If you’ve been on TikTok within the last week or so, chances are you’ve seen some videos either about the possibility of the Rapture happening this week (or this month), or you’ve been seeing videos joking about the people saying they’re about to get Raptured.
Before we dive into the absolute mess this has been on social media, let me explain what this whole Rapture business is.
The Rapture
The Rapture is a belief that some, but not all, Christians have that before the second coming of Christ occurs, as described in the book of Revelation, Christians, both dead or alive, will at some point be raptured up into Heaven to the sounds of trumpets and following Jesus up into the sky. This is a belief that originated in the 1800s and is held by many Non-Denominational Evangelicals, some Baptists, Pentecostals, and other Bible churches. However, it is primarily rejected by Catholics and mainline Protestants, including Lutherans and Anglicans, as well as the Orthodox church. There are different views on when the Rapture could happen, but the general idea remains the same.
So why did this blow up on TikTok?
Rapturetok
A lot of people started seeing videos on TikTok seemingly out of nowhere saying that the Rapture was going to happen on September 23rd, and to prepare for it by selling some of their earthly possessions. It caused fear and anxiety in a lot of viewers, especially as some pastors throughout the country exacerbated these beliefs.
But where did this come from?
A South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela described a vision he had supposedly from Jesus, saying that the rapture would happen on September 23rd or the 24th. This took off on TikTok and then went viral on all social media platforms.
People posted videos saying they would be selling their cars, leaving their jobs, and planning the future for their families and partners who might not be getting raptured, including their children. One woman even posted a video about giving her children to CPS, believing that only she would be raptured. While there were a lot of serious videos, giving tips for what to do when it begins, there were also quite a few videos poking fun at the whole thing.
One woman played her trumpet because her neighbor believed in the September rapture. More and more people started posting skits that began to look so real that no one could tell who was joking and who believed that the end of the world as we know it was on its way. Twitter memes went CRAZY during those few days leading up to and on the 23rd.
it didn’t happen
The 23rd came, and some people spent all day looking to the skies, wondering when the rapture would happen, listening for trumpets from above. And then after everyone had sold their lives and prepared themselves to lift to the skies, nothing happened. The next day still came, and everyone realized they had bills to pay and work to go to. People who had previously posted videos all about the rapture began to upload apologies, and others even said they didn’t want to talk publicly about the rapture in the future. Once that day was over as well, believers who had still held out hope quickly realized they had been wrong.
Some of the church leaders who told their churchgoers to sell their belongings apologized, saying that they believed what they had been told and had even sold some of their own belongings, acknowledging the frenzy they had caused as well as the panic and fear.
Other Christians shook their heads at the whole ordeal, saying that this gives Christians a bad reputation and that they need to learn from their mistakes, as this has happened before.
Be careful what you see online, folks. You never know what mass hysteria could happen next.