Great news! The rapture is coming on Rosh Hashanah

The latest guestimate for a rapture date is this Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of 5786. Graphic by iStock/Mira Fox

By Mira Fox September 22, 2025

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A new date for the rapture has taken over the internet, declaring that true Christians will bodily ascend to heaven this week — on Rosh Hashanah.

Believers are sharing tips for the rapture — don’t hold onto anything as you begin to rise, lest you hurt yourself. Others have pinned notes to their refrigerators with instructions for anyone left behind. (The main advice is to convert to Christianity.)

It’s not a coincidence that the latest rapture is slated for Rosh Hashanah. It’s core to the biblical math used to calculate the date.

This rapture date was sparked off, seemingly, by a South African pastor named Joshua Mhlakela, who said he had a vision of the rapture in which he heard trumpets; Christians often refer to Rosh Hashanah as the Feast of Trumpets. The sermon was shared on YouTube, where it went viral.

A South African woman, Mahlatse Letoka, employed by KPMG, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, sent an email to the entire staff of the enormous company. That email went viral as well and was shared around online. “Jesus will take the Christians who are ready (filled with the Holy Spirit and prayed up) between 23-24 September (Feast of Trumpets)” she wrote.

Now, users on ChristianTok — that’s the Christian part of TikTok — are debating whether or not the rapture will take place on Israeli time, or whether it will roll out across the globe at midnight. Others are attempting to prove the date through a sort of biblical math.

The idea of the rapture is tied to a line in 1 Thessalonians 4, which references trumpets — or shofars — describing “the dead in Christ” rising first “with the trumpet call of God,” followed by those who are still living ascending to the clouds. Though the New Testament in Matthew 24:36 says that “no man knows the day nor the hour” of the rapture, some posts on ChristianTok are saying that this, too, is about Rosh Hashanah, since Jewish tradition requires two witnesses to the new moon to confirm the day and no one knows when they might see it.

Of course, there have been a lot of Rosh Hashanahs without a rapture — 5,785 to be exact. Why this year is the winner is unclear.

Most of the people expecting a rapture seem to have a clear vision of what it will look like: people rising into the sky, as though they are being beamed up into an alien ship. (It seems likely that most of these ideas are based on popular media such as The Leftovers, an HBO show about those who remained after a rapture event.) Those left behind would then endure seven years of tribulations, after which Jesus would return to establish heaven on earth.

The idea of the rapture is a relatively new one in Christianity. While various lines in the New Testament refer to some sort of second coming of Jesus, also a raising of the dead, the idea that a rapture would come to save true Christians from the seven years of tribulations was only popularized by a British minister in the 1830s, John Nelson Darby. In the early 1900s, an American edition of the Bible called the Scofield Reference Bible further spread the idea of a rapture through its margin notes.

Pastors and historians online are desperately trying to calm those who are concerned about the rapture via videos discussing the recent history of the idea.

But for those readying themselves and their homes for the rapture, the details are irrelevant. The main thing to remember is not to look down.