In preparation for the potential imminent rapture, an end-times prophecy some believe could occur on September 23 or 24 this year, evangelical Christians have been sharing warnings and advice in videos and videos on social media.
Rapture predictions have long been linked to real-world events, including Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza, despite the apparent inspiration of a South African pastor’s prediction shared on YouTube.
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What exactly is the rapture, and why do some Evangelical Christians think the world might end this week?
What information is necessary here:
The rapture is what?
Not all Christians believe in the rapture.
According to Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, author of Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End, this shouldn’t surprise you because the word “rapture” doesn’t appear in the Bible.
It is regarded as a prophecy for those who do because it covers events that will occur before Jesus returns to earth.
True Christians will rise up into the clouds “to meet the Lord in the air,” according to rapture theology followers.
Non-believers will also be left behind on Earth, where they will experience a number of tribulations, including plagues and fires, at the same time.
What are people saying about TikTok’s rapture?
A woman shares tearfully with her best friend in a video shared by an account with 848, 100 followers, called christwillreturn, in which she shares the words “you need to repent.” Now. You won’t be forgotten, I want you.
She recalls a dream in which she attempted to warn people that “Jesus is coming,” but instead she yelled and said, “Nobody was listening to me.”
Some people made fun of me, I said. Everyone needs to turn their heads, I feel. She continued, “He’s coming.”
Two men offer advice on what non-believers should do when the rapture occurs in another video shared by Christianquotes89.
“You’re probably wondering where the missing people went, I suppose. What’s happening here? One of the men explains, “I imagine you’re pretty afraid and looking for answers.”
“All of us who entrusted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior have been taken off the planet to heaven, to the Father’s house in heaven.” . with Jesus . He continued, “We will be there with him, and we will be returning with him in about seven years.”
He warned that those who are left behind will go through a “troubling period that’s worse than any period since mankind was created” in the interim.
How many people think that rapture is real?
People who are watching the rapture in popular videos also respond with surprise and even disdain, while also appearing to be genuinely concerned that it might start soon.
End-times beliefs are not particularly uncommon in the United States, where many of the videos come from.
Nearly half of Christians in the US, or 47 percent, respond to questions about whether they believe we are in the end times, according to research from the Pew Research Center’s study from 2022.
Although, according to Pew, the majority of Americans, or 58%, “reject the notion that humanity is in its final days.”
According to Pew, end-times beliefs may have an impact on how people feel about the world’s current state, including issues like climate change.
At 51%, those who think we’re living in the past were less likely than others to say that climate change is “an extremely or very serious problem” (62%).
Will there soon be rapture?
According to South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela, the rapture might occur on September 23 or 24 in a video that was posted on YouTube three months ago.
As of September 22, the video had more than 560,000 views.
However, other types of end-times prophecies date back even further than that, and predictions for the rapture have been made since at least the 1800s.
There have also been a number of well-known books and films about the rapture that have sold millions of copies in that time.
The late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, whose non-fiction book The New York Times ranked among the best in 1970, is one of them.
Lindsey, 95, passed away last year, making it more popular that events in contemporary Israel and Palestine would lead to the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.
According to Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth, Jesus’s return wouldn’t occur until after the final great war, which “was triggered by an invasion of the”new state of Israel.”
He added that “mankind will be on the verge of annihilation” when this would only occur.
One of the central themes of the rapture, that non-believers will be abandoned on earth, was recently brought out by the well-known Left Behind series of books.
One of the 16 books in the series was also adapted into a movie starring Nicolas Cage, and at least three of them reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
According to clinical social worker and author Josie McSkimming, beliefs about the end times can become deeply ingrained, especially in people who were raised learning about them in schools. Additionally, events like Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza may help to elicit those feelings.
According to McSkimming, who is from Sydney, Australia, and the author of Leaving Christian Fundamentalism and the Reconstruction of Identity, “I have clients who have left those churches, who have found themselves very dysregulated, very distressed, hypervigilant, and fear that this is the end times.”
