R Is For Rumor: The 2025 Rapture That Was Not
Beck Wells | Nov. 4, 2025
Man holds a sign advertising the Rapture in Brooklyn, New York. (Timothy Krause)
Those who were active on social media in the months leading up to September 2025 may have heard about the latest installment in doomsday fearmongering: the Biblical Rapture, supposedly due on September 23 of the same year as prophesied by a South African man named Joshua Mhlakela.
While many have mistakenly labeled Mhlakela as a pastor, he holds no official title, spiritual or otherwise, instead basing his claims on a dream that he had. As a guest on the CENTTWINZ T “I’ve Been Through The Most” podcast, Mhlakela told hosts Innocent Sadiki and Millicent Mashile, “The Rapture is upon us. It is so upon us that if you are not ready for it, it is ready for you.”
The Rapture is a primarily Evangelical Christian belief that was first introduced in the 1830s. It is said to be an end-of-world event where true believers will be spirited away into the heavens while the rest of humanity is plunged into a devastated world of unimaginable horrors. According to Mhlakela, this was meant to happen on Sept. 23, 2025.
This is hardly the first widely rumored apocalypse proved false - in merely the last 30 years, we have survived such impotent disasters such as ‘Y2K’, the supposed end of all electronics that was thought to come at midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, setting humanity’s progress back decades and May 21, 2012, where a misunderstanding of the Mayan calendar convinced thousands that the world was ending. These are just a few of the better known examples. While the type of Armageddon being proposed differed, the panic amongst the masses was the same.
Douglas Schamle, a realist with a Catholic background, had much to say on the issue. While he was unaware of this particular apocalypse hoax when it was trending, Schamle was none too surprised upon hearing about it.
“At my age, I’ve seen half a dozen [hoaxes], at least, that gain traction with a large group of people,” Schamle said. “People seem to be endlessly gullible… the herd mentality is what kept us alive for an awful long time, and so we buy into things that our fellows buy into.”
Schamle pointed to the Jonestown Massacre as just one example of how dangerous this groupthink can be.
“[You get] a large group of people, and a very charismatic leader, and next thing you know, they’re buying into things that, if they thought about even a little, objectively, [they] would never have [given] a second thought,” Schamle said.
While Mhlakela introduced this particular rapture panic to the public, in this case, the “charismatic leader” seems to have been the whole of social media, as more and more trusted influencers added fuel to the dumpster fire.
Blakelee Holmes, the woman who informed me of the hoax a week before the failed Armageddon, agreed with Schamle. She was brought up in a very Evangelical household where the Rapture was a big part of the theology, and thus knew firsthand just how stressful and dangerous this belief could be for those who hold it.
“I think [the looming threat of the Rapture] has a genuinely negative effect on everyone it interacts with,” Holmes said. “When you grow up thinking, ‘Oh… the world is going to end in the next couple of years,’ it makes it a lot harder to think about details of the next couple of years… If the Rapture is coming in a couple years, why work on getting a career? Why work on doing all of these things?… I think the biggest detriment that that can have in people is that… it gives them an excuse not to live life… it creates this culture of not caring… To continue forward in society, we have to be motivated to do so.”
Gaye Sandoz, a television chef, had not heard of this particular rapture, but said that it was not something that she believed in anyway.
“I see people that want to buy chickens so they have their own eggs and can their own goods [because they think] the world’s coming to an end…” Sandoz said. “I have seen that a lot. I’m not a firm believer in all that, though.”
Sandoz had similar opinions to Holmes when it came to the higher levels of stress caused by this doomerist way of thinking.
“Things like climate change, which is definitely happening...are making people scared…” Sandoz said. “I think people are just getting frightened by news in general.”
This very much seems to be the case, especially in the recent political climate, which has taken a hard right-wing turn in the last decade, leading to an amplification of conservative voices like Mhlakela.
This conspiracy was largely perpetuated by TikTok, which ensured a quick and widespread of the misinformation. All of my interviewees seemed to agree that social media was largely at fault for the unprecedented levels of misinformation.
“Most people are gullible,” Holmes said. “If you look at the past and the way that society functions, people have been gullible for hundreds of years. [The misinformation epidemic] is not because we have become more gullible, but because we have more access to making things that are untrue.”
Sandoz agreed with Holmes.
“People have more access to social media, so I think they look at that and then they take it to heart, whereas before, you didn’t have all that social media access,” Sandoz said.
Schamle had a similar take on the situation.
“I think it’s because critical thinking isn’t taught in high school, because it all comes down to a lack of critical thinking…” Schamle said. “Otherwise, you fall for any number of scams. Scams… are everywhere, and they are [getting] better and better at what they do.”
The Rapture did not happen on the 23 of September, nor on the rescheduled dates of October 5 or 6. It is worth noting that people sold their cars, houses, and many worldly possessions in anticipation of the Rapture-that-was-not as a show of faith, which goes to show that this combination of gullibility and doomerism has the potential to cost more than just one’s peace of mind.
“I go back down to ‘critical thinking should be a high school requirement to graduate,’” Schamle said. “Our country is full of people who don’t do that, and they are sucked into the bubble of their choice.”