Several high-profile pastors and religious commentators have told followers that the long‑predicted Christian event known as the Rapture could begin on Sept. 23, 2025, a date that falls during the Jewish Feast of Trumpets. Clips of sermons and interviews making the claim have circulated widely on social media, drawing hundreds of thousands of views and renewed debate over attempts to tie a precise calendar date to an end‑times prophecy.
In a YouTube interview with CettwinzTV that has been viewed nearly 500,000 times, South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela said he had a vision in which Jesus told him the Rapture would begin "on the 23rd and 24th of September 2025." Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who has more than 1.3 million followers on YouTube, posted a Sept. 3 video saying he believed major events such as the coming of the Lord could be "linked to the trumpets." Other short clips and posts making similar claims have accumulated large view counts on platforms including TikTok and YouTube.
The predictions tie the timing to passages in the New Testament that describe the return of Jesus "with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The Feast of Trumpets, observed by Jews as Rosh Hashanah, features ritual trumpet blasts in synagogue services and has therefore been cited by some Christians as a possible calendar correlate to the biblical trumpet imagery.
Advocates of the interpretation present the Rapture as an event in which believers are taken from Earth ahead of a seven‑year period of tribulation described in some Christian eschatological traditions. Those traditions hold that the Tribulation will be a time of widespread calamity and conflict before a final return of Jesus to establish a messianic kingdom.
The surge of online predictions has prompted responses from religious leaders and lay believers who caution against dating the end times. The New Testament itself includes a passage often cited in that vein: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36). Andrew Morse, a congregant at Grace Church in New Jersey, told the Daily Mail that he has "a strong aversion to date setting on biblical things, because if you're wrong, it ruins credibility, and damages people's faith."
Religious commentators and theologians who decline to specify a date note that eschatological teachings include signs to watch for — such as wars, natural disasters and unusual celestial events — but emphasize that those signs are interpreted differently across denominations. The biblical verse Joel 2:31, which says, "The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes," is often cited by those looking for astronomical confirmations. Some social media posts have also highlighted recent lunar phenomena as part of that pattern.
Claims that believers are selling possessions and making preparations in response to the predicted date have appeared on social platforms, though such anecdotes are not independently verified. Social media has long amplified apocalyptic theories: Sept. 23 previously surfaced in doomsday claims in 2017, when some predicted a catastrophic collision with a hypothetical planet dubbed Nibiru.
Mainstream Jewish and Christian institutions have generally avoided endorsing a specific date. Scholars of religion and clergy who spoke publicly during the wave of posts urged followers to treat apocalyptic predictions cautiously and to consider the broad historical context of prophetic interpretation, which has produced many failed date predictions over centuries.
As Sept. 23 approaches, the discussion highlights persistent differences within and between religious communities about the interpretation of scripture, the role of prophetic signs and the propriety of predicting a calendar date for future divine action. Those debates are likely to continue whether or not any widely anticipated events occur on the specified day.