Will the “rapture” happen on September 23-24, 2025? I have a quick answer for this one: “NO.”

Over the past thirteen years when I have been writing on the Veracity blog, there have been several attempts at “date setting” event predictions connected to the Second Coming of Jesus. Speculation about “blood moons,” eclipses, etc. surface from time to time, and go viral on various news feeds, and this year is no exception. Videos of people having personal dreams about the “rapture” show up on YouTube and TikTok.

I would normally ignore stuff like this, as it keeps happening over and over again. All of the hundreds of attempts over the centuries to try to calculate the exact timing of the Second Coming of Jesus, or related events, have a 100% failure record…. which is pretty terrible. But what struck me this time is how “date setters” have managed to find a way around the New Testament warning AGAINST date setting.

Back in 2017, a prediction associated with the Second Coming of Jesus was made by date setters connected to the constellation Virgo. Foreboding a fulfillment of the Book of Revelation? Nope.  Nothing happened like that in 2017….. The same will prove true for the September 23-24 prediction in 2025.

The standard response any informed Christian should give to “date setting” speculations can be found in texts like Matthew 24:36, where Jesus himself says:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.“

In other words, Jesus as the Son does not even know the time of the Second Coming. For if Jesus does not even know, why would we think that anyone else living on planet earth would be able know any better?

You would think that should settle the matter. But apparently, some have come up with a very clever response to get around these words of Jesus.

The September 23-24, 2025 current speculation for the “rapture” has a certain twist to it. Rosh Hashanah is the time of the Jewish New Year, which will occur sometime during this period, for 2025, over these couple of days. Rosh Hashanah is also known as the Feast of Trumpets, the timing of which is determined by the sighting of the first sliver of the New Moon.

But what if certain atmospheric or other conditions interfere with an accurate sighting of the New Moon? For example, what if the evening is cloudy? Here is where the latest escape hatch for justifying “date setting” comes into play.

The claim is made that when Jesus says that the “day and hour no one knows,” this is a reference to the fact that it is not always clear as to when the New Moon could be actually sighted.  Could it be September 23rd?  September 24rd? At what hour? We are not sure, but it should be somewhere within this time frame.

If you scour Internet websites where this claim is made, the suggestion is made that Jesus is simply using a Hebrew idiom associated with the Feast of Trumpets to describe the timing of an event like the “rapture.”

The problem here is that there is no evidence which indicates that the “day and hour no one knows” is indeed such a common Hebrew idiom. You would think that if there was indeed such a Hebrew idiom, that a source can be cited to demonstrate this.

Hebrew idioms like this do exist. For example, when Jesus in the Gospels cites the sign of Jonah regarding “the three days and three nights” associated with his coming death, there is indeed an existing Hebrew idiom found among rabbinic Jewish writings, which serves as evidence to support the claim.

Unfortunately, for purveyors of the “day and hour no one knows” Hebrew idiom claim, there is no such evidence. But since the idea appears to fit, advocates for this hypothesis are not bothered by the lack of evidence.

In other words, for the date-setters, it is apparently okay for someone to claim something is true without evidence to support it, simply because you want it to be true: It is okay to simply make things up in order to justify your interpretation of the Bible.

This is really a bad way to try to interpret the Bible.¹

I am no prophet, but I am willing the make a firm prediction here: While it is true that Jesus could indeed return at any time, September 23-24, 2025 will come and go and nothing will happen. As this has happened time and time again, purveyors of this type of thinking will go back and rethink their date setting, and some may suggest a new date, based on more supposedly accurate data to work with. Or they will find some other sophisticated way to wiggle out of their original predictions. If someone is foolish enough to buy into the prediction and sell their house and all of their belongings before September 23-24, they will probably be severely disappointed.

But worst of all, such another repeated failed prophecy prediction will invite more skepticism against the integrity of the Christian faith.

Folks, we can do better than this.

Notes:

^{1. As apologist Mike Winger shows from his videos regarding the September 2025 rapture speculations, there are other ways of mistreating the Bible which are also bad. For example, 1 Thessalonians 5 is the famous passage on the “rapture,” as verse 2 lays out what Paul is writing to his readers: “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Paul is indeed warning the Thessalonians of the first century that the return of Jesus will come at any time. That Jesus is returning is sure, but the timing is unexpected. But at least one popular purveyor of the September 2025 rapture hype claims that in 1 Thess 5:4 , Paul shifts his audience to address people living much, much later (like September 2025???): “But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief“.  In other words, Christians today will not be surprised as to when Jesus comes back, as they will no longer be in darkness about the timing of the “rapture.” Not surprisingly (pun intended), this popular purveyor of the September 2025 prediction gives no supporting evidence for the claim that the “you” of verse 2 shifts to a different “you” in verse 4, the later “you” being Christians living 2,000 years later. This is just making stuff up to make the Bible say what you want it to say. What is missing is the intervening verse 3: “While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”  Verse 3 here explains the meaning of verse 4, in that there will be some in Thessalonika who will be completely surprised at the coming of the Lord, when/if it comes in that day.  But the coming of the Lord will not be a surprise for the Christian believers who understand the truth that the Lord will indeed return. In other words, while the coming of the Lord Jesus will not be a “surprise” for those who expect it, we still will not know when it will come; that is, the exact timing of his coming, NOT the fact that Jesus is coming.  Since what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, regarding the Second Coming, did not happen in his lifetime, there is nevertheless still a message for us living today. If only such prophecy “teachers” could read the Bible in context, and stop reading things into the text which simply are not there!! ↩}