Well, if you did experience The Rapture this past Tuesday, you won’t be around to report on it, but social media channels hummed throughout the day fueled by TikTokers who proported that the day had come.
Other social media channels hummed with predictions, with one Bluesky user suggesting tuning in to this Blondie tune.
The NYT reported Tuesday on the prediction:
The Rapture is upon us, according to TikTokers, some of whom have latched on to a prediction that on Tuesday, Sept. 23 — today — Jesus Christ will return to Earth and take true believers to Heaven.
Some evangelical Christians believe the Bible predicts such an event, known as the Rapture, which essentially marks the beginning of the end of human history. They interpret parts of the Christian New Testament as describing the Rapture, including a passage from First Thessalonians that says followers of Christ “who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
The article continues:
There is a long history of people using numbers and dates in the Bible to try to calculate when end times will come, according to Peter Sherlock, a professor and theologian at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
“The Bible is full of patterns and symbolism,” he said in an email. “It’s no wonder that in trying to interpret this sacred text, many readers end up decoding these patterns to arrive at prognostications of doom, sometimes even dates for when the world will end.”
But, he added, the fact that people want to believe that the world will end on a certain date usually “says more about the uncertainty of our own times than it does about what is actually in the Bible.”
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