a global talking point within days.
The lack of institutional validation did not prevent organizers and creators from assigning practical steps to the dates. Some advised paying off debts and spending remaining cash on charitable gifts or evangelism; others sketched itineraries for what the faithful might expect “within minutes” of the trumpet call. In parallel, dissenting voices from within churches used the same platforms to call the timetable unbiblical and to warn would-be quitters that abandoning employment on the strength of a viral video could create avoidable hardship for families. The result by Tuesday morning was a bifurcated feed: testimonies of readiness and farewell posts on one side; derision, skepticism and pastoral cautions on the other.
What is documentable, as the predicted day unfolds, is that a specific set of statements from one pastor—“He says to me on the 23rd and 24th of September 2025, ‘I will come to take my church’”—ignited a cycle of action that, for a slice of believers online, included resignations from jobs and the disposal of property. Those choices appeared in first-person videos and were then aggregated by news sites, which in turn amplified the trend to larger audiences. Absent from the record so far are corroborated counts of how many people have left employment due to the prophecy; the evidence remains self-reported and uneven, ranging from earnest vows to tongue-in-cheek provocations. But the visibility of the behavior—and the specificity of the pastor’s claims—set this week’s wave apart from vaguer end-times chatter that has recurred in recent years.
By late morning in London, the hashtags and explainer pieces continued to accumulate, and so did rebuttals. MySA’s review stressed that Christian sources it consulted pointed back to Matthew 24:36. The Statesman’s digest likewise noted skeptics who argue that the verse “no one knows the day or hour” undermines date-specific predictions. Whether this cycle ends like previous ones will be answered by the calendar; what is already certain is that, in the span of a few days, a handful of sentences spoken in a YouTube studio were sufficient to push some viewers to announce resignations and liquidations, and to spur others to post warnings not to stake livelihoods on a timetable the Bible itself is widely read as forbidding.